Police say Jarrett met more than 60 women who responded to the ads and that he had sex with at least two of them. Jarrett is well known to police, having first come to their attention in September 1997 when he was arrested at Crown Casino after an assault (not by him) on the driver of a limousine he had hired while pretending to be Daniel Depp, Johnny Depp's brother. Jarrett and his driver had tried to gain entry to a party at Crown Towers in the suite of basketballer Shaquille O'Neal. The next day, Jarrett pleaded guilty to 10 charges of obtaining a financial advantage by deception related to the Depp scam, which dated back more than a year to June 1996. The next year, Jarrett surfaced in Adelaide pretending to be American actor Skeet Ulrich, star of Scream. He bore enough resemblance to Ulrich that he was interviewed by Foxtel entertainment reporter Peter Ford, who took him for the real thing until his accent began to slip after a few drinks.

In April 2001, Jarrett was sentenced to a maximum of two years' jail over fraud charges stemming from the collapse of a Bendigo nightclub, Nocturnal Insomnia, that left creditors $139,000 out of pocket. Since then he has made a return appearance as Skeet Ulrich. He also pretended to be Jai Hanlyn, a representative of Johnny Depp scouting holiday locations in NSW for the star, Josh Jarrett, a Las Vegas-based nightclub owner looking to set up a base in Geelong, and Joshua Hitchcock. The ads placed by Hitchcock Media International, or HMI, first appeared in late November. The Age repeatedly tried to contact the company throughDecember, at first in the belief that a local production of Cheers might have been in the offing. Calls to the office number on the HMI website were taken by an answering service. Eventually The Age received an email and a press release from a Kate Sellick on behalf of the company. Joshua Hitchcock was said to be ''overseas'', and the company was on the brink of launching ''on what we believe is a large scale''. Mr Hitchcock would, the email said, ''be more than happy to meet with you if you are interested''. Loading

While waiting for the meeting that never came, The Age tried to check HMI's credentials. Geoff Brown, executive director of the Screen Producers Association of Australia, said he had never heard of Joshua Hitchcock or HMI, ''and I thought I pretty much knew everybody in this industry''. Neither federal funding agency Screen Australia nor state funding body Film Victoria had heard of Hitchcock or HMI, and management at the Docklands film studio - the most likely site for a set-based production - confirmed to The Age that they had not been approached by HMI and had heard nothing of a local version of Cheers.