‘Stupid Us’: How U.S. Retirees Lost Thousands to Fraud Linked to Ex-E.U. Official<br />But European investigators now believe that Mr. Dalli was linked to a separate fraud scheme — one<br />that reached from Malta to the Bahamas to South Carolina, and that bilked investors including Ms. Hayes of at least $1.5 million.<br />During a visit to the Bahamas, Ms. Corbin introduced Mr. Dalli to Michael D. Brady, a founder of a Tea Party branch in South Carolina, as her business partner and as a European commissioner, and<br />that "gave credibility to her and the whole investment scheme," Mr. Brady wrote in an email.<br />Even as that scandal unfolded, European Union investigators were looking into Mr. Dalli because he had taken three trips to the Bahamas in 2012 — including a round trip from Cyprus<br />and back in one weekend — before he was forced to resign.<br />Investigators say that Mr. Dalli and Ms. Corbin traveled together in 2011 and 2012 to a German health spa, and spent time together at a villa in the Bahamas, where he benefited from the use of an $8,000-a-month beachside villa<br />that was not declared to the European Commission, his employer at the time.<br />A former police chief in Malta, John Rizzo, said in a recent interview<br />that "there was enough evidence to substantiate a criminal case against John Dalli" but that he "cannot really explain" why Mr. Dalli was not charged in the tobacco case.
