According to the personal history he served up in interviews, which were often accompanied by photographs of him posed on the hood of his canary-yellow Rolls Royce, Buti came to the U.S. from Florence "in search of a fresh start" after a disagreement with his wealthy father, for whom he had been working. In reality, he left Italy after bouncing 51 checks and promissory notes, having never worked at all. When I confront Buti with this information, he responds blithely. "I think everybody can have a financial problem," he tells me. "We're talking about $30,000 to $40,000. We're not talking about $3 million. You know this, no?" Buti claims that the bulk of the bad money was promissory notes he wrote for the purchase of a BMW -- notes he deliberately did not make good on when he realized the seller was a fraud. What the rest of the notes and checks were for -- all of which he says have since been paid off -- well, he can't remember. "I swear I have no idea," he says, laughing. "Is it that big of a deal when you are 22 years old?"

Notwithstanding the embarrassment back home, Buti insists he comes from an affluent background, and peppers his conversation with richly textured details of his pedigree. To hear him tell it, the Buti family was one of the first "pioneers" of Sardinia but sold their home there when posh Porto Rotondo "became commercial." But those with firsthand knowledge of Buti's upbringing insist that his family fortune is a mirage.

"Tommaso Buti is not from a wealthy family," says someone who has done extensive research into Buti's finances. A former associate is more blunt: "When Buti came here, he didn't have two pennies to rub together." The youngest son of an Italian family that a former close friend describes as "upper-middle-class at best" -- his mother owned a clothing company; his father manufactured bottle caps -- Buti attended school in Florence and was, by his own account, a very poor student. "I am a two-plus-two kind of guy," he says. After repeating his final year twice, Buti graduated high school at 21, and did not continue his studies.

In 1989, he moved to New York and immediately began refashioning himself as a wealthy playboy. He moved into a Fifth Avenue apartment owned by the Caltagirone family, which is quite prominent in Italian real estate ("bigger than Trump!" boasts Buti); at the time, he was dating one of their daughters. With introductions from his wealthy girlfriend, Buti began hanging out with the Italian-expat jet set, befriending people like Luca Orlandi (scion of one of Italy's largest fabric manufacturers and ex-boyfriend of Naomi Campbell) and Stefano Chitis (heir to a Naples-based global construction firm called Fondedile). "It's not like Buti hung out with these people in prep school," quips a former close friend. Along the way, he also befriended Kevin Costner, who often accompanies Buti to local nightclubs.

Inevitably, Buti soon amassed a personal posse of models, going to dinner with "the girls" in groups and making a name for himself on the scene. Wisely, he also parlayed his jet-set pals into something he could bank on. In 1990, Buti enlisted Ippolito Etro, scion of the leather-goods family, as a partner in his first venture, a focaccia-sandwich delivery service operated out of a converted office at World Wide Plaza. In 1992, Buti sold his stake to his partners in order to start his own "business on Wall Street" -- a Fulton Street deli he immediately began promoting as an enormous success. Trade newspapers reported that his deli sold 1,000 lunches daily and was worth "an estimated $10 million." When I remind Buti of this, he laughs. "It's an article," he tells me. "It doesn't mean anything." As for how much profit the deli made, the deal-maker has no idea and suggests I ask his former accountant. "His name was Greg," he says. "Last name I don't know."

With the financial support of his friend Orlandi, Buti quickly graduated to an Italian restaurant in South Beach and an increasingly flamboyant life. Suddenly he had luxury cars -- the Rolls, a Bentley, a Porsche, a Ferrari -- and high-end real estate: At 26, he bought a $1 million five-bedroom house on Sunset Island in Miami. A short time later, his older brother, Francesco, bought a $450,000 condo nearby and joined him in business.