Convicted conman Patrick Spiteri was arrested yesterday afternoon following an investigation by The Sunday Times of Malta that tracked down the disgraced lawyer to a country mansion in an upmarket rural town in the UK.

Surrey and Guildford police moved in at around 3pm after being alerted to his whereabouts by this newspaper.

He was watching his favourite team Chelsea play Liverpool when the police knocked on the door. He was later found hiding under a bed, police sources said.

The 50-year-old former tax law guru has been living permanently in the UK since January in a €4 million country estate set over 15 acres of land, evading the Maltese courts where he is facing eight separate cases linked to fraud and misappropriation charges.

Since October 2013, he has been presenting medical certificates that claimed he had multiple sclerosis and was unfit to travel.

Police raid country home

Last May, Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera – at the request of the prosecution – decided to postpone indefinitely a case in which he was accused of defrauding an Italian businessman of almost €5 million.

Seven other cases, in which Mr Spiteri is alleged to have swindled in excess of €10 million, were also put off. However, in an apparent change of heart Malta police asked the courts to issue a European arrest warrant after the medical certificates could not be verified.

The request was upheld on October 20, but Mr Spiteri’s whereabouts were unknown until The Sunday Times of Malta tracked him down in the sprawling Barford Court estate belonging to former Tory MP and MEP Tom Spencer and his financier wife, Liz. He has been living there with the Spencers’ daughter, Lorna Maltby, and their two children. Though this newspaper managed to get visual confirmation that he was on the property, Ms Spencer ordered journalists out of the mansion’s inner grounds, which are separated from the main gate by a 70 metre driveway.

Mr Spiteri was visiting a Christmas fair with his family in a nearby town yesterday morning but returned in the early afternoon, only to be taken into custody shortly afterwards.

Two Surrey officers turned up with a police van.

One stayed at the front while the other checked the property from the back when they got no answer after knocking several times.

Eventually, they were allowed inside and moved in to arrest Mr Spiteri after searching the house.

Shortly after that, he was driven out in a panelled police Ford Transit van.

Conning the conman

The man accused by many of being a con artist ended up giving himself away with a profile on dating website Europe.match.com.

Notoriously camera shy, Mr Spiteri ditched his inhibitions and posted four pictures to entice prospective “slim and athletic”, “attractive” women whose best features are their “smile and legs”.

He used the alias Patrick Borgia – another independent reference to his claims of a House of Borgia lineage [see box below] ­– and confirmed his identity when he responded to a message sent from a profile this newspaper set up under the name of Sarah Montgomery.

He asked for photos to be sent to an e-mail address attached to the server of Symphony Global, a consultancy firm where he was a director and in which his current partner and the mother of his two children, Lorna Maltby, and her mother Liz Spencer are still involved.

“Hi there. Yes, I am [Italian],” he answered when asked a question about his nationality.

‘Patrick Spiteri runs like a greyhound’

Not everyone at the estate was distressed by the arrest. Tom Spencer, former Conservative MP for the Surrey county, said he blamed the disgraced lawyer for the breakup of his family.

He said his wife was seeking a divorce, which he was not opposing, but she wanted to sell Barford Court, which was put on the market in March 2014 with an asking price of £3 million, to give her share of the money to Mr Spiteri.

“My children will never see it again,” an emotional Mr Spencer, a broad 6’5” bearded man said, referring to the lush green park at the back of the property.

He claimed Mr Spiteri manipulated his wife and step-daughter into believing the Malta court cases were orchestrated by the former PN government.

The PN was in power when his career fell apart in 2000 and he was engulfed by a stream of fraud allegations by investors.

However, before his fall from grace, Mr Spiteri was widely regarded as a leading legal authority on financial services, having been entrusted by both PN and Labour administrations to draft landmark tax legislation.

Ms Spencer rejected her husband’s claims, saying as she escorted the journalists off her property that Mr Spiteri had never done anything to harm the family. However, she also alluded to political orchestration in connection with his legal trouble in Malta.

Asked whether he believed that Mr Spiteri was seriously ill, Mr Spencer said that over the past months “Patrick would on some occasions climb down the stairs apparently hardly able to move, having to prop himself up with a walking cane... but then on other days he would forget and be completely normal”.

“The truth is that Patrick runs like a greyhound. He is very nervous and runs up stairs in sets of three.”

Mr Spencer said Mr Spiteri had persuaded his estranged wife to lend him hundreds of thousands of pounds that were lost in what he called unsuccessful investments. Ms Spencer denied this claim.

For years Mr Spiteri ran an investment firm and advised the Fenech Adami administration on the introduction of VAT in 1995. He also acted as a consultant to Labour a year later on the changeover to the Customs and Excise duty.

In the late 1990s he was investigated over multiple cases of fraud and misappropriation that led to at least 11 criminal cases. So far his only conviction is in relation to a property contract. Prosecutors often said he used delaying tactics in court.

Borgia family turned Mossad agent?

According to Mr Spencer, Mr Spiteri would make outlandish claims about himself and his family history.

Among these alleged stories was a claim to be a descendent of the Borgias – the highly influential Spanish family that dominated Italian public life during the Renaissance after producing two popes and a string of cardinals, aristocrats and politicians.

“Patrick said that the Borgia family had settled in Malta when they were exiled from Italy during the Mussolini era and that he was a descendent of this family.

“He claimed the Italian State had seized a number of properties belonging to the Borgias which the family was now battling to obtain back over a long-drawn legal process typical of the Italian legal system.”

According to Mr Spencer, he even claimed to be a former agent of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad – a connection that apparently also springs from the Borgias’ rumoured Jewish heritage.

“He said that he was part of an international anti-terrorism agency that incorporated people from the US, UK, Israeli, Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies,” whose task was to uncover the secret financial assets of terrorist organisations.

In recent months, Mr Spencer said that Mr Spiteri claimed to have travelled on secret missions to all sorts of exotic destinations like Angola Djibuti.

“In late Autumn 2013 – a period corresponding with the onset of the alleged medical condition – he claimed that he was poisoned by al-Qaeda.”