To the investigators hunting him, Elliott Keith Offen is an elusive Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde -- a silver-tongued con man one moment and an erratic, violent paranoid the next.

He reportedly has used at least 14 aliases, switches addresses every few months and has cash or valuables stashed in safe-deposit boxes scattered from Fort Lauderdale to New York.

His extensive criminal past allegedly includes thefts that drove his father to ruin and his brother into the streets of New York as a homeless person, and a $30 million planned bankruptcy in South Florida.

On Monday, officials of the Broward Sheriff's Office, the State Attorney's Office, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the FBI released details about Offen at a news conference.

Offen is wanted in Broward County on racketeering, organized fraud, conspiracy and grand theft charges in connection with the planned bankruptcy and in New York on three arrest warrants.

Authorities say he snatched his daughter from his wife and kept the child a virtual prisoner for seven years, not allowing her to have friends, attend school or even know her real name.

His former girlfriend, identified Monday by the pseudonym of Randy Jacobs, said he psychologically dominated her for a "terrifying" two years in which he beat her and hinted that he might kill her.

Offen, 34, has become one of South Florida's most-wanted fugitives since he was charged last December with operating the planned bankruptcy, or bust-out, in Broward and Dade counties in 1984 and 1985.

"He's dangerous. He should be off the street. . . . We're talking about a very brilliant man who is a very sick man. He can convince anyone of anything at any time," Jacobs said.

Broward prosecutor Kent Neal said the search for Offen has intensified since investigators recently unraveled Offen's background and learned he reportedly was a former mental patient with violent tendencies.

A key to the hunt has been Offen's daughter, who was taken into custody by Connecticut officials after Offen and Jacobs were arrested on minor charges -- and Offen posted bond before he could be identified as a fugitive.

He has since outwitted authorities up and down the East Coast as he tries to use a host of ploys to retrieve his child from a Connecticut youth shelter.

"He has continued to try to contact the child and, using a variety of ruses, has tried to regain custody of her," Neal said. "Deceptive ruses. Calling her over the phone, using various aliases and accents."

Offen was using the alias of Jack Gordon back when he was charged in December with using four companies and six warehouses to order merchandise valued at $30 million retail without paying for it.

His plan was to sell the merchandise at bargain prices to dealers, officials said, but some $15 million of the goods was confiscated before he could do so.

The case began to turn strange after the Connecticut arrest, when officials who thought they had a temporary custody case found themselves with a 10-year- old girl who wouldn't say anything.

"She refused to say how old she was, what her name was, where she had been living," said John Coffey, a Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent.

An intensive, months-long search for her identity resulted in investigators learning that Gordon actually was Offen -- and that he was far more than just another white-collar criminal.

First, there were bizarre notes that investigators found in apartments that he would abandon with regularity. The gun-toting Offen apparently had scribbled them to himself, officials said.

"Violated every stanard (sic) of human decency & civilized behavior," one reads.

There was also his arrest record. Coffey said a computer printout of Offen's arrest record in New York is eight feet long and includes charges ranging from littering to weapons violations to criminal trespass.

One larceny charge came, Coffey said, after Offen ruined his father's novelty shop on 42nd Street in New York through his stealing, and the father swore out a warrant.

Offen's family also told investigators that Offen terrorized them and that his brother, Lloyd, was the victim of a theft that was never reported to police.

"The family said he (Lloyd) used to be doing pretty well. Then he (Elliott Offen) ripped off his brother. His brother is now a street bum," Coffey said.

Offen snatched his daughter as his marriage was breaking up, officials said, with his ex-wife saying Offen began to act strangely and beat her so severely that she twice wound up in a home for battered women.

"He found more and more devious ways to get money," the former wife, who didn't want to be identified, told investigators.

Offen arrived in South Florida about three years ago, according to Coffey, and by then had trained his daughter in how to adopt a series of aliases to avoid detection.

Prosecutor Neal said that Offen would lock her in an apartment for hours or days as he worked one angle or another on various schemes, although there is no evidence he otherwise abused her.

"Her life was her father. Her life was protecting her father. She was under his complete domination," Jacobs said at the news conference. "The little girl had no friends. She was pretty good at entertaining herself, watching television."

Jacobs also used to teach the girl writing and math -- and Offen would teach the girl how to scratch out the names and dates in the notebooks to remove any evidence of who did them.

Offen had also discovered the lucrative world of bust-outs, according to officials.

Jacobs said that she met Offen on a blind date while he was just starting the planned bankruptcy and soon found herself pulled into a whirl of crime as she fell under his domination.

"I was terrified for my life. I looked like I was on drugs. I was in complete shock. The man used to beat me, lecture me for hours about what would happen if I talked," she said. "I was involved with a maniac."

Jacobs has since pleaded no contest to criminal charges connected to the bust-out, and Offen's daughter may be reunited with her natural mother. But officials say that won't happen until Offen is caught.