By Chris Summers BBC News Online

The St Paul's Cathedral fraud trial collapsed because two of the defendants jumped bail and fled back to the United States, and cannot be extradited.

One of them was Andrew Jalassola, who has a chequered history and a conviction for grand theft in Florida.

Andrea Appelman, from the office of the Florida State Comptroller, said Jalassola had been convicted in 1994 and had his licence to act as a mortgage broker removed for 15 years.

Andrew Jalassola: "Handsome and charming"

Ms Appelman said: "He is handsome, well-dressed and charming, with a strong Finnish accent, and has a wife and three beautiful children."

His company, Stallion Financial, had performed a "slick con job" on an old man, Herman Brewer, who attended the same church as Mr Jalassola.

Mr Jalassola persuaded Mr Brewer to sign certain documents and then applied for a mortgage loan on his behalf and then kept the advance fee.

'Affinity thefts'

Ms Appelman said such "affinity thefts" were not uncommon in Florida, which has a high number of old people who are sitting on sizeable life savings.

The state's population doubles between November and April and many of the visitors are elderly people, known as "snowbirds", who are escaping bleak winters in places such as Buffalo, Boston and Seattle.

She said: "A lot of bad guys prey on these snowbirds, especially the widows, who are often unfamiliar with financial matters as their husbands had always dealt with money."

She told BBC News Online the State Comptroller's office was keeping an eye on a company called PSJ Properties, based in Wilmington, Delaware, with which Mr Jalassola was associated.

Ms Appelman said she had seen Mr Jalassola back in the US recently.

Cold shoulder

She said he lived in an area of West Palm Beach which was popular with Finnish expatriates and often used the name Andrew Jacobs.

Ms Appelman said she had seen him in her local Baptist church over Christmas but had decided to give him the cold shoulder after she learned that he could not be extradited back to Britain because of "the wording" of the charge.

She said he had tried to contact her and had left a message on her answerphone, but she did not wish to enter into a dialogue.

Ms Appelman said she had read about the attempted fraud of St Paul's Cathedral and said: "The people at the cathedral should have asked for the money to be put into their attorney's escrow account, which would have kept it safe."