This prince was too charming to be true.
He lived like royalty in an ornate SoHo loft — but “Prince Josef von Habsburg-Lothringen of Austria” was actually Josef Meyers, a regular schlub from Michigan with a rap sheet longer than his phony name.
Even stranger, he was able to sustain this illusion by working as an FBI informant — landing enough dough to fuel an over-the-top lifestyle in Manhattan, sources said.
But the bizarre saga of the oddball, 50-year-old scam artist has apparently come to an end.
Meyers is now cooling his royal heels in a Michigan jail after being nailed as a deadbeat dad for owing more than $200,000 in child support to his first wife, Marianne, and their kids, whom he abandoned years ago, law-enforcement authorities said.
The alleged con man’s new digs behind bars are a far cry from his extravagantly appointed loft on Broome Street where Meyers and his second wife, half-French, half-Vietnamese beauty Michel Trico, had been raising their kids.
“He would walk around SoHo in banker-style suits. It was always very preppy with expensive, intellectual-looking spectacles,” said a source close to the family.
“Sometimes he would even wear a cordless hair dryer on his belt like it was a gun,” the source said.
“It was so bizarre. Their apartment was full of chandeliers and Chinese antiques. It was always cool to be in there because you felt like you were in a Habsburg’s apartment.”
The family ate almost every meal in the now-closed Country Cafe on Thompson Street and wore quirky outfits of lederhosen and bow ties when they walked their rare dog around the streets of SoHo.
“We used to call them the Addams family because they were so weird but cool at the same time,” one neighbor said.
But these eccentricities pale next to the tall tales that Meyers told.
He claimed to own a bank and once boasted that losing $100,000 a day meant nothing to him, said a source.
“He was dressed up all of the time, even the hottest days. His shirts were all very special. Everything he had was custom-made,” said David Sun, who owns Soho Dry Cleaning, where the family took their washing.
“But I never saw this guy work,” Sun said.
In fact, he was not a banker but a high-level FBI informant, sources said.
Meyer — a former mental patient who was once committed to a psych ward in Pontiac, Mich. — had attacked his mother at age 21 and was arrested in a 1987 drug raid, where police confiscated 2 kilos of cocaine and an automatic weapon, according to the Detroit News.
He was never charged, but it is believed that that arrest sparked his foray into top-secret work with the federal authorities. But he was convicted in 1989 of stealing and cashing a $100,000 check.
Still, he was allowed to continue his elaborate charade until he was busted for being a deadbeat.
Meyers was arrested on the rap May 17 by federal marshals in Manhattan, where he was in hiding, authorities said.
The marshals pounced on him in an apartment inside a Battery Park City high-rise at 300 Albany St., law-enforcement sources said.
“It was a small one-bedroom. We heard people inside, and we knocked, but they refused to answer,” said a source. After unhinging the door, authorities found Meyer standing inside a closet clad in a ripped T-shirt. Trico, 35, and their three young kids were also inside the apartment, sources said.
The Post was unable to locate Michel and the children, and old neighbors said they haven’t been around.
According to his lawyer, Meyers is still going by his made-up name.
“Mr. von Habsburg is looking forward to addressing the charges in Oakland County Circuit Court,” said the court-appointed lawyer, Josh West. “He’s a devoted family man.”