Looking
back, those who crossed paths with Kaushal Niroula - an exchange
student accused in a dizzying binge of graft and murder - wonder if
anything he ever said was true.

He wasn't royalty in his native Nepal, as he once claimed, nor was
he an estate lawyer or a luxury condominium buyer. Considering he is
gay, it appears he did not fall in love with the Japanese tourist to
whom he became engaged - while allegedly relieving her of half a
million dollars.

With wonder and horror, authorities and associates are recounting a
singular crime spree in which, they say, a dogged con man exploited
others' goodwill or greed.

"This guy wanted that quantum leap," said Greg Ovanessian, a veteran
San Francisco police fraud inspector, "from zero to everything."

In his wake, authorities say, he left ruin. He contributed to the
2008 closure of New College of California in San Francisco, which had
been around for 37 years. He is accused of conning an art collector out
of $400,000 - money he blew in Las Vegas.

In the capper, police say, Niroula and an odd band of accomplices
killed a Palm Springs retiree and tried to sell his home. That has the
28-year-old Niroula - whom San Francisco prosecutors call the "Dark
Prince" - in a Riverside County jail awaiting a Sept. 7 murder trial.

"Honey," Niroula once told a friend in a text message revealed by
prosecutors in the Palm Springs case, "everyone believes me until they
have been conned ... some even after that."

The promise

Niroula had many believers after arriving in 2002 on a visa
sponsored by New College, an alternative school in the Mission District.

The instructor who recruited him, Jerry Dekker, said Niroula had
lived in a one-room home in Kathmandu but had a striking personality.
"Being poor, gay and incredibly sharp," Dekker said, "he wanted to
escape that world."

At New College, Niroula showed promise. His manners were regal, and
he called instructors "sir" and "ma'am." He also spun a story.

Although he wasn't paying tuition, he was rich - but cash-poor
because his accounts were frozen amid unrest in Nepal. When he could,
Niroula said, he would give the school $1 million.

The scandal

New College needed the lifeline. And its leader bought in.

"He was very good at showing just enough little crumbs," said former New College President Martin Hamilton.

Once, he recalled, he went to dinner with Niroula and a man the
student introduced as Nepal's former deputy foreign minister. Another
time, Hamilton got a call from a banker in India who explained how
Niroula was busy making arrangements for the $1 million donation.

The money never came, but scandal did. Niroula, faculty members
said, gave the registrar papers with fake grades and Hamilton's
signature.

Hamilton said the signature was forged, but the resulting probe
helped cost the school its accreditation with the Western Association
of Schools and Colleges.

Hamilton, who resigned in 2007, now admits he tried to help Niroula
even after being conned out of thousands of dollars of his own money.

"He had me convinced that his sister - and this sounds embarrassing
- had been kidnapped," he said. "He needed a few thousand dollars to
get her released."

The veneer

As the school sank, Niroula built an image that awed some people and turned off others.

He didn't work, but amassed enough cash to frequent the Four Seasons
and ride in limos. At Martuni's in San Francisco, bartenders recall him
peeling off $100 for two drinks.

"Image is everything," Ovanessian said. "When you buy a round for the house, it has an effect."

Former housemate Thomas Avona, who was briefly married to a Nepalese
who came to the United States with Niroula, described him as a
childhood "nerd" who took flight in San Francisco.

"He destroyed money," Avona said. "He made you feel like everything
was going to be OK, because he had either the money or the scheme to
take care of it."

The con games

The schemes that followed included the one that hooked the Japanese tourist.

After meeting the woman on a 2006 trip to Waikiki, Niroula said he
could get her a U.S. visa for investors if she wired more than $500,000
into a domestic account.

When she did, Niroula drained the account with forged checks, the woman wrote in a lawsuit.

Soon, he explained that he had only borrowed the money to help
relatives flee Nepal. He was a member of the royal family, he said, and
there were complications - his sister had been kidnapped. The woman
then gave another $41,000 for ransom.

She later told police - who doubt Niroula ever had a kidnapped
sibling - that she planned to marry Niroula. They had not had sex, she
explained, because "he respected her," Ovanessian said.

Then there was the tale of the pretend painting. In September 2007,
police say, Niroula and an art dealer boyfriend told collector Gary
Heidenreich that he could acquire a work by surrealist Yves Tanguy.

The British crown wanted to sell it quietly - the Nazis had once
owned it - and needed $400,000 of the $990,000 price up front.
Heidenreich gave the money to the boyfriend, who gave it to Niroula,
who spent much of it at Bellagio in Las Vegas, police say.

If Niroula was ambitious, he was also sloppy, authorities say.
Heidenreich's money was traced to him, and on Feb. 29, 2008, San
Francisco police arrested him.

By then, though, he had made a fateful connection - befriending an
attorney and his client who had filed a high-profile, and lucrative,
lawsuit against a San Francisco financier.

The sex case

According to a friend, Niroula read about the attorney, David
Replogle, and his client Danny Garcia in People magazine. He soon grew
close to them and partied with Garcia.

Garcia had become well known in 2003 by suing Thomas White, saying
the wealthy financier had sex with him as a teenager. Two years later,
White settled the suit - and a second suit Replogle filed on behalf of
Mexican boys who said White abused them in Puerto Vallarta - for $10
million. Garcia, who is now 27, had helped recruit the Mexican
plaintiffs.

Today, White remains jailed in Mexico and faces federal sex-tourism
charges in San Francisco. But he is appealing the deal with the Mexican
boys, claiming that Garcia, Replogle and others conned him.

It was Replogle, records show, who paid Niroula's $250,000 bail in
the art caper. Niroula allegedly tried to pay him back by stealing
hundreds of thousands of dollars in jewelry from a friend in Novato,
and was arrested in August 2008.

A month later, a Marin County judge released Niroula, pending trial,
when a hearing had to be postponed. The lead detective, records show,
was unavailable while on honeymoon.

The soap opera

Within weeks, authorities say, Niroula was planning his two most startling crimes.

"I am a predator," he texted Garcia in November 2008. "That's why you love me."

Niroula, Garcia and Replogle had unusual relationships. Replogle
once got a restraining order against Garcia, who countered in a court
declaration that Replogle had showered White's alleged Mexican victims
with cash and didn't care if they told the truth.

Garcia and Niroula were "hot and cold," a boyfriend of Garcia's
later testified. During a cold stretch, he said, Garcia hacked
Niroula's e-mail and called people Niroula knew to warn them about him
- including the Japanese tourist.

He told others Niroula had tried to infiltrate the sex-tourism case to get some of White's money.

The inheritance

Still, in late 2008, Niroula and Garcia were in close contact.
Prosecutors say they texted each other about "Operation C.L.," which
targeted Cliff Lambert, 74, a Palm Springs retiree who was about to
vanish.

Lambert knew Garcia first, having met him online, Riverside County prosecutor Lisa DiMaria told a judge last year.

Then, she said, Niroula became estate lawyer "Samuel Orin." He
called Lambert to say he was in line for a big inheritance, prompting
Lambert to invite him over.

The unraveling

On Dec. 5, 2008, prosecutors say, Niroula showed up at the house
with two Heald College students from San Francisco whom he had offered
a split of $30,000. One grabbed a knife and stabbed Lambert repeatedly,
DiMaria said.

She said Lambert was stuffed in the trunk of his own car and buried in the desert. His body has never been found.

Garcia immediately splurged with Lambert's bank cards, DiMaria said,
while Replogle posed as Lambert to give Niroula's art dealer boyfriend,
Russell Manning, power of attorney over the dead man's affairs.

On Jan. 6, 2009, DiMaria said, Manning deeded Lambert's home to
Niroula, who deeded it to San Jose telecommunications executive Jay
Shah - who had once bailed him out of immigration custody.

The next day, though, police caught a break.

The man who allegedly stabbed Lambert, Miguel Bustamante, was caught
cleaning out the victim's home. In jail, prosecutors say, he detailed
the conspiracy to an informant.

Detectives also heard from a Saratoga real estate agent who had once
let Niroula stay with him and his wife. Mark Evans said Niroula and
Replogle had asked him to sell the Palm Springs house.

The explanation: Lambert had offered the property in a secret deal
after he and another man tied up Niroula, raped him and gave him AIDS.

"It's always a wild story," Evans said.

The condo con

Even as police investigating the Lambert killing closed in, authorities say, Niroula was scheming another audacious crime.

In early 2009, while acting as home-shopper "Syd Jones," Niroula got
a look at a condominium in One Rincon Hill, San Francisco's tallest
residential tower, said city prosecutor Michael Troncoso.

Meanwhile, the prosecutor said, an accomplice, Winston Lum, forged
papers to take title of the condo and two others worth $7.5 million -
then applied for equity loans.

Before the real owner of the three condos discovered what was going
on, the lender visited the units to make sure the deal was solid.

Lum took on the role of a Chinese-language speaker, Troncoso said,
while Niroula became his translator. Lum didn't speak Chinese, though,
and spouted "gibberish," the prosecutor said.

An investigation began when the real owner, Shirley Hwang, started
getting Lum's mail and discovered he, not she, held title with the city
recorder.

Lum, along with two other alleged participants - Jay Shah and San
Jose attorney Melvin Emerich, who once aided Niroula in his Marin
County case - have pleaded not guilty to multiple criminal counts.

The takedown

Niroula was also charged in the condo case. But by the time San
Francisco prosecutors went to court, he and Replogle had been arrested
on suspicion of murdering Lambert.

The two were taken into custody March 2, 2009, outside a hearing in the art fraud case.

Later that week, the $2.2 million condo loan was paid out to various
accounts that police say are linked to the suspects. One check, for
$869,000, was cashed in Zurich.

But Niroula "barely missed the money," Ovanessian said.

In July, police found Bustamante's Heald College classmate Craig McCarthy and charged him with Lambert's murder.

Manning, Niroula's art dealer boyfriend, was arrested the next
month. Authorities couldn't tie the 68-year-old to the killing, so he
pleaded guilty to fraud and got five years in prison.

As for Replogle and Garcia - who is also charged with murdering
Lambert - they say they had nothing to do with his disappearance.

Replogle's lawyer, John Patrick Dolan, said his 61-year-old client
thought Niroula had traveled to Palm Springs to finalize a settlement
with Lambert over his purported sexual assault of Niroula.

Later, Dolan said, Replogle posed as Lambert only after his life was threatened by his alleged accomplices.

But prosecutors say Replogle spoke on the phone to Niroula, Garcia
and Bustamante more than 160 times in the days before Lambert's
disappearance.

The last believer

As a trial nears, Niroula is still trying to sell his story. He is acting as his own attorney.

He did not respond to an interview request sent to him in jail. But
he still talks often on the phone to Jerry Dekker - the New College
instructor who recruited him back in 2002 - assuring him he is innocent.

"He said, 'Jerry, you know me better than anybody. I'm just a poor
Nepali boy from south Kathmandu,' " Dekker said. "He said he wants to
go back to school, get his degree and get a job in the U.S. State
Department."

Dekker said he does not condone any of the acts of which Niroula is accused, but has some sympathy for him.

Niroula has suffered from homophobia and the greed of others, he
said, and his story "could be instructive to all of us about the hopes
and aspirations of people from poor countries."

He was asked if Niroula might be manipulating him.

"Of course, that's his genius!" Dekker said. "You don't think I know that?"

E-mail Demian Bulwa at dbulwa@fchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle