Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Fake Saudi Prince - The Anthony Gignac story

Episode Date: March 16, 2025

Anthony Gignac, a Colombian-born con artist, spent over three decades impersonating Saudi royalty to defraud investors worldwide. Assuming the identity of "Prince Khalid bin Al Saud," he orchestrated schemes that amassed over $8 million, funding a lavish lifestyle of luxury cars, yachts, and private jets. His deception unraveled in 2017 when a suspicious investor noticed inconsistencies in his behavior, leading to his arrest. In 2019, Gignac was sentenced to more than 18 years in prison for impersonation and fraud.

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So this kid ends up conning millions of dollars out of people by pretending to be a sound. Saudi royal prince. Now his name's Anthony and Anthony's around 18 years old and he's kind of a turd. He's always in trouble. And one day in 1988 he starts stealing credit cards. And of course he'll run up like thousands of dollars on them buying stuff. But specifically he likes to rent limousines and he'll ride around in them and when people are like, damn, who's this rich teenager?

He'll tell them that he's a royal Saudi Arabian prince. And just to be clear, he's not a prince at all. He's not a prince at all. He's not royal. He's not even Saudi Arabian. He's actually Colombian-born, but raised in the U.S. But anyway, he eventually leaves Michigan where he lives, and he moves over to California. And there he starts pulling this con all over again. And he'll steal credit cards and pretend he's a royal Saudi prince, and he pulls this scam for a few years. However, you can only steal credit cards and commit fraud so many times before you finally get caught, and they throw your asses prison for a while, which is exactly what happens to him. But a few years later, he gets out,

and now it's 1993 and Anthony is living in Miami. And there he commits identity theft and he steals someone's identity and he moves into a luxury hotel and he keeps this lie going. He tells everyone he's an important Saudi prince and everyone believes him and they want to be his friend and so he throws these big ass parties in his hotel room for all his new friends. But unfortunately, one night in his hotel room, boom, two of his guests rob him. And so he calls the police to report it. And then police show up, and even to the police, he lies and says, I'm a Saudi prince. And so I guess the police reach out to the Saudi embassy, and the Saudi embassy's like,

Prince, who? That guy's full of shit. And so eventually, bam, Anthony is arrested, and he goes to jail. And he's actually there for quite a while. Because it's not until about a year later that he gets out on bail. Then he goes right back to scamming. He goes to an American Express office and he tells them he's a Saudi prince and that not only was his credit card stolen, but that that card had a $200 million credit limit.

And then he like screams at the agent to get his way and by some miracle, I guess this works. And they give him a new American Express card with a $200 million spending limit. But unfortunately for him, it's not long before, bam, he's caught again. And he actually gets caught a bunch of times. Here's his mugshot. And also, here's another mug shot from a different time he got caught. But anyway, Brog goes to prison a couple of times because he just won't stop telling people that he's a Saudi prince and conning them.

And around 15 years go by. And at this point, you would think that Anthony would give up. But no. Not only has he not given up, he keeps trying to perfect this scheme. and make himself more and more believable as this fake prince. And one day in 2015, he decides he wants to level up. And that is when he meets this guy, Carl. Carl's a British businessman, he's an asset manager, and he really likes Anthony.

And so they come up with a plan to con people together. First, Anthony needs to get people to unquestionably believe that he's a Saudi prince. So he goes all in. He starts dressing up, wearing the convention. clothing, he buys fake diplomatic license plates off eBay to put on his car, he even hires personal security to follow him around like he's so important. Then he starts involving his social media. Like he's living this life of luxury with nice cars and he's going out on yachts and

even his dog wears a diamond body harness. And so he's posting about all this stuff on his Instagram account because you know he's trying to make all of this as believable as possible. And by the way, my favorite post of his is it's just a picture of two random Saudi guys that he like got off the internet and the caption says family. Man, that is not his family. This motherfucker is from Columbia. So anyway, Anthony and Carl set up a fake investment company for Anthony the fake prints and they start recruiting people with money to invest in it. And to their credit, this actually works because pretty quickly

they've conned 26 investors into giving them over $8 million. And then Anthony starts selling shares in a legitimate Saudi royal family oil company. Like it's a legitimate company, but Anthony has nothing to do with it. He's just selling fake shares in it. And so all of this is working really well for them. And Bro now has tons of money. And he's like showing it off because he wants everyone to know how witch he is. He's always tipping wait staff with $100 bills.

Every building he passes, he points to it and claims that his royal family somehow owns it. He rents a penthouse condo on a tiny private island. But see, the prince, like he's royalty. He would never rent. So Anthony tells people that he owns the whole building. And no one in the community really questions him. They all believe him. In fact, some of them even start referring to him as Sultan or Your Highness.

It's absurd. Bro is a menace. And it seems like with this many people believing him, he's never going to get caught. Until One day in 2017 Anthony finally screws up because he meets

an actual billionaire this guy, Jeffrey. And now Jeffrey, he owns a nice hotel in Miami Beach and he's looking for someone to buy a 30% stake in it. And so Anthony hears about this

and he's like, I'm a prince, I'll invest $140 million into this deal. Even though he doesn't have that kind of money, I guess he just wants to pretend to be rich. And so Jeffrey is like, sweet, I found a buyer. And the two of them start hanging out a bit. Like they kind of become friends.

But then Anthony starts telling Jeffrey that Jeffrey needs to shower him with gifts because that's what's customary back in his home country of Saudi Arabia and it's a sign of respect. And so Jeffrey does because he doesn't want to be rude. And so he starts buying him jewelry and expensive art and he takes him on flights in his private jet. Jeffrey is really trying to win this prince over. But then, of course, this whole plan starts falling apart. Because one day, Jeffrey flies himself, Anthony, Carl, and some others on his private jet from Miami out to Aspen for a nice little luxury trip. And while they're there, they all go out to dinner.

And that is when Anthony really screws up. Because when he orders his dinner, he orders prosciutto, a type of ham. And Jeffrey notices this and he's like, wait a minute. Isn't the Saudi royal family Muslim? Isn't pork forbidden for Muslims? So now he's suspicious. And so he has his team low-key start investigating Anthony, calling around, asking people about him.

So then later someone calls Anthony and tips him off like, Hey, some of Jeffrey's people are calling around asking about you. And Anthony knows he's about to get exposed, and so to try and get out of this, he doubles down. In front of everyone, he makes a scene, and he has a huge meltdown meltdown, screaming at everyone, how dare you doubt me, I'll sue you, I've never been so disrespected in my life.

I mean, it gets really intense and everyone goes back to their hotel room mad. The next day, at breakfast, the prince's team tells Jeffrey, hey, to keep the prince interested in purchasing your hotel, you need to buy him a nice gift, like something worth at least $50,000. And of course, this makes Jeffrey even more suspicious, but he plays along. He's like, I. But eventually he gets the FBI involved and they investigate. And as soon as the FBI sees photos of Anthony and they see his messed up teeth,

they're now certain that he's a fraud. Because apparently Saudi royals are known for taking care of their teeth. And Anthony's teeth, they're not in the best shape. Anyway, so eventually, bam, they go and arrest him. Here's his mugshot. And since this is actually the 11th time he's been arrested for this con, he gets sentenced to 18 years in prison.