NEW YORK – Mark Hotton appeared out of nowhere this year, offering to come to the financial rescue of a fledgling Broadway adaptation of the psychological thriller "Rebecca."

The musical's producers had never heard of Hotton, but he managed to sell himself as a globe-trotting moneyman with connections to a wealthy Australian named Paul Abrams. That was before Hotton raised suspicions by claiming that Abrams had suddenly dropped dead.

Federal prosecutors charged Hotton on Monday with concocting a tale of phantom investors and an untimely death as imaginative as the classic Alfred Hitchcock film about a man haunted by the memory of his dead first wife.