The Talented Mr. Niroula: Gay Palm Springs Murder Suspect Implicated in San Jose Real Estate Scheme

Authorities have focused on a mob of "gay grifters" in the disappearance and presumed murder of a Palm Springs art collector, as well as a complicated real estate fraud.

At the center of the group of alleged con men stands Kaushal Niroula, who has claimed to be a Nepalese prince, and whose "Spanish prisoner"-style scams have supposedly enabled him to bilk his marks of hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of jewelry and cash. Last year, Niroula faced charges in the case of 74-year-old Clifford Lambert's disappearance in December of 2008, and an attempt to empty the missing art collector's home and bank accounts.

As detailed in a lengthy Apr. 1, 2009, profile on the case in the San Francisco publication SF Weekly, Lambert had been missing for about a month when men in a moving truck arrived at his house to clean the place out. Lambert's neighbors called the police, who arrested Miguel Bustamante, a 26-year-old bartender who seemed to be directing the movers. Under interrogation, Bustamante led police to a web that seemed to span San Francisco's and Palm Springs' social strata, from a 60-year-old lawyer named David Replogle to 27-year-old Daniel Garcia. Attorney Mario Rodriguez defended Garcia as having been the younger lover of the missing art dealer. Garcia used Lambert's bank card for purchases and cash withdrawals totaling around $13,000, but, claimed Rodriguez, Garcia had Lambert's blessing: the expenditures were gifts, a March 25 SF Weekly article reported.

"It's probably no secret, but there's a certain scene here in Palm Springs," said Rodriguez. "This case has a sexual, alternative lifestyle overtones, and, uh, that's how they met, given the social scene in Palm Springs. Actually they met in Hollywood at a social function there a number of years ago there, and they became friends after that." Rodriguez also said that, contrary to Bustamante's allegations, Garcia did not know Bustamante and had no inkling of the schemes that were afoot. However, the purchases and withdrawals made by Garcia took place in the span of two weeks after Lambert suddenly vanished.

Moreover, Garcia had another boyfriend--Niroula, whose string of scams now seems to have extended to a labyrinthine real estate "scheme" in San Jose that authorities say involved still more alleged co-conspirators, according to a March 24 article in local newspaper the Mercury News.

So outrageous and wide-ranging are Niroula's alleged crimes--and his apparent luck in convincing judges to set low bail for him when he has appeared in court for his alleged misdeeds--that at least one lawyer for Niroula's purported victims is convinced that he's the Devil, or at least a "vessel" for evil. One of Niroula's scams brought down an entire college; in another, he played a role in convincing a mark to pay nearly a half million for a canvas executed by a French painter that the victim was told was up for sale. In reality, the painting is part of the collection at the National Gallery of Scotland. In the Lambert case, Niroula apparently obtained a fraudulent power of attorney document for Lambert's assets through Replogle.

"There are too many instances of him getting out and going free to blame it on his charisma or a lack of good police work," said Stephen Shaw, attorney for Megumi Hisamatsu, whom Niroula supposedly cheated of half a million dollars, according to a March 24, 2009 SF Weekly story. "I attribute it to the supernatural. He's evil. He's like a vessel. And if people don't treat it like this, he's going to continue doing what he's doing."

"He sprinkles in stories of the Nepalese royal family, Islamic terrorists, the British intelligence service MI6," Greg Ovanessian, a San Francisco detective who took a more mundane view, told the SF Weekly. "Whether he believes the stories he tells, I can't say, because I'm not his clinician. But that's what makes it interesting."