THE TROUBLE WITH JOSHUA

TO SEASONED players in the film and television industry, the name Joshua Hitchcock meant little. But to dozens of aspiring actresses looking for a big break, it meant the world.

Hitchcock grabbed their attention in late November 2009 when he placed ads on three internet casting sites announcing his company Hitchcock Media International, or HMI, was planning a Melbourne remake of Cheers.

The phenomenally successful sitcom set in a bar in Boston ran over 11 seasons from 1982 to 1993 and made stars of Ted Danson, Shelley Long and Kirstie Alley, and dozens of wide-eyed Melbourne women responded to the ads hoping a role in the remake would ensure everybody knew their names, too.

According to the ads, HMI was a privately held Australian firm with a low profile and big ambitions. With "three offices, and around 200 staff", HMI was "one of the largest and most credible global film finance companies", and was about to make the move from behind-the-scenes player to major production house. As well as Cheers, the company planned to make a reality show called Gold Diggers and a street comedy set in Britain called Hill Top Thugs.

A meeting with Joshua Hitchcock sounded like a big break, but some of the women who had the privilege would later say they felt there was something not quite right, and not only because he stepped out of his limousine dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. Still, hope can be blind, and at least a couple of the women succumbed to Hitchcock's advances and had sex with him.

But none of what he offered was real. There was no Cheers remake. There was no Hitchcock Media International. There wasn't even a Joshua Hitchcock.

All there was was Brenton Jarrett, serial fraudster, and the fake edifice he had created, police believe, for the sole purpose of seducing women.

Police investigating the case say it is like nothing they have ever dealt with before. They say they have spoken to more than 60 women taken in by Jarrett's scam. Police say Jarrett created false names on Facebook and LinkedIn, used multiple phones, and pretended to be his own PA.

Jarrett began his deception, The Age believes, on October 1, 2009, when he, or someone acting for him, made edits to two pages on Wikipedia, each subtly helping to create a back story for his persona of Joshua Hitchcock. At 8.28pm, someone using the alias Perryman22 added a line to a page devoted to the 1993 Australian TV series Time Trax. To a list of actors in minor roles, he added the name Joshua Hitchcock.

At 8.39pm, Perryman22 added a line to an entry on Bruce Gordon, the owner of the WIN television network. "Hitchcock Media International is also a sub-branch with links to the WIN Corporation through the Hitchcock Family ties to the Gordons," he wrote. Prior to that entry, there was no Hitchcock Media International.

Shirley Brown, manager of legal and regulatory affairs for the WIN group, told The Age there is no link between WIN or the Gordon family and Hitchcock, Jarrett or any associated entities.

Wikipedia's Australian president, Brianna Laugher, was unable to confirm the identity of Perryman22, but everything points to it being Brenton Jarrett. The two other edits made by Perryman22 on his one and only outing related to Vanessa Paradis, the wife of Johnny Depp (with whom Jarrett is fixated), and to the martial art meibukan, which Jarrett is known to practise.

With traces laid so that anyone who went looking for Joshua Hitchcock or HMI would not come up empty-handed, Jarrett could now develop his new persona in earnest.

By November 16, HMI had a fully fledged online identity, a multi-page website complete with pictures of the "current management team", as distinguished and reassuring a bunch of grey-haired men (and a couple of women) in suits as you could hope to find. True, their pictures did look a little distorted, as if they'd been poorly scanned, and there was no image of Joshua Hitchcock himself, but that was just being picky.

To anyone checking out its credentials, HMI looked like a company going places, and it seemed to have a pedigree to match its ambitions. Its international partners included some of the biggest names in the industry: Warner Bros, Carsey-Werner, Lorimar, Castle Rock, Paramount and Universal. The roster of programming in which it claimed to have had a hand was dazzling: Seinfeld, Roseanne, That '70s Show, Benson and 3rd Rock From the Sun.

The company also claimed a direct connection to the most famous Hitchcock of all. "The year was 1957 and with strong links to the Alfred Hitchcock side of the family, plans for a new film were being developed," the website claimed. "It began with a group of five people being approached by Rodney S. Hitchcock, future heir to the Hitchcock Wealth, for funding of the new production."

FIFTY-TWO years on, Joshua Hitchcock was head of the company and heir to the "Hitchcock Wealth". Or would have been, if he'd been real.

With the back story in place, Jarrett could now move to the narrative proper. On November 29, he placed ads on three internet casting sites announcing HMI's forthcoming production slate. Soon after that, he began taking meetings with aspiring actresses, telling them he was "the grandson of Alfred Hitchcock".

Elaborate though it was, this fraud was just the latest in a long line of showbiz-themed scams perpetrated by 38-year-old Brenton Jarrett. The convicted conman's previous faked identities have included the actor Skeet Ulrich, the fictitious nightclub owner Josh Jarrett and Daniel, the brother of Johnny Depp.

Jarrett first came to police attention in 1997 when the then 25-year-old pleaded guilty to 10 charges of obtaining a financial advantage by deception. He had run up debts of thousands of dollars, including on film equipment hire, limousines and bodyguards, while passing himself off as Daniel Depp between June 1996 and his arrest at Crown in September 1997.

In 2001, Jarrett was sentenced to a maximum of two years in jail over fraud charges stemming from the collapse of a Bendigo nightclub, Nocturnal Insomnia, that left creditors $139,000 out of pocket.

In September 2007, he pleaded guilty in Queensland to multiple fraud charges related to his outing as actor Skeet Ulrich the previous year. He had also pretended to be Ulrich in 1998, and bore enough resemblance to the actor that Foxtel showbiz reporter Peter Ford interviewed him thinking he was the real deal. Ford later confessed that he only became suspicious when Skeet's American accent began to slip after a few drinks.

Jarrett also tried the same scam in Canberra, where, the Daily Telelgraph reported in 1998, "aspiring actress and theatre student Natalie Holburn, who met 'Skeet' in the gourmet chicken shop where she worked, said she was completely taken in. 'He told me he was Skeet Urlich and could get me a screen test . . . and I gave him my phone number. I thought this was my break'."

In October 2007, Jarrett resurfaced as Jai Hanlyn, a representative of Johnny Depp supposedly scouting holiday locations for the star. (In reality, Jai Hanlyn was a minor character on the 1990s Australian drama E Street).

In January 2009, he bobbed up again in Geelong, under the name Josh Jarrett, claiming to be a Las Vegas-based nightclub owner.

Jarrett has in the past often worked with a female accomplice, and it appears his previous scams have been motivated primarily by financial concerns and delusions of grandeur. But police believe his latest false identity and the accompanying corporate edifice of HMI was constructed purely to meet women with a mind to procuring sex. They believe Jarrett had sex with at least two of the women who responded to his ads, and possibly more.

Representatives of Paramount and NBC, rights holders of Cheers, have confirmed there are no plans for a remake.

The website of Hitchcock Media International is no longer operative.

And, at the time of writing, Brenton Jarrett is believed to be living somewhere in NSW, no doubt planning his next performance.

THE MANY LIVES OF BRENTON JARRETT

JUNE 1996 Brenton Jarrett begins posing as Daniel Depp, brother of Johnny, scouting locations in Geelong and Melbourne for a forthcoming shoot.

The real Daniel Depp (pictured) is halfbrother to Johnny, considerably older than Jarrett, and a screenwriter and author in the US.

SEPTEMBER 1997 Jarrett reports an assault (not by him) at Crown on the driver of a limousine he has hired while pretending to be Daniel Depp.

He flees the scene but is arrested the following day. Pleads guilty to 10 charges of obtaining a financial advantage by deception.

JULY 1998 Jarrett fleeces the good folk of Adelaide as he pretends to be the American actor Skeet Ulrich (pictured, star of Scream).

Foxtel reporter Peter Ford interviews Jarrett thinking he is the real deal.

APRIL 2001 Jarrett is sentenced to a maximum of two years in jail over fraud charges stemming from the April 2000 collapse of a Bendigo nightclub, Nocturnal Insomnia, that leaves creditors $139,000 out of pocket.

SEPTEMBER 2007 Jarrett pleads guilty in Queensland to multiple fraud charges related to a 2006 outing as actor Skeet Ulrich.

OCTOBER 2007 Jarrett resurfaces as Jai Hanlyn, a representative of Johnny Depp supposedly scouting holiday locations in NSW for the star. In reality, Jai Hanlyn was a minor character on the 1990s Australian drama E Street.

JANUARY 2009 Jarrett crops up in Geelong, under the name Josh Jarrett, claiming to be a Las Vegas-based nightclub owner.

OCTOBER 1, 2009 Jarrett creates the character Joshua Hitchcock on a Wikipedia page, and on another he creates the company Hitchcock Media International (HMI).

NOVEMBER 16, 2009 HMI website goes live, with details of staff, international collaborators including Paramount and Universal and prior programming, including Seinfeld, Roseanne and That 70s Show.

NOVEMBER 29, 2009 Ads appear on three internet casting sites announcing HMIs forthcoming production slate.

DECEMBER 2009 Jarrett begins taking meetings with aspiring actresses, telling them he was the grandson of Alfred Hitchcock.

Police believe he has sex with at least two of them.