With a gregarious manner, a ready - and familiar smile - and the telltale hint of a childhood stutter, nobody would ever be in doubt who Frank Biden's brother is.

For 66 years he has largely been in the shadow of his older brother Joe, self-deprecatingly saying that he is the least important Biden sibling.

But now DailyMail.com reveals how he has been hiding the Biden family's perhaps darkest secret - an almost 20-year failure to pay a cent to the family of a man killed in August 1999 by the speeding Jaguar coupe he hired.

The revelation comes as his brother Joe recovers from the blow he suffered of coming in fourth place in the Iowa caucuses, and as his campaign faces a make-or-break series of contests in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

Born in November 1953, the youngest of four children to parents Joseph Sr. and Catherine, Frank had little choice but to live in big brother Joe's shadow.

Family: Frank Biden is the youngest of the Bidens. His brother Joe was 11 when he was born, with his sister Valerie eight years his senior and brother James three and a half years his senior

Family time: Frank Biden and Mindy Ward, his partner, posed with his brother Joe in February 2013 in a picture posted just after Joe began his second term as vice president

Tragedy: Frank Biden graduated high school in 1972, the summer before his brother's most tumultuous year: In November Joe became the youngest senator in history, celebrated his 30th birthday at a party with his sons Beau (left) and Hunter (right) and then weeks later, his wife Neilia and their daughter, Naomi were killed in a car crash

Frank now lives in Atlantis, Florida, with his partner Mindy Ward, a Hooters waitress-turned American Airlines flight attendant and healthcare worker at a house owned by her parents

Like his brother, Frank overcame a childhood stutter about which he has been open in later life. Tall and athletic, he was a high school basketball star, playing guard for Wilmington Friends School in the Bidens' Delaware hometown, as well as second choice for quarterback.

He transferred to and graduated from the Quaker school in the class of 72 and had barely graduated high school when he first helped Joe campaign against the Republican incumbent senator.

Joe became the youngest senator in history - a Democratic superstar who was rapidly hit by the tragedy of his wife and daughter both being killed in a car crash before he had even taken up his seat.

In the meantime, Frank began an educational career which DailyMail.com has been unable to fully untangle.

According to a memoir written by Joe's second wife Jill Biden, Frank was a student at the University of Delaware - who played Cupid for the couple in 1974, as his older brother raised his two sons alone.

But in Frank's marriage announcement in 1985, he is described as having studied at San Francisco State University.

In other places, he is described as having attended Cornell University and Pepperdine Law School in Malibu, California, where he claimed that he had developed a love of surfing.

None of the schools would confirm Frank's attendance to DailyMail.com.

At age 22, however, he had a brief taste of the public spotlight when he was named as having received a free trip to Africa in 1976 with his brother as part of a Congressional delegation.

Marriage: Frank Biden married Janine Jaquet, a local newspaper reporter in Delaware in 1985, when he was a realtor in San Francisco

Questions were raised over an apparent safari photo trip, which Joe said was actually their minibus journey from the hotel to the airport, and Joe defended his presence saying he took his brother because he was not married.

'I didn't take any staff, so he was my staff, and for company. I wasn't married then,' Biden told The Morning News of Wilmington, which said he only answered questions after being 'corraled' by reporters.

By 1985, Frank was a real estate broker in San Francisco when he married Delaware journalist Janine Jaquet in October of that year.

Jaquet was working for the Newark bureau of the Morning News of Wilmington, Delaware in June, 1981 before moving to Delaware News 12 as a political reporter in 1984. It is unclear how long they lived in San Francisco; by the end of the decade Jaquet had was credited in a TV documentary in Delaware.

She is now an associate dean at Columbia Journalism School in New York. The couple had a daughter Alana in 1989, who is an NBC Productions executive in Los Angeles.

Frank also has a daughter Megan, a nurse practitioner in Virginia, according to an online profile he appeared to have contributed to for a substance abuse charity, although obituaries of his mother name only Alana as one of her grandchildren.

With his big brother already a rising star in Washington D.C., it was natural for Frank to follow him into government, albeit behind the scenes.

Daughter: Frank's daughter from his marriage to Janine Jaquet (right) is Harvard graduate Alana Biden (left), who works for NBC in Los Angeles. He also has a daughter, Megan, who is a nurse practitioner in Virginia, from another relationship

In 1993, as Bill Clinton started his first term, he obtained a $78,000-a-year political appointment as director of congressional and legislative affairs at the Government Printing Office - now the Government Publishing Office - which he held until June 1997.

In effect its chief lobbyist, he defended his appointment in June 1996 to The Wilmington News, saying that its work was outside his brother's responsibilities in the Senate and that he had been alerted to the role by a friend, not by his brother.

He claimed he had 'assiduously' avoided jobs in Delaware which could raise conflicts of interest and said: 'People have a natural tendency to be kind to someone who is related to someone they admire.'

But within a year the job was over and, aged 43, he had separated from his wife and his life took an unexpected turn. He moved to Florida where he worked as a sales manager for a printing company.

In 1998, Frank appeared in the Palm Beach Post having presented the 'Volunteer Of The Year Award' For The Palm Beach Photographic Center.

It was also reported that he was working in a representative capacity in his brother's Senate office.

But at some point in those years, he also grappled with his personal demons and was gripped by substance abuse, court papers submitted by the family of the man killed in the car crash say.

Rose garden pose: Mindy Ward, Frank Biden's partner, posed with Joe in August 2016 before a state dinner for the prime minister of Singapore

How the penniless vacation: Mind Ward and Frank Biden posed at Triple Creek Ranch in Darby, Montana, where room rates start at $1,050 a night. It was bought by Craig Barrett, a former CEO of chip manufacturer Intel, and has been rated one of the best hotels in the world by a series of magazines

Tanned and muscular Frank lives in a $600,000 four-bed, four-bath home in Atlantis, Palm Beach County, with partner Mindy Ward who it's understood he met in early 2010

Frank and his partner have been photographed together attending black tie functions at the White House while Joe Biden was in office. Pictured: Frank out and about in Lake Worth Florida

In 1999, aged 46, he moved to California for a fresh start and rented an apartment in San Diego, apparently without a source of income, and with a girlfriend whose name is unknown.

It was then that tragedy struck with the death of Michael Albano - hit by a car Biden had hired on a suspended license - but Biden didn't stick around.

He fled the Golden State and eventually returned to Florida where public records suggest he has lived in West Palm Beach for the past 15 years.

But his own accounts of those years have shifted, making it hard to know the truth,

In 2011 he said that he had been out of Florida for some time until 2008, working for Hand in Hand Ministries, a Kentucky-based charity providing scholarships to poor children in Appalachia and Latin America.

He had been in Nicaragua and contracted a bacterial infection, moving to Florida to recover, he told the Sun Sentinel.

In an online profile dating from 2009, he said he had been director of 'a major philanthropy in Central America.' He raised funds and built schools for the Catholic charity he said, apparently a reference to Hand in Hand, which was founded by a Jesuit priest.

Boast: Frank Biden is a member of the National Recovery Council. His profile on its website includes a series of questionable claims about his past

But in April 2015 he told a rather different version of that story, claiming he had been in El Salvador and Nicaragua since 'right towards the end of' the Clinton administration, for whom he added: 'I was one of his chief salesmen.'

The Government Printing Office said he left it in June 1997, long before the end of the Clinton administration.

According to a recent ABC News investigation into the business dealings of the younger Biden, in 2009 he became involved with the Florida based for profit charity Mavericks in Education after meeting the company's founder. Asked what he role was, he said: 'I'm the big cheese.'

A different source named the founder as Mark Rodberg.

In 2011 he was appointed president of Mavericks in Education, according to Florida LLC company documents.

According to ABC News a person familiar with Frank's role at Mavericks told them he was paid $70,000 per year over the course of five years – a salary that amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Over the years, ABC claims, Frank touted his famous last name and Washington connections to help land the company a series of charter contracts from local officials in Florida to open charter schools. There were private jet trips to Tallahassee to lobby lawmakers; a far cry from 2008 when his brother Joe's chief of staff said Frank had 'no assets.'

In an interview with The Washington Post in 2011, Frank admitted the Biden name helped open doors.

'I enjoy automatic acceptance or at least listening to what I have to say,' he explained. In several press releases put out by Mavericks, Frank was touted as 'brother of Vice President Joe Biden.'

Former charter school officials and board members approached by ABC revealed that Mavericks schools all wanted the Biden name out front.

To fit the role Frank even wore cufflinks bearing the presidential seal to meetings and when speaking at schools he would regularly discuss his closeness to his brother.

His time with Mavericks was blighted by claims of mismanagement, however.

Many of the schools, which focused on educating teens with troubled backgrounds, were mired in controversy, badly under performed, suffered low graduation rates, and in lawsuits and state audits, were hit with allegations of fraud.

According to ABC News Mavericks was hit with at least two lawsuits over allegations of inflating enrollment as part of a scheme to garner more government funding. The charters were eventually sold off in 2017 to EdisonLearning.

Family affair: Frank Biden posted this picture from the White House in August 2016 with (from left) Joe Biden, Finnegan Biden - Hunter's youngest daughter from his first marriage - and Jill Biden, the then second lady. The Bidens were at a state dinner for the prime minister of Singapore

Life now: Frank Biden shares a $600,000 four-bedroom, four-bathroom home in Atlantis, Florida, with his partner Mindy Ward, whose parents own the house. The couple drive contrasting black and white Range Rovers

That year Mavericks was operating six schools with nearly 2,500 students enrolled. Frank was president of Mavericks through January 24, 2013, but disappeared from the amended annual report filed on December 6 that year.

Bizarrely, archives of the Mavericks company website show Frank was scrubbed from the company's 'about us' page between August and September 2015.

Yet he was still introduced as 'President of Mavericks Charter Schools, Frank Biden' in a September 20, 2016, Blog Talk Radio interview, and he didn't challenge the description.

Tanned and muscular Frank lives in a $600,000 four-bed, four-bath home in Atlantis, Palm Beach County, with partner Mindy Ward who it's understood he met in early 2010.

Ward, 47, is a former Hooters waitress and current American Airlines flight attendant who also works at CHG Healthcare in Boca Raton, according to her Facebook profile.

Frank and his partner have been photographed together attending black tie functions at the White House while Joe Biden was in office.

Mindy posted separate photos of her posing next to Joe at the White House in October, 2016. Frank and Mindy also posed with the former vice president at the Miami Book Fair for the Veep's memoir in 2017.

In other photos Mindy is seen with Frank on vacation at Triple Creek Ranch hotel resort in Darby, Montana in 2013 - cabins begin at above $1,000 per couple per night - and having fun at the beach in the summer of 2010 not long after they met.

But he has also been open about his struggles with drink, in one interview for the Hagerstown Herald-Mail in 2019 saying he had been sober for 23 years, even if that did not tie together with his DUI arrests inside that time.

He is also policy director of the National Recovery Council, whose online biography of him is at the least questionable, saying: 'Prior to moving to Florida, Mr. Biden served as The Director of Legislative and Congressional Affairs in the White House under President Clinton from 1992 -1998.'

Behind the scenes Frank has been involved in multiple election campaigns for his big brother, working as an advisor and unpaid campaign coordinator.

He is often seen in YouTube videos donning a sharp suit, collar and tie while talking politics.

In January 2019 he was photographed wearing a 'The Biden Team' t-shirt and told the Palm Beach Post he's 100% behind his brother in his bid for the White House in 2020.

Now his own problems might come to cast a shadow over his big brother - reversing the pattern of Frank's life.

