Christophe Thierry Rocancourt (1967 – ), also known as Christopher Rocancourt, is an impostor, confidence man and gentleman thief who scammed affluent people by masquerading as, among other things, a French member of the Roc
kefeller family.
He told Dateline NBC in a 2006 broadcast that his mother sometimes worked as a prostitute and that his father was an alcoholic who took Christophe to an orphanage when the boy was 5. He said he eventually ran away and made his way to Paris, where he eventually pulled his first big con by faking the deed to a property he didn’t own, then “selling” the property for $1.4 million.
Making his way to the United States, Rocancourt used at least a dozen aliases. He got the rich and powerful to invest in his schemes, he told Dateline, by tapping into their greed. He convinced his victims that he was rich by paying for their lavish dinners in cash. In Los Angeles, he pretended to be a movie producer, ex-boxing champion or venture capitalist. He dropped names like “his mother” Sophia Loren or “his uncles” Oscar de la Renta and Dino De Laurentiis, and was associated with various celebrities. He married Playboy model Pia Reyes; with whom he had a son, Zeus. He lived for a time with Mickey Rourke and apparently convinced actor Jean-Claude Van Damme to let him produce his next movie.
Besides being married to Pia Reyes, according to the press, he lived with playboy model Rhonda Rydell for six months. She said she did not know Rocancourt was married, and that he told her he was the son of a countess.
In 1998 he was arrested for an involvement in a shootout, and subsequently jumped bail. In 1999 he was freed of charges of forging passports after he had bribed State Department employees to get a passport. He was arrested in 2000 in the Hamptons for an unpaid hotel bill, and then jumped bail again. On April 27, 2001 he and Reyes were arrested in Oak Bay, British Columbia, Canada, and charged with defrauding an elderly couple. Reyes was released after convincing authorities that she had no part in the scam, much less any idea of her husband’s criminal activities.
In Canada, Rocancourt wrote an autobiography in which he ridiculed his victims. In March 2002 he was extradited to New York and pleaded to charges of theft, grand larceny, smuggling, bribery, perjury and fraud against 19 victims. He was fined $9 million, ordered to pay $1.2 million in restitution and sentenced to five years in prison. In Switzerland, the police have connected him with a jewel theft and barred him from the country until 2016.
In the Dateline interview, he estimated that his various cons had netted him at least $40 million.
Editor Phil Robertson is an award-wining journalist and graphic designer. With a degree from the University of Florida’s School of Journalism, his career in journalism and publishing spans over 30 years, and includes positions as editor and publisher for several newspapers and magazines. During his career he has received a first-place award for investigative journalism from the Society of Newspaper Editors, and five ADDY awards for advertising design.
