The group, headed by 75-year-old Milan-based lawyer Antonino Felice Siracusa, were arrested in the Island earlier this year after allegedly presenting false documents to try to con Esplanade-based Nedbank Jersey.
Over several months, the men and their associates in Italy sent misleading emails and put together fake documents to make the bank believe they were entitled to the cash, the Assize jury heard.
And to support their claim for the money the trio even created a document supposedly signed by the Queen, the Pope, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and US president Barack Obama.
Appearing alongside Mr Siracusa were businessman Tommaso Antonio Caruso (50) and 38-year-old freelance writer and interpretor Enrico Verga. All three deny fraud charges.
Outlining the case for the prosecution, Crown Advocate Stephen Baker said that believing the men’s conspiracy would be like ‘going to see a magician and believing it is real’.
Addressing the jury, he said: ‘It is a world of smoke and mirrors, which is inhabited by greedy dishonest people after their own ends.
‘Sometimes dishonest people will try to draw you into that world where their sense of right and wrong applies.
‘As you hear the bewildering range of falsehoods and nonsense involved in this case be careful not to be sucked into their financial Never Never Land. Rely on your common sense.’
He added: ‘When you read the documents in this case you descend into a murky fantasy world in which it is difficult to know who is scamming whom, and who believes what. But what is clear is that the aim of all the scammers was to make money from someone else by fraud.’
Advocate Baker told the court that the three men came to visit Nedbank from Italy on 3 February accompanied by two other men, who appeared to be ‘heavies of some kind’.
He said: ‘Their goal was to obtain a huge amount of money by fraud. The fraud involved telling lies and using false documents which made reference to secret accounts containing billions of dollar.’
The advocate claimed that the men had fabricated documents, some of the contents of which he described as ‘gibberish’, to try and confuse the bank into thinking that they were entitled to access vast amounts of money held at its branch.
The alleged false documents included contracts for billions of dollars and a fake bank transfer document.
The prosecution said that the conspiracy had ‘at its heart’ a made-up transaction relating to a trust called the Five Star Trust, which they claimed had transferred billions of dollars to an account at Nedbank Jersey.
The court heard that the account in question was held by a British Virgin Islands-based company called City CRT Marketing Limited, which is a real company but has never had any assets.
Advocate Baker said that when the three men turned up at Nedbank’s offices, they produced the false documents, including a contract which claimed $20 billion had been transferred from a Deutsche Bank account in Germany held by the Five Star Trust to City CRT Marketing’s bank account.
Another alleged falsified document was a contract stipulating that the Five Star Trust should allocate a portion of its funds to Siracusa.
It was heard that when the men presented their story and their documents to the bank, staff became suspicious, declined to help them and contacted the police.
Siracusa was arrested at the Airport on 4 February when all five men planned to leave Jersey.
Caruso and Verga were arrested the next day after deciding to remain in the Island.
Advocate Baker said that Siracusa, who was dressed in a dark pinstripe suit in court, and Caruso, who wore a black pullover, were at the heart of the conspiracy, and Verga, who was acting as their interpreter for their visit to Jersey, was also aware of the fraudulent nature of their documents.
The trial continues.
