The man known as the “Yorkville Swindler,” who months ago was fresh from prison and living in a homeless shelter, answers the door to his luxury apartment wearing black Valentino combat boots with red laces. Like the cashmere sweaters he has been known to drape around his neck while lording around Yorkville, the boots are the kind of flashy wardrobe showpiece meant to demonstrate that he is a man of great wealth and importance.

Albert Allan Rosenberg, a 76-year-old serial fraudster who has fooled lovers and investors into believing he is a billionaire Swiss baron, is a free man.

It is a warm day in June, nine months since his most recent prison sentence expired. Rosenberg, who was released last year with $315 in his pocket, appears to have somehow landed on his feet, despite being saddled with a lengthy criminal record and limited job prospects. He has taken his act from affluent Yorkville, a neighbourhood he was banned from last summer, to slightly less affluent Midtown.

I found him at the Montgomery, a new 27-storey luxury rental apartment near Yonge and Eglinton, where the monthly rent for a suite similar to his one-bedroom unit on the 26th floor is $2,750. The aviator shades remain, but he has traded in his cashmere for a black leather bomber jacket that matches the boots.

How is he funding this lavish lifestyle? With his mugshot and criminal history all over the internet, one would think Rosenberg might have a hard time playing his old game, a well-known act that has led authorities to call him Baron Von Bulls---, “an incorrigible serial con artist” and a man “incapable of living within the norms of society.”

The swindler does seem to have lost some of his swagger. A Toronto art gallery owner told me he thwarted an attempted Rosenberg scheme two months ago. Rosenberg was posing as a wealthy businessman, using a fake persona — Allan Rothschild, a member of the posh European banking family with a legendary private art collection — while trying to procure paintings worth tens of thousands of dollars, the gallery owner said. That mission may have failed, but Rosenberg has managed to rent an upscale apartment and acquire quite the wardrobe.

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Rosenberg denies the gallery owner’s allegations. He also denies many of the past accusations levelled at him, but court and parole records document a history from which he cannot hide.

Rosenberg has spent much of his life convincing people he is the wealthy heir to various fortunes and a sophisticated investor who will, as a personal favour, help friends and romantic partners earn a quick and tidy sum of money. He has tricked unsuspecting victims into handing over their savings, and then has used the money to fund his lavish lifestyle and advance his charade. He has swindled the kind of educated professionals who should know better, who normally wouldn’t fall for such tricks. Rosenberg is that good.

“If he’d used his power for good rather than evil he would have been a very successful man,” says Toronto police Det.-Const. Val Dahan, one of the lead investigators on the case that led to his arrest and conviction on assault and fraud charges in 2013. (Dahan is not involved in any current Rosenberg investigation and spoke only about the previous case.)

Given his tendency to invent histories for himself, newspaper articles about his fraud trials contain the most reliable records of his personal history.

Born in Cairo, the son of a jeweller, Rosenberg lived with his family in France and Montreal before moving to Toronto in the 1960s with his mother, Marcelle Kaye, who owned a successful clothing boutique in Yorkville, according to stories in the Star and Globe and Mail archives. He met his first wife, Karin, with whom he had three daughters, in Switzerland. He has claimed to have a computer science degree from the University of Toronto, but parole records say that’s not true.

His history of bamboozling began in the 1980s, after he and Karin moved to Toronto and opened the Rosenberg Fine Arts gallery in Yorkville, a venture that led him to declare bankruptcy. In 1988, Rosenberg was sentenced to four years in prison for defrauding two American art galleries and Lorraine Monk, a respected Canadian photography curator, in various schemes, including one that involved a Picasso painting.

Rosenberg took paintings from New York and St. Louis galleries on consignment, but kept the sale proceeds. Monk, a widow supporting three children, told a judge she was so distressed after being swindled out of $100,000 by Rosenberg that she considered taking her own life.

Rosenberg was in and out of jail through the 1990s, spent five years at large in Europe, was arrested for crimes in France, and then jailed again in Canada for parole violations. He has amassed 25 fraud convictions.

One of his more recent victims was Antoinette Larizza, a Toronto woman he met through an online dating website in 2012. At the time, Larizza was 54, owned her own home and earned $110,000 a year as the director of a medical centre.

Rosenberg told Larizza he was a 56-year-old Swiss-Canadian businessman and heir to a fortune made from Ovaltine, the popular malted milk drink.

Rosenberg convinced Larizza to quit her job, sell her house and move with him into a Yorkville penthouse with rent of $10,000 a month. During their time together, Larizza gave Rosenberg $155,000 — money he was meant to be investing on her behalf, or borrowing because his own funds were “tied up abroad.”

After they married in March 2013, Larizza learned that Rosenberg was actually a convicted fraudster with no fortune, and more than a decade older than he claimed. Her money was gone. When she confronted him about the lies she’d uncovered, he assaulted her, squeezing her arm hard enough to leave a bruise. Larizza went to the police.

Rosenberg pleaded guilty to one assault charge and eight separate counts of fraud. Larizza wasn’t the only victim. He had pulled a similar trick on Michaela Zavoianu, another romantic partner who he had convinced to cash in her retirement savings and hand over $80,000 to him for investment. He had also swindled a project management company, a design firm, a furniture maker and private investors. He was sentenced to five years in prison. A judge imposed restitution orders totalling over $1.6 million.

In a victim impact statement, Larizza spoke not only of her financial loss but the devastating psychological pain. Even the business investors Rosenberg had befriended and scammed were stricken by his breach of trust. Dahan, the fraud detective, remembers how some victims cried during their police interviews. Many continued to call him Mr. Rosenberg, speaking with deference even then.

“They all had immense respect for him, even though he took their money,” Dahan says. “Even after they realized they weren’t getting their money back.”

In his doorway, Rosenberg stands over six feet tall and is thin bordering on gaunt, with age-spotted skin and ears that protrude from the sides of his bald head like tiny wings. He appears poised, ready to charm.

When he learns I’m the journalist he has been dodging, the charm evaporates and his face hardens. He begrudgingly agrees to talk, but escorts me outside, away from his residence. He walks stiffly, pressing a hand into his left hip and lower back, but moves fast; he is eager to get away from the Montgomery. The property managers don’t know about his criminal record, he explains, and he wants to keep it that way.

“We all have things that people shouldn’t know about,” he says. “Right?”

I had been trying to track down Rosenberg for a few weeks, since I learned he was living in Midtown and using a fake name, and that Toronto police have been investigating some of his recent activities. (Officially, police could not confirm whether there is an investigation.)

A local art gallery owner — we’ll call him John — told me that a man walked into his shop one day in May, looking to procure art and claiming to be a Rothschild. (John asked to have his real name withheld because his partner is fearful of retaliation.)

John was on vacation, but a gallery employee took the client’s name and they arranged a meeting when he returned.

The man who called himself Allan Rothschild was brash and eccentric, with the confidence and intensity John was accustomed to seeing in men from old-money families. He claimed to be in his 50s. He said he owned a company called CS Holding. He had a younger female companion who he referred to as “my lady friend,” though she described herself as an employee. Rothschild wore the same thing every time John saw him: aviators, a leather bomber jacket and black Valentino combat boots with red laces.

Rothschild told detailed stories about how the rapid weather changes in Switzerland made him ill, or how he dealt exclusively with Swiss and American banks because Canadians took three days to return a phone call. He complained about the delays caused by the high-end cartage company he said was shipping his possessions from Switzerland to Canada, an explanation for why his apartment had no furniture. He played the part well, but John felt something was off.

Rothschild initially wanted three paintings from the gallery. He would take them on loan, to see how they suited his apartment — a trial period for paintings is customary in the art world — and then pay after making his selections. Each painting was worth between $4,000 and $6,500.

The first red flag was when Rothschild asked John if he could pay a sum by cheque more than what the paintings were worth, then get the rest back from the gallery in cash. Just a small overpayment, maybe $5,000, Rothschild said. John didn’t like the sound of that, but said he’d think about it.

The next time they met, John overheard Rothschild’s female companion call him by another name: Rosenberg.

At the apartment on Montgomery Ave., John asked Rothschild for identification. Rothschild seemed insulted and scolded the gallery owner, claiming he didn’t have ID on him. John politely challenged him, pointing to a wallet on the counter. He asked if Rothschild was sure he didn’t have a document in the apartment that had his name on it. A bill? A bank statement? When Rothschild insisted he had none, John took the paintings and left.

Later, John tried an internet search for “Rosenberg,” the name he’d heard the assistant mistakenly use, with “scam,” and was floored to learn he’d been dealing with the infamous Yorkville Swindler.

Rosenberg says all of this is “nonsense” and “lies.” He never claimed to be a Rothschild. He didn’t try to buy art. There were no paintings in his apartment. He didn’t offer to overpay and get cash back. He doesn’t own a company called CS Holding and never pretended that he did. He tells me this outside a coffee shop in Midtown, in the shade of the towers that line Yonge and Eglinton, wearing the exact same get-up John had described to me in detail.

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Rosenberg says he’s living a quiet life, looking for a job, maybe in sales. He does not appreciate being asked about new allegations. He is hostile, contemptuous and often silent. He glares at me from behind his sunglasses, responding to my questions with his own. Who told you that? What proof do you have?

He repeatedly alludes to a lawyer who will look into whether “this” — my “intrusion” into his life — “is legal,” but he won’t give me contact information for the lawyer. He challenges everything I put to him, even facts that have been established in court, even things he has already admitted to.

Later, over the phone, Rosenberg admits he was trying to buy paintings, but says the whole thing was legit; he never pretended to be a Rothschild and didn’t offer an overpayment for the art.

When Dahan dealt with him back in 2013, she says Rosenberg had a similar attitude. “Things that were black and white, things that were factual and could be corroborated in 10 different ways,” the police officer says, “he still played the part of ‘No, I don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s not true.’ ”

He behaved as though he believed his own fake story.

Pleading guilty to his most recent fraud charges in 2013, Rosenberg expressed remorse, accepted responsibility for his conduct and acknowledged that his motivation was greed. While in prison, he told a Toronto Life writer that he was done with financial crime. “It has to stop,” he said. “I keep winding up here.” It seemed Rosenberg might be headed down a new path.

But his behaviour during parole a few years later didn’t inspire confidence. Released from prison in his mid-70s, accustomed to a life of luxury but with no real work experience, what’s a convicted serial fraudster to do?

In 2017 and 2018, Rosenberg was twice rearrested, his statutory release revoked “due to evasive and deceitful behaviour.” The Parole Board of Canada found he had been lying about his accommodations, finances and associates, and returning to his “cycle of fraudulent behaviour” within days of release.

In March 2018, he told his parole officer he had $315 and was living in a homeless shelter, but was then reported to be in the Yorkville area using an alias and offering $10,000-a-month rent for a luxury apartment. “You were considered to be bordering on harassment to secure the residence,” parole records noted.

Rosenberg claimed to have an inheritance, but the board said an investigation revealed the money was being held in trust, and he had “no access to the funds as they are subject to an active garnishment order” — restitution for the victims of his crimes.

“Your supervisor contacted your inheritance trustee, who explained that you do not have access to the principal amount and that all dividends were being garnished,” the board wrote. “She indicated that you had instructed her not to reveal this.”

The parole board noted that Rosenberg seemed “disassociated from reality” and unable to recognize that his actions suggested a return to criminal behaviour. He offered conflicting explanations and excuses, saying the Yorkville rent was only $1,600, not $10,000, and an aunt was going to pay it for him. Later, he said he wasn’t even planning to rent the apartment; he was just looking.

Unconvinced, the board imposed a new and unusual new restriction. “You are not to enter the affluent Yorkville neighbourhood in Toronto,” his release papers said. That area had been “the playground of choice” for his fraudulent activities, the board noted, a place where he had used aliases to pretend to be someone else and “ensnare unsuspecting victims” into his “web of lies and deceit.”

He was released again in July 2018. Two months later, his sentence expired and all restrictions, including the Yorkville ban, were lifted.

After his release, Rosenberg met the woman he would describe to John, the art gallery owner, as his “lady friend.” I spoke to the woman, who asked that her name not be used because she is frightened of him.

The woman told me she was never in a romantic relationship with Rosenberg. They met at her workplace, where during frequent visits he would dazzle her colleagues with stories of his supposed life as a rich businessman, she says. He offered her a job as an administrator, but said that to work for him she had to register a company in her own name, and then make his company the holding company. In May, she went with him to John’s art gallery, where Rosenberg warned her not to use his real name, but instead asked that she call him Allan Rothschild. Rothschild was his grandfather’s name, he told her, and he used it for “tax reasons” when buying art.

The woman alleges that Rosenberg convinced her to give him roughly $1,500 as a fee for a loan he promised his company would deliver within a few days. The loan never materialized. When she confronted Rosenberg on the phone, he became angry and called her a “vicious woman,” she says. Rosenberg denies taking money from her.

Sitting with Rosenberg at Yonge and Eglinton, I ask him again about the name Allan Rothschild. Three people have told me he has been using it. I tell him I find his repeated denials hard to believe.

“OK, that’s up to you,” he says. “But even if I did use it, which I didn’t, so what? What did I do? I didn’t do anything criminal.”

At first, Rosenberg shrugs when I ask how he went from living in a homeless shelter to a luxury apartment within a couple of months. Then he opens a small black bag he’s been carrying around and pulls out a bank statement, a document that appears to show he has an inheritance from the estate of his mother, Marcelle Kaye, a trust worth $781,000. He tells me that he used the May 2019 statement as proof of income when he rented his apartment at the Montgomery. (The property manager declined to comment for this story.)

Rosenberg acknowledges the trust is being garnished — “I have to pay restitution. I have no choice,” he says, bitterly — but insists he has access to some of the funds, despite the parole board’s finding that he does not.

As we speak, Rosenberg shows little of the remorse he claimed to feel back in 2013. “I do regret what happened in the past, but I paid a price for it, too,” he says.

He appears to feel lingering animosity toward Larizza, his ex-wife, who he has said he intends to sue to retrieve his possessions, a plan the parole board found “incredibly concerning.” The board told Rosenberg that Larizza doesn’t have the items he says she took and “feels targeted and pursued by you in a predatory fashion.”

“She claimed that she lost money, but she didn’t lose anything,” Rosenberg tells me. “She didn’t lose a thing.”

He makes this argument despite having pleaded guilty to crimes against her. Just because a person pleads guilty to something, he says, doesn’t mean they are truly guilty. “There are many things that I wasn’t guilty of, but I still pled guilty.”

In Rosenberg’s world, truth is flexible.