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The Greco Amirandes in Crete :: Luxury Fit for a Fugitive

August 29, 2007 at 11:36 AM | 0 Comments

Last year we mentioned the Hotel Thule in Namibia, which became famous as the place thieving former Comverse executive Jacob Alexander was tracked down while running from the law.

Apparently Amirandes in Greece, on the island of Crete, is the place to stay when you're a fugitive Greek who has run a Ponzi scheme hedge fund into the ground. That's according to this New York Post article, which says this find may not have a happy ending. Greece won't extradite a naturalized citizen unless he's guilty of something like murder, not just stealing $80 million from defrauded investors.

Angelo Haligiannis is certainly having a grand time with the stolen money:

About a month after he cut off his ankle bracelet and vanished on Jan. 10, 2006 - he was to be sentenced the next day to 15 years in jail - Haligiannis was living it up, gambling at the Club Hotel Casino Loutraki, a swanky retreat and spa on a gorgeous beach near Athens, sources said.

And the party carried on until last Monday, when he and Liz, comfortably settled in a $2,500-a-night suite at another posh hotel, the Amirandes resort, sipped champagne on the beach while their daughter frolicked in the sand.

The really ironic thing about this story is that Interpol and federal marshals searched for two years but hadn't had any luck tracking him down. Haligiannis finally got caught when a family member of a fraud victim spotted him at the hotel, snapped a photo, and called the cops.