Italian conman tricks his way into government post

In an audacious scam worthy of the confidence trickster in Steven Spielberg's film Catch Me If You Can, a man with no legal qualifications has passed himself off as a high-flying government lawyer and is still in an important public job.

Paolo Bonaccorsi takes sensitive decisions regarding Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's favourite infrastructure project, the planned suspension bridge across the Straits of Messina connecting Sicily to the mainland, the longest structure of its kind in the world.

In 2001, Mr Bonaccorsi was appointed counsellor with responsibility for urbanism and the environment in the region of Calabria, in the extreme south of the Italian peninsula. The environmental impact of the bridge is part of his brief.

Announcing his appointment in August 2001, Mr Bonaccorsi's new employers claimed that he was a lecturer in urbanism at the University of Siena. But three months earlier, the same man was working as a highly paid consultant for Roma Duemila, a property subsidiary of the Italian state railways. He had been in the job for several years but gradually suspicions began to be aroused. It was noticed, for example, that he never discussed legal questions directly with the staff of the company, but always delegated to one of his subordinates. An auditor suggested that he could be replaced by a professor from the prestigious Sapienza University at half of the salary which Mr Bonaccorsi was drawing but the proposal came to nothing.

It was noticed not only that his bills were high but that he did not follow the standard billing system used by Italian lawyers. A check revealed that his name did not appear in the register of Roman lawyers.

When challenged by the company to prove his credentials, Mr Bonaccorsi said he was in the Milanese register. He sent what he claimed was a photocopy of the 1997 edition of the Milan register, giving an address and telephone number in the city, and with a small "c" by his name indicating that he was accredited with the Court of Cassation, Italy's highest court.

But Mr Bonaccorsi, who styles himself professore avvocato or "professor lawyer", had pushed his luck too far. A further check in the Milanese register revealed that his photocopy was a clever fake. His name was not in the true register.

The company asked him to clear up the discrepancy but by then Mr Bonaccorsi had disappeared. Three months later he showed up again, this time masquerading as an alumnus of the University of Siena.

Mr Bonaccorsi presented a formidable curriculum vitae when he successfully applied for the sensitive position of urbanistic counsellor in Calabria.

Besides the Siena post, he also claimed to be graduate, summa cum laude, in public law from Rome in 1965 and with a further university teaching qualification in administrative law (from an unspecified institution) and in urbanistic law from the Faculty of Jurisprudence from the famous private Luiss University in Rome.

Many other qualifications were listed on his CV, which concluded that he had also published about 150 articles. He also claimed to have been a teacher of administrative justice at the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Teramo in 1968-71, but the institution only came into existence in 1993.

Mr Bonaccorsi did not return phone calls from The Independent yesterday.