Tracking the Bogus Dodi
Rachel
Tracking the Bogus Dodi
May 22, 2000 at 19:42:15
By Maryam Henein
Maryam Henein/APBnews.com
Mohamed Yehia Sead
TORONTO (APBnews.com) -- A convicted Egyptian con artist who befriended
and defrauded rock musicians and athletes while posing both as Mohamed
al-Fayed, owner of Harrods department store in London, and al-Fayed's
playboy son, Dodi, has disappeared, violating his parole in Canada.
Mohamed Yehia Sead has been convicted of fraud several times. Some of
those who befriended him when they thought he was a member of the al-
Fayed family say he spent thousands of dollars on his impersonations
and seemed driven by more than a desire for profit.
Yehia Sead finally got a good look at Dodi al-Fayed in a Toronto
courtroom in 1997. Dodi al-Fayed, a few months away from his doomed
romance with Princess Diana, was the star prosecution witness at Yehia
Sead's trial.
'Mo' partied with rock stars
AP
The real Dodi al-Fayed
Photographer Dennis O'Regan got to know Yehia Sead when he was posing
as the senior al-Fayed and calling himself "Mo" during Duran Duran's
1988 tour of the United States. Mo traveled with the group for weeks,
parting tearfully from them in Atlanta.
In a court affidavit, O'Regan said that Mo cried "I love you. I love
you. I've had the best time of my life."
"Our backing band really loved him," said keyboardist Nick Rhodes. "He
showed them a great time."
Some former friends suggest that Yehia Sead's fascination with the al-
Fayeds springs from his relationship with his own father, who died when
he was 22. Yehia Sead, in conversations under many aliases, would
complain that he had been an unloved son.
Canadian authorities are not sympathetic.
"We want his ass back in jail," Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cpl. Mark
Abernethy said in a recent interview with APBnews.com. "There's a
Canada-wide warrant for his arrest, and, if he's ever caught, Yehia
will be required to serve the remainder of his sentence, plus he'll be
convicted for breaching his parole."
25 aliases
Yehia Sead has used more than 25 aliases, posing as a Saudi Prince and
a professional soccer player. But Dodi al-Fayed was his favorite.
Before his death in 1997, Dodi al-Fayed was known in Hollywood as the
producer of the Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire and two box-office
disasters, Hook and The Scarlet Letter. But his name and face meant
little to the public and the news media.
Life with father
AP
The real Dodi al-Fayed with Princess Diana
Yehia Sead was born on July 25, 1949, in Alexandria, Egypt. According
to his half-nephew, Hussein El Said, Yehia Sead's father, Mohamed El
Said, was a wealthy landowner with four wives and 14 children.
Yehia Sead felt neglected, Hussein El Said said in a phone interview
from Egypt.
"You can't expect much care from your father when he's 75," El Said
said.
After his father died, Yehia Sead left Egypt. He visited the United
States at least twice in the 1970s.
In 1982, he settled in Vancouver and got married, becoming a Canadian
citizen. He also became a nightclub regular with the nickname Ya-Ya.
"Everybody knew him," recalls John Teti, owner of Richards on Richards
Cabaret. "But I eventually barred him from my club. He just gave me a
bad vibe, the way he tossed his money around and made demands."
'A sleazy land shark'
Waitress Valerie Fox described him as a "sleazy land shark" who claimed
he had been a professional soccer player in Egypt.
Relatives say that Yehia Sead returned home when his mother died in
1985 and sold some land he'd inherited from his father. Back in Canada,
Yehia Sead and his wife divorced, and in 1988, he headed south.
He was jailed briefly in California on fraud charges. On Oct. 18, he
surfaced in San Francisco with a new identity.
On the road with Duran Duran
Duran Duran was staying at the Portman Hotel. Yehia Sead, "dripping in
jewelry," sent the group a bottle of champagne, O'Regan would later
tell a British tabloid. Yehia Sead approached singer Simon Le Bon,
introducing himself as Mohamed al-Fayed, who had recently taken over
Harrods for $917 million. Then he joined them on the tour.
At the Sunset Marquis Hotel in Los Angeles, Yehia Sead threw a lavish
party, providing a belly dancer who snaked up and down Le Bon's body.
In Atlanta, Yehia Sead ordered bottles of champagne in a Creole
restaurant, O'Regan later said in a court affidavit. But he never paid
the tab, which was later covered by Duran Duran's accountants.
AP
The real Mohamed al-Fayed, Dodi's father and Harrod's magnate
"He was living on credit himself," Le Bon told APBnews.com. "He threw
parties for us in hotels. With belly dancers. It was amazing. He gave
us a really great time. He disappeared for a while ... then someone
contacted us who was investigating some fraud case. He certainly gave a
lot of people a lot of pleasure."
Sending Harrods the bills
O'Regan sent photographs to Harrods with a friendly note addressed
to "Mo." One shot showed Yehia Sead in a silk bomber jacket with the
words "Duran Duran-MoBaby" on the back.
When O'Regan failed to get a reply, he called Harrods, hoping to talk
to his friend al-Fayed. The security department informed him that al-
Fayed had never heard of Duran Duran and was never called Mo.
Bills began arriving at Harrods. Al-Fayed ordered an inquiry that ended
up costing at least $20,000.
Yehia Sead moved to Orlando, Fla., in 1990, this time impersonating
Dodi al-Fayed. He found one close friend, Mohamed Khaled, the owner of
an upscale men's clothing store.
Khaled noticed that Yehia Sead was often depressed. Yehia Sead confided
that his mother was a housemaid who had died young and that al-Fayed
had never acknowledged him as his son.
Found out by Disney chief
The false Dodi al-Fayed knew how to party. Mark Magic, owner of the
nightclub JJ Whispers, remembers Yehia Sead arriving at sundown in a
white stretch limousine.
Disney chairman Michael Eisner was Yehia Sead's nemesis, recalled
Magic. Eisner knew Dodi al-Fayed and was not deceived by the man he
spotted lounging with former New York Mets player Keith Hernandez at
one of the Disney hotels.
Yehia Sead was soon arrested after Eisner called Harrods in London.
Yehia Sead told reporters that al-Fayed was out to get him. He was
sentenced to three years for fraud. In a 1991 settlement, Yehia Sead
agreed to cease impersonating members of the al-Fayed family. The
stipulation, valid only in Florida, required a $50,000 penalty for any
violation.
When Yehia Sead was released, Khaled paid his fare to Canada, where
Yehia Sead was eventually charged with fraud in Edmonton, Toronto and
Vancouver.
'Royal treatment'
Corbis
Duran Duran
Yehia Sead arrived in Toronto in October 1994 impersonating Dodi al-
Fayed again. He became well known in the city's Egyptian community and
was introduced to the Egyptian ambassador to Canada and the brother of
late Egyptian leader Gamel Abdel Nasser.
Alaa Eltaher, editor of a Toronto newspaper for the Egyptian community,
later testified that Yehia Sead received "royal treatment wherever he
went." Eltaher published an article about the false Dodi al-Fayed,
saying he was working on movie plans.
"Dodi hates nothing more than hypocrites, the malicious, and those who
spread rumors," the article ended.
Yehia Sead became a regular backstage at the theater where Phantom of
the Opera was playing. He became so friendly with Ciaran Sheehan, who
had the title role, that Sheehan invited him to his New Jersey home.
'A very interesting case'
During one visit to New Jersey, Yehia Sead was admitted to a hospital
emergency room after complaining of strokelike symptoms. It was there
that he met a psychiatrist, Dr. Nabil El-Rafei, who became a friend.
El-Rafei believes that Yehia Sead exhibits traits common to dramatic-
erratic personality disorders and that his stroke symptoms were
psychosomatic.
"He's a very interesting case to study," El-Rafei told APBnews.com. "He
was very needy, emotionally and family-wise. He was crying, sounding
very genuine about the suffering and humiliation he'd felt because of
his father."
El-Rafei said that Yehia Sead appeared to both admire and despise al-
Fayed.
Yehia Sead's lies caught up with him after 18 months when a business
associate complained to al-Fayed's staff in London about the false Dodi
al-Fayed's behavior.
Lying low in the Yukon
After the Toronto Sun ran a story detailing the impersonations, Yehia
Sead left Toronto in May 1996 in a Cadillac rented by a travel agent he
had been dating. His next stop was the Yukon.
Keeping a low profile, Yehia Sead claimed to be a doctor, telling an 18-
year-old waitress in a Whitehorse lounge that he had given up medicine
for photography.
"He said he knew all the right people in Hollywood," the waitress told
APBnews.com.
Yehia Sead persuaded the young woman to pose, sometimes in the nude,
for photographs, and cried about his manipulative and neglectful
father.
Yehia Sead's props
From Whitehorse, Yehia Sead went back east to Montreal, and once again
he found a friend who could give him legitimacy. Peter Bahlawanian, a
fledgling director and the owner of a music store that specializes in
Middle Eastern music, played that part.
Yehia Sead strolled into Bahlawanian's store, saying he was Dodi al-
Fayed and that he was working on a "secret project" for the National
Film Board of Canada. The following day, the two men dined at Costas,
an expensive Mediterranean seafood restaurant.
Bahlawanian enjoyed his new friend's company and hoped the relationship
would help his career. His suspicions were lulled by Yehia Sead's
props.
Posters of movies financed by the real Dodi al-Fayed hung in Yehia
Sead's living room. A box with a gold nameplate was filled with
screenplays and provocative pictures of women. Yehia Sead owned Armani
suits, a $4,000 camera and a Rolex watch and smoked exquisite cigars.
Yehia Sead paid his round-the-clock bodyguards an extra $100 a day to
coordinate appointments and book reservations. They carried his daily
planner, cellular phone and up to $3,000 in cash.
He claimed his father, al-Fayed, gave him $40,000 a month -- less than
half the real Dodi al-Fayed's reported allowance. The Royal Canadian
Mounted Police were never able to trace the source of the money Yehia
Sead threw around.
In two months, Yehia Sead spent approximately $20,000 entertaining his
Montreal buddies.
Luck runs out again
At clubs, Yehia Sead's high spending attracted pretty women half his
age. He instructed his bodyguards to remind his dates of their luck.
But Bahlawanian listened to his friend crying and claiming his father
was "out to get him." Yehia Sead's bouts of depression continued, and
Bahlawanian said he saw him using the anti-anxiety drug Xanax.
Bahlawanian eventually became suspicious. On a trip to Los Angeles,
Bahlawanian began remembering inconsistencies in Yehia Sead's stories
and asked a friend to find some information. Soon, Bahlawanian received
an article from the Toronto Sun, "Pharaoh of Fraud."
"The sympathy disappeared and the anger set in. I especially didn't
want him near my family," Bahlawanian said.
He contacted al-Fayed's security chief, and Yehia Sead was arrested in
Montreal on Oct. 30, 1996. He was escorted back to Toronto for trial.
"The al-Fayed family is setting me up, don't you see, they buy people
with their money. I am not out to cheat or con people. I am innocent,
and I have a very strong case," Sead said in a 1997 interview with
APBnews.com conducted from his jail cell as he awaited trial.
After his conviction, Yehia Sead was sentenced to two years and a day
in prison, in addition to the eight months he already had spent in jail
awaiting trial.
Yehia Sead served one-fourth of his sentence and was given accelerated
parole on Dec. 16, 1997. A condition of his parole, which was slated to
end June 15, 1999, was that he live in a designated halfway house,
where he could be supervised before his full release.
But sometime in the summer of 1998, Yehia Sead slipped away.
Relatives confirmed that he'd briefly stopped in Egypt to sell some
land. But then he vanished without telling them where he was going.
Yehia Sead hasn't been seen since -- not as himself, at least.
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