Dennis Hope, a former used car salesman from California, claimed ownership of the Moon in 1980 and has since made £7.7 million allegedly 'selling' it off by the acre. Property genius, complete lunatic or savvy con artist who has pulled off one of the greatest scams of all time? This is his incredible story.

Before he had his multi-million-pound brainwave, Hope worked as a used car salesman, actor and ventriloquist. His risqué cabaret act made him realise he could say just about anything and get away with it, as long as he could smile his way through.

One day back in 1980, a recently divorced and penniless Hope was thinking he could generate some cash if only he had a property portfolio to exploit. Looking out of a nearby window, the Moon caught his eye and a crazy idea was born.

What if he could claim ownership of the celestial body and make money selling the land? As far as he was aware, nobody owned or had claimed the Moon, so it was up for grabs. Hope hit the local library to find evidence to back up his assertion.

He got his hands on a copy of the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty and homed in on Article II which states: “Outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.”

The used car salesman took this to mean that, while countries are barred from making land claims on the Moon, individuals are not. Hope had discovered what he thought was a cunning loophole and decided to stake his claim there and then.

He cobbled together a document declaring ownership of the Moon, as well as eight other planets and their moons, stating his intention to sell off plots of land. He was eventually able to register his claim with the local US Governmental Office after several attempts.

Buoyed with confidence now that he'd managed to register his claim officially, Hope brazenly posted it off to the UN HQ in New York, as well as the government of the Soviet Union. Needless to say, he never received a response.

Assuming the lack of reply was tacit approval for his hair-brained scheme, in his mind Hope was now the rightful owner of the Moon and eight other planets in the solar system, and he set about dividing his acquisitions into plots and formulating deeds.

Hope first started selling chunks of the Moon in his local neighborhood drinking holes. “I'd sit in bars, with a batch of deeds in my coat,” he says. “I'd get talking to someone and when they asked what I did, I'd say, 'I sell the Moon'.”

Realising he had a market for his scheme, Hope trademarked the term Lunar Embassy. By 1995, he was making enough money selling land in outer space to give up his day job and concentrate 100% on his baby, building a website called the MoonShop in the process.

Hope has never had any trouble attracting publicity for his outrageous scheme. The Lunar Embassy has been featured on TV in over 180 countries on around 80 different TV channels, including CNN, NBC and the BBC.

The cheapest plot of land available on the Lunar Embassy site, a single acre, is priced at £14, while the most expensive, a 'continent-sized' expanse of territory of 5.3 million acres, will set you back a cool £9.3 million.

Not content with simply selling plots of land on the Moon and the planets of the solar system, Hope also sells extraterrestrial domain names with suffixes like .moon and .mars via the Lunar Embassy site.

Hope claims to have over six million customers who own: 611 million acres of land on the Moon; 325 million acres on Mars; and a combined 125 million acres on Venus; Io, one of Jupiter's moons; and Mercury.

Business is well and truly booming according to Hope, who doesn't anticipate a slowdown in sales any time soon. Rushed off his feet, he claims to be selling a staggering 1,500 lunar properties a day, and then some.

Plots of land on the Moon are owned by all age groups, from toddlers to seniors. The youngest lunar landowner is a two-year old from Germany and the oldest is 97. You know what they say about an old fool.

The Lunar Embassy counts a whole host of A-list celebrities among its bulging customer base – 679 in total – the most high-profile of which allegedly include Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Nicole Kidman.

It's not just the cream of Hollywood who couldn't resist snapping up some land on the Moon. Hope claims three former presidents of the United States – Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George W Bush – have all bought plots from the Lunar Embassy.

Hope boasts that 1,800 major corporations have acquired huge swathes of the Moon from the Lunar Embassy, and has mentioned that the Hilton and Marriott chains are among them, presumably securing land for that first lunar hotel.

Not every part of the Moon is up for sale. Hope has deemed the polar regions off limits as they contain the Moon's frozen water supplies. In fact, he swears he has turned down a multi-million dollar offer to safeguard future H20 reserves.

Hope founded the Galactic Government in 2004, which has its own constitution, ratified the same year by 173,562 extraterrestrial land owners. Hope has even claimed that the Galactic Government has diplomatic relations with over 30 Earth governments.

The Galactic Government has created its own currency according to Hope, which is backed by the Moon's helium reserves, which he says are worth £4.2 quadrillion. It just gets curiouser and curiouser.

If that isn't out there enough for you, Hope says that in 2009 the Galactic Government patented a space craft that can journey to the Moon in 30 minutes, which is slated to launch as soon as 2020.

Once the shuttle service is up and running, Hope intends to construct a pyramid city on the Moon housing 70,000 people. The structure will be 2.5 km tall and contain a whopping 62 billion square feet of inhabitable space. We'll believe it when we see it.

Contrary to what he thinks, Hope was not the first person to claim ownership of the Moon, and he isn’t even the second or third. In fact, people have been doing it for hundreds of years, the oldest claim being that of the Jurgen family of Germany, which dates back to 1756.

Space law experts have weighed in on the matter and it's bad news for Hope. Tanja Masson-Zwaan, deputy director of the International Institute of Space Law, has told National Geographic that UN treaties apply to people as well as countries, rendering Hope's claim null and void.

Frans von der Dunk, the world's foremost space law expert agrees. The super-respected attorney has described Hope's self-proclaimed ownership of the Moon and solar system planets as “either a hollow claim or a fraud.”

While most experts agree that Hope's claim is illegal, Henry Hertzfeld, a space analyst at George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, has explained to CNN that the 1967 treaty is unenforceable and Hope's claims are tricky to counteract from a legal point of view.

Governments have tried and failed to sue Hope. Germany and Sweden attempted to indict him for fraud but both cases were dropped due to jurisdiction and enforcement issues.

Although Germany and Sweden had no luck suing Hope, the Lunar Embassy is banned in China. The scheme was outlawed by authorities on charges of “profiteering and lunacy”. An interesting choice of words.