Avi Ben-Abraham quickly became toast of Hong Kong.(Chicago Tribune)

Visiting Hong Kong in January of 1996, Avi Ben-Abraham quickly became the toast of the Crown Colony.

According to The South China Morning Post, the man cited by the Guinness Book of World Records s the world's youngest doctor had treated Pope John Paul I, was "intimate with the powers-that-be at the Vatican, the Kremlin and the White House," and had been chosen as "one of the 100 greatest minds in history by super-IQ society Mensa."

It was a bravura performance by a young man from a working-class neighborhood of Tel Aviv who claims to have mastered Einstein's general theory of relativity at age 7, and who for more than two decades has employed his purported credentials as a child prodigy, "the real-life Doogie Howser," to ingratiate himself with some of the world's wealthiest and most powerful men and women.

Ben-Abraham had an important message for the super-wealthy Hong Kong investors who quickly befriended him and took him into their homes: the company he headed, Toronto-based Structured Biologicals, had developed an AIDS vaccine that was ready to begin human testing within the year.

All Ben-Abraham needed was $20 million to finance the vaccine trials.

"He had this great story about saving the world from AIDS," recalled one Hong Kong acquaintance. "And of course everybody said, `Hey, that's a great concept.' He walks around the with Guinness Book of World Records and says `This is me and I did this and I did that,' and everybody says `Wow, that's great.' So he said, `Put some money into this company, and it's got a fantastic technology that can save the world.' And these people said, `That's a great idea.'"

There was no AIDS vaccine, and never would be. But Avi Ben-Abraham left Hong Kong with $4 million from investors that included Asian casino magnate Stanley Ho, and Michael Kadoorie, whose company owns the Peninsula Hotel chain, both of whom are among the world's wealthiest men.

Based on more than 100 interviews and hundreds of pages of documents obtained by the Chicago Tribune, little about Avi Ben-Abraham's life is as it appears. The real story of Avi Ben-Abraham is one of an indifferent student, rejected by Israeli universities, who found his way to Italy and obtained a questionable medical degree at the age of 18, then used that rare distinction to build a globe-spanning network of relationships that included presidents, prime ministers, European royalty and Hong Kong billionaires.

Ben-Abraham declined to be interviewed by the Tribune. But his legend withers under scrutiny. A Guinness spokesman said Ben-Abraham's entry "somehow slipped through the net" and was dropped after only three years. Mensa says it has never compiled a list of "the 100 greatest minds in history." Authorities in Rome say it appears that Ben-Abraham's medical degree was obtained through "a false presentation of documents."

Driven from his own company's management in 1998 by the same Hong Kong investors he wooed, Ben-Abraham displayed his genius for reinvention by surfacing the following year as a candidate for the Israeli parliament and, most recently, as a vociferous promoter of the highly controversial effort to clone a human being.

Ben-Abraham often returned to Hong Kong in the months that followed his initial visit, usually as guest of the Hos or the Kadoories. "He was treated as a friend. He was welcomed into households. He would stay for weeks, even for months," said a prominent Hong Kong architect, Joseph Fung, who recalled wondering why the head of a company embarked on such an urgent venture seemed to have so little to do.

"He went to all the parties," Fung said, "but definitely he was not busy, like a person who was fully engaged."

Claus Wagner-Bartak, president and co-founder of Structured Biologicals, had enthusiastically endorsed Ben-Abraham's becoming its chairman and CEO, in hopes that his connections would bring the company much-needed financing for its research on "nanoparticle technology" being conducted at UCLA.

In recent interviews, Wagner-Bartak recalled his exasperation at learning that Ben-Abraham was touting the nanoparticle research as his own. "He claimed that he invented this technology," Wagner-Bartak said. "Everything that UCLA has done he claimed was his."

Wagner-Bartak was even more concerned when he discovered that Ben-Abraham was raising money in Hong Kong on the strength of a non-existent AIDS vaccine. "He made people believe we have already a vaccine which can go into human trials," Wagner-Bartak said.…