Days of extravagance come to an end in a London prison cell, reports Kevin Sullivan.

SOME people knew him as Kevin. He told others he was Richard. Everyone could see he had money to burn, and most people thought he was a British spy. But nobody in Washington really knew Kevin Richard Halligen, not even the woman he pretended to marry.

Halligen now sits in a London prison, fighting extradition to the US where he faces felony fraud charges stemming from his days of extravagant living in Washington high society.

For about three years, until 2008, Halligen spent hundreds of thousands of dollars living it up. He stayed in a Willard Hotel suite for months and drank the days away at pricey restaurants. He travelled everywhere in a chauffeur-driven car and bought a mansion in Virginia.

Smart, charming and favouring black turtlenecks and sunglasses, Halligen told everyone that he was a spy, or a former spy, or connected to spies. Virtually all of it, it turns out, was fabricated or exaggerated but with amazing ease and a perfect British accent, the diminutive Halligen schmoozed his way into Washington's intelligence elite - Pentagon officials, influential lawyers and lobbyists, former CIA operatives.

And he took their money.

He set up shop as a corporate security consultant, offering his dubious ''operational experience'' in intelligence for customers working in dangerous places. But he didn't set off any alarm bells until he started taking money but not doing the work he promised.

The US government obtained an indictment against him in 2009 for milking a client out of $2.1 million and he has been ordered to pay $6.5 million to former partners who claim he fleeced them. Through his London lawyer, he declined to comment as he fights extradition.

Those who knew Halligen described how he created a trail of creditors and left Washington and London insiders wondering how one charming and audacious hustler managed to seduce them all.

''I was duped,'' said John Holmes, a retired British army general who was head of the British military's special forces. He met Halligen in 2002, when Halligen took an IT job at a private security consulting firm where Holmes was working.

He said he helped Halligen start his own firm, Red Defence International, and backed Halligen's application to join the Special Forces Club in London, an exclusive private club for people with links to British intelligence.

That membership helped Halligen as he set his sights on an ultra-lucrative security consultant mecca: Washington.

In 2006, Halligen still had money coming in from Red Defence as well as his growing Washington business. Money was pouring into his corporate account, and he was spending it just as fast.

Amid it all, Halligen still found time for romance.

Friends said he met Maria Dybczak, a lawyer and started courting her. They married in 2007 but Halligen was already married, so he hired an actor to preside over the ceremony as a priest. He told his fiancee that because he worked undercover, he could not sign any public documents - including a marriage licence.

Halligen also received a boost from the case of Madeleine McCann, the three-year-old British girl who disappeared in Portugal.

In early 2008, the Find Madeleine Fund hired his US business, Oakley International, on a six-month million-dollar contract. His bank accounts ballooned with regular deposits of $200,000 or more over the next few months. But Clarence Mitchell, a spokesman for the fund, said officials soon began questioning whether his work was worth the money and terminated his contract.

Investigators started pursuing Halligen over fraud allegations and in November 2009 he was jailed after being arrested at a luxury Oxford hotel where he was staying under an alias.
WASHINGTON POST