The five-act con of ‘David Sassoon’
Kathimerini chronicles the activities of the bogus investor with multiple identities and many criminal convictions
Posing as a multimillionaire, David Sassoon managed to host lavish receptions for ambassadors in Athens while having been repeatedly imprisoned in the United States and the United Kingdom for multiple criminal offenses.
Kathimerini presents his story, which reads like a screenplay for a dramatic thriller.
Act 1
At the Lighthouse among officials
On Wednesday, September 27, the entire “Joseph Sassoon Group” had an early start. The day for which they had worked for months had arrived. The head of the group, 50-year-old American-Jewish David Sassoon, arrived at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center on Athens’ southern coast in a Porsche. He went up to the Lighthouse, the SNFCC’s highest point, to make sure that everything was in place, just as he wanted it to be, for the American Mediterranean Investment Forum, his first-ever conference in Greece. While welcoming businessmen, politicians and diplomats into the conference hall with a panoramic view from the Acropolis to the Saronic Gulf, he was relaxed and smiling as if he were right at home.
Just before the forum started, Sassoon sat in the front row. Beside him sat the former US secretary of state and ex-director of the CIA Mike Pompeo, a keynote speaker and one of his guests. The night before, he had hosted a reception in Pompeo’s honor at his newly rented 400-square-meter luxury apartment on Rigilis Street, near the Presidential Mansion and the prime minister’s official residence. The conference began with a video about the history of his family, cast as one of the oldest and most powerful families in Israel, “the Rothschilds of the East,” and about the billion-dollar trust he managed and intended to invest in Greece. Pompeo and Sassoon took the floor. The event continued with speeches and panels of businessmen and diplomats. At the end of the conference, Sassoon took to the stage again: “We are growing, we are going global, if you want a company that is going to give you the biggest return on your investment, give me a call,” he told the participants.
But who, really, is David Sassoon? Kathimerini’s months-long investigation unravels his story, which, while similar to a movie script, is entirely true. Through dozens of interviews, in Greece, Israel, the UK, Africa and the US, official documents and electronic correspondence that Kathimerini has at its disposal, we present the journey of a man who for the past 10 years has been pretending – according to the available evidence – to be someone he is not, having succeeded to mislead employees, investors, businessmen, journalists, politicians and even, as it turned out, the powerful top US and Israeli diplomats in Greece, ambassadors George Tsunis and Noam Katz, who attended and spoke at the conference.
Act 2
Send a loan until the billions come
He arrived in Greece in August 2020 with his wife Sharon Levy. They rented an apartment in the southern Voula district and started making contacts for their business and investment plans. They already had a small team of associates, including John Kiriakou, the Greek-American former CIA agent. They approached him in early July with a proposal. “I would be working from Washington, but I would come to Greece regularly. With an annual salary of $600,000, a bonus and a company car, we would make multi-million-dollar investments. My first reaction was ‘Where do I sign?’ It was my dream job,” Kiriakou tells Kathimerini.
Kiriakou put Sassoon in touch with Chesa Keane, a graphic and web designer. She was hired and asked to create five websites for the group’s different activities. But first of all, they wanted her to design their logo. “I want to bring the Jewish concept and tradition into the future, into something that is more fierce,” Sassoon told her. Keane designed a lion emerging from the flames of a menorah. He loved it. Although the websites have been taken down, the logo remains.
Meanwhile, Kiriakou was looking for an office space in Washington, DC. The real estate brokers gave him a tour of the second floor of the Willard, an iconic building next to the White House. Sassoon told them to close the deal fast and not lose this prime piece of estate, so they instructed the accountants to deposit a downpayment ($68,610.00) and the first month’s rent ($22,870.00). At that time, the entire team also met via e-mail with Alexander T., the trust’s attorney, based in Switzerland. He told them that it was only a matter of days before the first 100 million was deposited into the group’s accounts.
Sassoon and Kiriakou – who was traveling back and forth to Greece – made appointments with the American embassy and meetings with politicians and executives of Enterprise Greece. They spoke about their intention to build hotels, a private bank and 3D printers, to make public investments (in the port of Iraklio in Crete, and much later in Attica Bank) and much more. The aspiring investor said he wanted to help Greece with its public debt. Also, he also wanted to hold a big conference featuring Tom Hanks and General Petraeus as guests. “It will give us legitimacy. The more you are visible, the more you are believable and the more you are trustworthy,” he wrote to his colleagues.
Kiriakou returned to Washington and set up an appointment with the Greek Embassy, asking for its support. The Greek diplomats, however, did some research and found a series of articles in the Jewish Chronicle. According to the English newspaper, Sassoon had done time in prison in the UK and the US and had not actually served in the US Army, as he claimed. “You need to be careful,” they told the Greek government.
“He told me about these articles, claiming they were all lies,” recalls Chesa Keane. Sassoon asked her to make them “disappear” from the internet. They set up a series of interviews that would appear in search engines when looking up on him, instead of the “bad articles of the obsessive journalist” that had often stood in the way of his plans. “I wish I could find a hacker to take them down,” he wrote to her in an email on September 24, 2020.
Meanwhile, the landlords of the Willard office never received any payment and terminated the lease. Even the group’s salaries were delayed. The Swiss lawyer, Alexander T., kept making excuses – bank audits, Covid, bureaucracy, issues with the IRS. Sassoon himself was beginning to feel the pressure. “I owe two months rent, my tooth is hurting and I can’t even go to the dentist,” he wrote to Keane. She offered to lend him a sum of money, but Sassoon refused. “I know you have spent money already and it is not fair to put this burden on you,” he wrote to her. Three days later, however, he changed his mind: “If you are really able and willing to help, I think I am going to have to take up on your offer for help.” That same day, on October 24, 2020, she transferred $3,000 to him. A few weeks later, he asked for help again and she mailed him a package. In it, she placed chocolates and a credit card issued by her company in his name. The bank statements she maintains in her files show transactions (over $4,000) at pizzerias, supermarkets and shops in Glyfada. “In my heart, I obviously knew something was wrong, but I felt the risk was less than the potential reward,” Keane explains. Sassoon had promised her shares and had promoted her to director, with an annual salary of $300,000 – which, of course, she never received.
The day she realized everything was a lie was on December 20, 2020. All members of the group were instructed by Sassoon to send e-mails exclusively through a supposedly secure server. When Keane didn’t get the reply she was expecting from Alexander T., she decided to email him directly, to the address she found on the Geneva law firm’s website. He answered that he had no idea what she was talking about. “I do not act for the ‘Sassoon Family Continuation Trust.’ I hope this clarifies,” he wrote to her. Keane, in shock, forwarded the email to the group. Sassoon was furious and fired her. “Alexander had no obligation to acknowledge your emails. Specific protocols were provided by him for intramural communications. We have been compromised – you have caused incalculable damage,” a close colleague of Sassoon wrote to her.
Over the next few weeks, Sassoon contacted a number of Greek partners in potential investments and informed them that he finally wouldn’t “explore investment opportunities in Greece.” He blamed it on “overbearing bureaucracy and confusing laws that make no sense.” To others, he claimed to have been offended by earlier anti-Semitic comments by Adonis Georgiadis. He remained in his Voula apartment but turned to South Africa for investment. Articles there mention an investment of millions in a company called Bluedrop, but Kathimerini has confirmed with its CEO, Kenneth Maduna, that not only did he never proceed but posing as an investor he actually asked them for money. At that time, the “obsessive” English journalist of the Jewish Chronicle continued her investigation of his activities in Africa and Greece. In September 2021, Sassoon filed a lawsuit against her in the US. The lawyer who filed the suit (a partner in the Sassoon Group), Bruce Fein, explains to Kathimerini that he withdrew it as soon as he realized that his client was “lying about everything.” The US judge irrevocably closed the case.
He arrived in Greece in August 2020 with his wife. They rented an apartment in the Voula district and started making contacts for their business and investment plans. They already had a small team of associates, including John Kiriakou, the Greek-American former CIA agent
Act 3
The clueless banker
The Jewish Chronicle reporter, Jenni Frazer, first met Sassoon in August 2016. His name and his plans to start a bank were buzzing in the London Jewish community so she wanted to interview him. Their first meeting took place in his luxurious detached house in the upmarket neighborhood of St Johns Wood. There, Frazer heard an unlikely tale of spies, secret missions and billions of dollars. She left, determined to find out if there was any truth in it.
Meanwhile, Sassoon kept making contacts. One of them was with a small but powerful Swiss bank. The bankers met him in London, where he told them about his fortune of billions of dollars and rare works of art. As they left, the two experienced bankers agreed that something “doesn’t add up.” The Sassoon dynasty was real, but he was unknown. “Someone claiming to be so wealthy would not remain anonymous,” they later testified to the British authorities. Nevertheless, they asked him to produce a number of documents, which he said he would. A few days later, the Swiss banker received a phone call from Sassoon. He was in the office of a British lawyer to whom he wanted to introduce his banker. The Swiss would later seek out the lawyer to clarify that Sassoon was not yet their client. “But, I have your bank’s documents here,” replied the lawyer and forwarded them to him. The banker was shocked to see that they bore his signature, obviously forged, and contained evidence of alleged deposits of $47 billion.
Meanwhile, a red flag was raised at the real estate agency through which Sassoon and his then-girlfriend, Sharon Levy, had rented the luxury London flat. Levy’s check for £128,000 covering the first month’s rent, bounced. When informed, he was calm and polite, reassuring. Over the following weeks, they received dozens of emails, supposedly from his associates in the US, with explanations about the money. “All designed to delay their inevitable eviction,” the real estate agents later told the authorities (Kathimerini has a copy of the eviction notice, dated October 18, 2016).
Sharon Levy filed a complaint with the police about the check he had issued without her knowledge. Those same days, someone – most likely herself – logged into his LinkedIn profile and wrote where his name would normally be: “Dickhead NOT a Sassoon” and below that “Chief liar at Cattaui-Sassoon Group” (the name of the group at the time).
Two weeks later, Levy withdrew the complaint and LinkedIn reverted to its previous form. The couple moved to Leeds. They stayed in the camper van of a Jewish family and later in a hotel where they also left debts. On February 13, 2018, the police raided the apartment where they were temporarily staying. They arrested him for “conspiracy to defraud” and found two fake IDs with his photograph – one of them Greek. According to the official documents filed in court that Kathimerini has obtained, “Sassoon” is not his real name. “His true identity is Khalid El Sheriff, a Sudanese national. On November 16, 2013 he arrived at London Heathrow on a flight from Mexico.”
Act 4
From Fort Dix FCI to UK prison
On the flight from Mexico in 2013, Sassoon was traveling with 41-year-old Amanda (she does not wish to have her surname disclosed). They had met a year earlier through a prisoner support organization and began corresponding. He was in prison in the US, she was at home in Nottingham, UK. She was told by the organization that his name was El Sheriff but he confided that his name was Sassoon and that he was in prison on an undercover counter-terrorism operation. In October 2012, she visited him at the Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institution and was fascinated by this kind man who promised her a fairy-tale life as soon as he inherited his grandfather’s immense fortune. “I was in an unhappy place, divorced. Mum had just died. I was vulnerable. Always struggling financially. He was the answer to my prayers,” she tells Kathimerini.
In August 2013, Amanda traveled to the US again in view of her companion’s release from prison. From New Jersey, they took a bus to Utah, then on to Mexico. They could barely make ends meet, with her own meager savings and the help of the Jewish community. Sassoon asked her to pretend she was Jewish but she refused and the first tensions arose. Meanwhile, she found out she was pregnant and they decided to return to the UK.
When they passed through security at Heathrow airport, the police stopped them and questioned them separately. They persistently asked her about his passport. He claimed to have traveled on a “world citizen passport” (an unofficial travel document usually issued to refugees). But they believed he traveled with a regular passport which seemed to have disappeared. He applied for asylum as David Sassoon and, 12 hours later, was allowed to enter the country “temporarily.” Leaving the airport, he promised Amanda everything would be fine. But the next few months were a nightmare for her. The police arrested the asylum applicant for driving an uninsured car (December 2014) and then again for shoplifting (January 2015). Finally, when he attempted to obtain a loan with fake documents, he was convicted. “You are a shameless conman,” the judge said, according to an excerpt from the transcript at Kathimerini’s disposal. In March 2015, he was sent to prison.
A few weeks after his release, in February 2016, he met Sharon Levy through a Jewish dating website. When he was arrested on February 13, 2018, and sent to prison for the second time in the UK, she stood by his side. She visited him and sent money; he sent her drawings and handwritten letters. In August 2018, they got married in London’s Pentonville Prison.
During the same period, a Florida court was looking for Sassoon, seeking clarifications on a lawsuit he had filed against Iran and Hezbollah, claiming $1.5 billion in compensation for his mother’s death. In the 41-page suit, he gave a new, different version of his life. It says he was born in Vermont, USA, and his mother, Josephine, of the Cattaui dynasty, was an American agent (as he claimed to be himself – supposedly). She had been on a secret mission in Argentina when she was killed in a 1994 bombing, which he believes was orchestrated by Iran. According to court documents, he mailed the lawsuit from an address in Florida, USA. But at that time, he was in the UK, unable to leave the country. So who had sent the lawsuit?
Kathimerini’s investigation traced the real sender. It was 52-year-old Kimberly Armando, Sassoon’s ex-wife in the US. Only, according to the marriage certificate in her possession, her husband’s name was not David Sassoon but Khalid El Sheriff. “He is from Sudan, with Egyptian ties. He was not Jewish but Muslim, and often went to a mosque to pray,” she tells Kathimerini. She had met him in 1999 in Arizona. They got married in April 2002. Their marriage, she recounts, was difficult, filled with lies. In September 2005, the FBI raided their Savannah home and arrested him for financial fraud. She struggled to get a divorce and completely lost track of her ex-husband until 2015 when he contacted her again from the UK.
“He told me he was deported, but that he did some work for Fort Dix, and his criminal past was wiped away.” He told her that he found his real family, that he was the heir to an immense fortune and was now a Jew. Even his date of birth had changed. It was no longer September 25 but October 6 – the day the Yom Kippur War broke out. He told her he never stopped loving her and had never felt so close to anybody before. He convinced her.
“I wasn’t very strong and able to fight him the way I usually did,” she tells Kathimerini. She then filed the lawsuit against Iran on his behalf, and in 2017 she agreed to join the board of Specter Command Inc, an intermediary company, supposedly for armaments, which turned into a scam (with one of their clients, George Cohen, sending Sassoon $40,000 ahead of the signing of a – fictitious – $3.5 billion contract with Saudi Arabia). When Armando found out in 2018 that he was back in jail in the UK, she was relieved. She was determined to walk away. This time for good.
Act 5
Greece, the promised land
In March 2020, “Sassoon” was released from prison and his wife, Sharon Levy, was still at his side. According to documents brought to the attention of Kathimerini, the couple had applied for relocation to Israel and had made contacts to go to Portugal. They finally decided to try Greece. Besides, Sassoon speaks Greek. According to what he testified to the British authorities during the interview for his asylum, he moved to Greece with his parents when he was a boy. Later, they lived in Germany, and from there, at the age of 19, he traveled to the United States. He admitted entering the US on a Sudanese passport, which he claimed was false, under the name of Khalid El Sheriff. For 21 years, until 2013, he lived in the US under that name. He has since insisted that his name is Sassoon.
In the summer of 2020, when planning to travel to Greece, he couldn’t obtain a passport. According to two testimonies, he used someone else’s passport to enter the country. From London to Calais, then by road to Brindisi and on by boat to Patras. When he settled in Voula, he told his colleagues that Greece was the place to make his dreams come true. It may have taken him three years, but, judging by the success of the event with the high-profile guests, the 18,600-euro-a-month luxury apartment and the Porsche, he came close.
For the people who spoke to Kathimerini and were misled by him, it was difficult over the years to see him reappear, with a narrative they knew was a lie. That’s why in October 2021, Kiriakou traveled to Athens to warn the Greek authorities. The story he told the police, without of course having all the documents to back it up, may have sounded far-fetched, but they looked into it anyway, and, according to information that has been confirmed by Kathimerini, they found enough evidence of Sassoon’s activities in the UK. They informed their superiors, but they also explained to Kiriakou that there was not much they could do. “They told me that since he had not defrauded anyone in Greece, no crime could be established.” Meanwhile, Sassoon continued to make contacts in Greece. And over the past year, he has also become active in Cameroon. “It was hard to accept that someone had to be scammed in order for him to be stopped,” says Kiriakou.
The answer
Kathimerini contacted ‘David Sassoon’ to ask about his past and his real identity. He insists that he has never used the name Khalid El Sheriff, that his name is David Solomon Sassoon, that he was born in the United States, that he is Jewish and has a clean criminal record. “Do you think that if there was even a shred of truth in your preposterous allegations, Pompeo would have accepted my invitation?” he said.
