Speaking to Lovin Malta, a community leader backed up her version of events, stating that he and several people had donated money, food, clothes, shoes and shelter to him, with one man even letting him use his shower.

However, he said he started smelling a rat after he stayed in Malta, instead of travelling back to Iran or Turkey, without returning the money.

“I even borrowed some money to help him out and I ended up having to apologise to people who had given me donations to help him travel to Iran.”

Contacted by Lovin Malta, Rad denied this version of events, stating that he couldn’t even fly to Turkey because he doesn’t have a passport. Instead, he said he had transferred the €3,000 via Western Union to his sister, who he said was sick with cancer.

Fr Michael Borg, rector of the Marsalforn church, said he and the community had helped Rad out when he spent some time living in the Gozitan town.

“I gave him food, clothes, money, vouchers, whatever he asked for. As far as I know, he wasn’t homeless but was living in a flat, and I had given him money to help pay his rent. He disappeared from Gozo after that, but I can say that he was well-treated and well-nourished in Marsalforn.”

Rad acknowledged the financial aid provided by Fr Borg, describing him as a “very good man”.

Other people said the man had asked women he had never met before for their hand in marriage, sometimes unsolicitedly leaving his phone number in their bags.

A woman told Lovin Malta that she had bumped into him at a Gozitan haberdashery.

“We spoke and made polite conversation while my items were being packed. That would have been fine but then he started asking questions about my personal life and family and that he would like to marry me and take care of my family, stating he is a very rich man,” he said.

“When I awkwardly laughed it off and politely refused, he became even more insistent, not letting me out of the shop before he wrote his number down on a piece of paper and shoved it in my bag.”

Others said he would approach elderly women at church, asking them to marry him.

However, Rad denied that he had ever put his phone number in women’s bags, asked them to marry him, or posed as a rich man.

Rad claims that he graduated as a cardiologist from an Iranian university in 1985 but left the country for South America a few years later using a false passport.

He said he spent the next three decades living in several countries across South and Central America, including with Christian missionaries, where he said he worked as a doctor without ever getting paid a cent.

After decades on the continent, he decided to move to Australia to stay with a friend, catching a ship from Panama that was meant to take him Down Under via Norway. However, after stopping off at Norway, the ship moved southwards to Malta and dropped him off here.

“I was double-crossed,” he claimed.

In Malta, Jack got in touch with AWAS, applied for political asylum on religious grounds – warning he would be persecuted back home because of his Catholic religion – and was sent to the Ħal Far open centre. However, he felt uncomfortable there as “it was extremely cramped and many migrants would smoke, drink and take drugs”.

Eventually, he was given a bed at a homeless shelter but again felt uncomfortable, seeing as the other homeless people were much younger and came from different cultures, and decided to live a vagabond life.

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