Italian who sparked Tom Cruise fever arrested on market rigging

The Italian financier who posed as a property broker for Hollywood stars and sent real estate agents in a frenzy over news that Tom Cruise wanted to buy a house in Malta, has been arrested.

After three years spent promoting himself as the messenger of unknown third parties pledging finance to buy up stakes in major Italian companies like Fiat and Tod's, Milanese financier Alessandro Proto, 38, was arrested as part of an investigation into alleged market rigging.

Italian tax police said Proto was arrested because he had not given timely information requested by market watchdog Consob regarding certain trading activity.

"All his market announcements are shrouded in mystery," the Milanese prosecutor Stefania Donadeo said in her request for an arrest warrant. "Proto's actions are evidently construed so as to hinder the vigilance of Consob... he is a capable conman, much to the chagrin of cash-strapped investors looking for finance outside the common banking channels."

Donadeo said the investigations and interceptions had "unequivocally shown he does not take are of market trading for Italian or foreign investors."

In November, Proto - also a candidate for Silvio Berlusconi's PdL - was placed under investigation by Milan prosecutors for alleged market rigging. Consob said Proto had not provided required information in relation to his role in an investment in RCS, the publisher of Italy's leading newspaper Corriere della Sera.

Proto was responsible for sparking 'Tom Cruise fever' the minute news was broken that the Hollywood actor was planning to buy his next residence in Malta. Property agents tried to entice Cruise's alleged house-hunter to buy Villa Rosa in St George's Bay, which was purchased for €29 million back in 2009.

When MaltaToday broke the news that Cruise's publicists had denied that the Mission Impossible star wanted a Maltese sojourn, Proto spent the next weeks trying to convince MaltaToday that Cruise had really put his finger on a "suitable" €12 million property in the San Gwann environs.

Proto also threatened to sue MaltaToday for libel in a flurry of emails he sent after this newspaper declared that no property could fit the descriptions, even describing himself as "a modern-day Sindona" - a reference to the Italian financier Michele Sindona, known for his dexterity at avoiding taxation by transferring monies.