Dattilo provided her with the man's name, address, phone number and car registration details. He gave her a cut-out photograph of the man and named the Toorak gym and coffee shop he frequented. He ordered her to get to know him as soon as possible so she began stalking the man's every move. Dattilo paid her in cheques, some from his family trust, while others were in a company's name in amounts varying from $1200 to $900 and then $500. But as the weeks passed, Dattilo's focus changed. To Meagher, he seemed ''obsessed'' with the wife of the man he was paying her to follow and appeared intent on breaking up their marriage. He had also begun pushing her to hurry up and lure the target into a compromising position. ''It didn't feel right,'' she says now. Which is why she confronted the man and his wife about Dattilo's scheme. They told her that this was not the first time Dattilo had caused problems in their lives and asked for Meagher's help in taking out intervention orders against him. She agreed. Dattilo did not contest the applications when the matter reached the court in early July 2010, so the orders were granted without Meagher having to give evidence. As far as she, the target and his wife were concerned, their association with Dattilo was behind them. But within days Meagher began receiving invoices from a company called Stefanel. The amounts ranged from $6050 to $15,125 for ''all necessary attendances and correspondence related to the legal matters … review of documents, exploring legal options and consequence follow-up''.

They made no sense to her, so she ignored them and turned her attention towards getting on with her life. MEAGHER was on the verge of starting over at the end of last year. She had been accepted into TAFE to study landscaping and horticulture, and was overcoming her sometimes debilitating mental health problems. She was also determined to turn her back on working as an escort. But then she received a text message in December informing her she was bankrupt. ''I thought it was joke,'' she says. ''It read that it was a courtesy text informing me I had been declared bankrupt. I showed it to my partner and figured it must have been a mistake. But when he looked up the case number on the internet he discovered a sequestration order had been made against me in the Federal Magistrates Court. I couldn't believe it.'' The order related to a $63,413.17 debt, the amount of an earlier default judgment in the magistrates court. She discovered she had also been ordered to pay the legal costs of Stefanel, the company that brought the action against her. After some further digging, she realised Dattilo was the company's director and sole shareholder and that he was behind it all. Meagher insists the first she knew about any legal action was when she received the text message four days after she was bankrupted. When she dialled the number the message had come from, Dattilo was soon on the other end of the line.

He told her he could have her financial status restored. All she had to do was write a letter he could show his company in Italy stating the man he had paid her to follow was a liar, abusive and unstable and had forced her to go to court for the restraining order applications. She refused and instead contacted the Federal Magistrates Court to find out how she could get the order annulled. ANTONIO Dattilo's name (or the names of his many registered companies) appears on Victorian court lists often. He has sought default judgments against multiple individuals and businesses in the Magistrates, County and Supreme courts. In many instances he has then gone to the Federal Magistrates Court to bankrupt those he is targeting, or taken steps to wind up their companies in insolvency. Not even his relatives are immune from his appetite for litigation. His four brothers and sisters-in-law have spent almost $500,000 in legal fees clearing their names over debt judgments and bankruptcy orders they claim were granted by Victorian courts without any foundation. His methodology is always similar. It revolves around baseless invoices for large amounts of money. When no payment is received, he takes court action, producing sworn affidavits from himself and his wife Patricia stating that all parties have been notified about court action.

But many who have been dragged through the courts by them deny ever receiving invoices, let alone being notified about legal action or any court hearings. In addition to financially crippling those he is targeting, and/or their companies, he also places caveats on any properties he can link to them, including their current and former spouses and business partners. Dattilo's former landlord, Con Mancuso, is among many forced to navigate their way through the legal system and all its complexities to get judgments and court orders Dattilo has had granted against them, overturned. Dattilo claims Mancuso owes him more than $2 million for property Mancuso sold from the Campbellfield factory Dattilo rented from him. Mancuso admits to auctioning off goods, but says he only did so months after Dattilo stopped paying rent, and after Dattilo repeatedly ignored requests to remove it.

Almost a year later, Dattilo took legal action against Mancuso, his business, his wife and their family trust. By the time they realised what was going on, Dattilo had already placed caveats on every property he could connect to them, many of which are still in place, as Mancuso's court battle, which so far has cost them more than $40,000, continues in the County Court. Importer Tony Garoffolo has also spent thousands trying to get caveats lifted and restore his sullied financial status courtesy of Dattilo. Garoffolo's company imported beer for Dattilo in 2009 but refused to hand it over until Dattilo paid them money he already owed. The debt was never paid and Dattilo's company was placed into receivership. Months later, Garoffolo received a tip-off that legal action was being taken in the Supreme Court to wind up his company. When he looked into it, the invoices - which he never received - related to imported beer. He had never heard of the company he supposedly owed the money to, and had never entered a business agreement with it. Then he discovered Dattilo was the company's director. Car dealer Barry Deacon still struggles to understand how court default judgments could have been issued against his automotive business when he never even met Dattilo. Deacon's son sold Dattilo a Range Rover in 2010. Dattilo left a deposit, but as Deacon puts it, he then ''fell off the face of the earth''. He never returned to collect the car, so it was eventually sold to someone else. His deposit was kept, mainly because they couldn't find him to return it.

Deacon learnt more than a year later that Dattilo had taken court action against his car dealership and was in the process of having the company wound up. That was the first he knew about it. AS LOUISA Meagher mulled over how she got herself in such a situation, she noticed that legal documents the Dattilos stated they had served on her claimed to have been served at an address where she no longer lived. One of Dattilo's wife's affidavits also claimed she had hand-delivered documents to Meagher after she was supposedly contacted through her apartment's intercom. But, as Meagher's property manager later confirmed, the intercom had been out of order at the time of the alleged delivery. Meagher was also able to disprove - through independent witnesses - allegations the Dattilos made in another affidavit that she had threatened their family. In addition to suggestions the Dattilos may have committed criminal offences regarding their sworn affidavits, reforms to the Civil Procedures Act now require anyone taking civil action in Victoria - or their legal counsel - to sign overarching obligations declarations. These affirm that the action being taken is not ''frivolous, vexatious, an abuse of process or does not have a proper basis''. Dattilo has consistently signed such declarations. Yet when Meagher presented her version of what happened to a court recently, federal magistrate Heather Riley was satisfied that she owed nothing to Dattilo or his company and never had. Riley declared the default judgment against Meagher had no proper basis and ruled the entire case against her ''a complete fiction'' and an abuse of process.

The bankruptcy order was set aside and Dattilo was ordered to pay Meagher's costs, which are now in excess of $47,000. Stefanel, like many of Dattilo's companies, is now in liquidation. She will probably see none of it. ''Soul-destroying is how I would describe this whole ordeal,'' Meagher says. ''Most people think I'm crazy when I tell them what's happened and I don't really blame them. If this wasn't happening to me I probably wouldn't believe it either.'' In another cruel twist, Meagher has learnt that she will have to go before the County Court to have another default judgment - worth $633,471.07 - set aside that Dattilo was granted against her. Many involved in legal stoushes with the Dattilos say they have reported their vexatious actions to authorities including Victoria Police, the Australian Taxation Office, Australian Securities and Investment Commission, and the Insolvency and Trustee Service Australia. But in most cases, for various reasons, they have all been turned away. ''One of the most frustrating things about this is that no one is prepared to really look at what he's done and punish him for the lives he has ruined and continues to ruin,'' Meagher says. ''Police aren't prepared to stop him and the courts and every other government agency we've gone to continues to let it happen. It's a disgrace.'' The best several people have been able to do is to take out intervention orders against the couple.

When approached by The Age for comment, Dattilo said he was ''unavailable''. Loading Meanwhile, Meagher's mental health has deteriorated and she openly admits to contemplating suicide because of what she has endured at the hands of Dattilo and his wife. Andrea Petrie is The Age Supreme Court reporter.