Following the end of the second world war and taking advantage of the lack of State Orders in the Italian Republic, an Italian had given himself an identity of a Polish Prince, and did a brisk trade in Maltese Crosses as the Grand Prior of the fictitious "Grand Priory of Podolia". Others followed suit such as the Grand Prior of the Holy Trinity of Villeneuve. The former was successfully prosecuted for fraud, and the latter gave up after a police visit. However the latter organisation resurfaced in Malta in 1975, and then by 1978 in the USA, where it found very fruitful soil and still continues.
The large passage fees (alleged in some
cases to be in the region of $50,000) collected by the American Association of "SMOM"
in the early 1950s seemed to have tempted a Charles Pichel to create his own
"Sovereign Order of St John of Jerusalem, Knights Hospitaller" in 1956. Pichel
avoided the problems of being an imitation of "SMOM" by giving his organization
a mythical history by falsely claiming the American organization he led was
founded within the genuine
Russian tradition of the Knights Hospitaller in
1908, a spurious claim, but which never-the-less misled many including some
academics.
These organizations have led to scores of other mimic Orders. Two offshoots of
the Pichel Order have been successful in gaining the backing of exiled Monarchs,
King
Peter II of Yugoslavia, and King
Michael of Romania.