Former con man Mark McClafferty tells Gavin Haines his extraordinary story...

The former brickie from Bournemouth is regaling me with stories about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s private cigar club, of which Mark was a member.

“It happened on the first Monday of every month. David Hasselhoff, Fred Durst and Bill Paxton were regulars,” says Mark.

“I took some of my buddies along one night and my mate Rupert turned up in the tightest t-shirt he could fit into. When Arnie saw him he came over, squeezed his muscles and said ‘are you trying to take over from me?’ Arnie was very down-to-earth.”

Although Mark claims he was mixing with the Hollywood elite, he’d arrived in America in 1991 with barely two dollars to rub together. But by the mid-90s he was a millionaire, jetting between a penthouse in Vegas, an apartment in Miami and a palatial pad in Hollywood.

Stephanie Beacham was his tennis partner and partying was his speciality.

“I’d fly to Vegas on a whim, hit the tables and then the strip clubs,” says Mark, who now lives more modestly in Winton. “Then I’d get an 8am flight back to LA for work.”

Ah, work, a term Mark uses loosely. You see, while he arrived in LA looking for an honest career, his appetite for the good life soon corrupted him.

“I was working as a bricklayer and one day I drove through Beverly Hills looking at the big houses and spotting movie stars,” says Mark, in a Dorset accent thick with Americanisms. “I wanted a piece of the action.”

The money was in film or finance but Mark couldn’t afford headshots, so he chose the latter.

“I swotted up, reading business sections of newspapers and autobiographies of successful entrepreneurs,” he says. “Then I saw an advert to become a stockbroker.”

Mark applied and somehow got an interview.

“The guy interviewing said ‘what the hell are you doing here?’” recalls Mark. “I told him I’d come 6,500 miles from a different country, had no bad habits and dreamt of becoming a millionaire in ten years – he offered me a three week trial.”

Mark started as a dogsbody, but quickly demonstrated a flair for the job. “Within seven months I was driving a Porsche,” he says.

However, relations with his employers soon turned sour when he demanded more money – they sacked him for his temerity.

Jobless, Mark established his own brokerage with a friend, but in 1995 the internet came along and set his moral compass off course.

“Every week I was reading about another billion dollar internet company,” he says. “I knew how the investment game worked and had investment companies at my disposal – all I needed was an idea.

“So I sat at home and came up with Central Plaza – a virtual mall where people could buy anything from around the world.”

Mark had brochures printed and pitched the concept to investors – within five months he’d raised $5.8 million.

“People were naïve about the web but at the same time they wanted to be part of the next big internet business,” explains Mark.

However, those putting a stake in Central Plaza would never see a return on their investment.

“It was a con,” says Mark, who had no intention of investing their capital.“I was selling the sizzle but not the steak.”

Mark placated unsuspecting investors with fake newsletters and small “dividends” while haemorrhaging their cash on his playboy lifestyle.

Keen to share Mark’s fortune, the directors of a boiler room operation (callcentres that sell shady products) recruited him to generate more phoney ideas for their reps to sell.

By 1999 Mark controlled 18 boiler rooms across the US and his scams had raised £117 million.

Assuaged by newsletters and diminutive “dividends,” investors had no reason to smell a rat, but while Mark puffed cigars with an unwitting Arnie they picked up the tab.

He had a good run but in 2001 the FBI came to arrest him after getting wind of the scam.

“I wasn’t home, but I couldn’t return to my house,” he says. “So I left everything.” Playing out the movie cliché, Mark fled to Mexico with a cache of $1.3 million.

“The myth is that when you get to Mexico you’re clear,” he says. “But that’s not true.”

Mark went on the run with some well-connected Mexican “chicks,” whose friends bundled him out of Cancun on a flight to Frankfurt.

“I expected to be arrested in Germany, but nothing,” he says. “So I got a connecting flight to Gatwick and still nothing.”

Keeping under the radar, Mark moved back to Bournemouth in 2001. He rented a flat in Penn Hill, until Scotland Yard came knocking in 2004 – the game was up.

Mark went quietly, signing the necessary papers to make his extradition swift – his co-operation shaved 11 years off his sentence.

His good fortune continued. In San Diego prison, Mark struck a Catch Me If You Can-esque deal with the authorities, agreeing to provide the necessary information to stop similar scams happening again.

After 16 months of negotiations his sentence was slashed to just under five years. Avoiding prison politics (four inmates were murdered while he was inside), Mark busied himself writing a novel,Exile Corporation, which has just been published.

“It kept me sane,” he says. “I’d only ever written phoney newsletters, but in prison I realised I had a flair for writing.”

The book follows the mixed fortunes of millionaire playboy, Mark Knoxx, who develops a device that gives immediate diagnosis for illnesses. The protagonist’s invention advises doctors what medication patients should take, but it falls into the wrong hands and is used for evil gains.

“Part of the book is based on my life experiences and the lives of those I met in prison,” says Mark. “The rest is influenced by other events like the war of terror.”

Were Mark’s book to go global, don’t expect him to be signing copies in America.

“I’m banned for life,” says Mark, who also has the matter of an outstanding fine for his crimes – although it’s unenforceable outside the US.

“It’s $15.5 million – bet that makes your credit card statement look good, doesn’t it?”