RedHanded - Episode 303 - Anthony Gignac: Prince of Fraud

Episode Date: June 22, 2023

How did an orphan from Bogotá, Colombia, become one of the most audacious white-collar criminals in the US during early 2000s? Starting his con career in Michigan at the age of just 12, Anthony Gignac transformed himself into a Saudi prince and spent three decades conning society’s elite out of millions – until one day his royal façade cracked, when he ordered the wrong entrée at a restaurant…See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. So, get this. The Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. Bonnie who? I just sent you her profile. Check out her place in the Hamptons. Huh, fancy. She's a big carbon tax supporter, yeah? Oh yeah. Check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here.

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And welcome to Red Handed. Hello. Welcome back. Welcome. We're here to fill your ears with some joy this week. Yeah. It's been pretty miz, actually. It has.

I mean, it's not quite joy. No. But a little bit less stabby. Stabby and completely corporately depressing than the ones we've been doing recently. Exactly. It's a little bit more of a con man. Yeah. Which I feel like is very much the vibe at the moment.

So I feel like you are going to enjoy this and have a little break from all of the truly horrible, horrible murders that we have discussed. So let's get on with it. On the 30th of December, 1993, 23-year-old Prince Khalid bin al-Saud spent the day indulging in a five-figure shopping spree in Miami, which, of course, is not out of the ordinary for a member of the Saudi royal family. I mean, there are rich people, there are the one-percenters,

there are the one percent of the one-percenters, and then there's the Saudi royal family. And Prince Khalid bin al-Saud lived like a god, in grand, unfettered luxury. He could spend the equivalent of many people's yearly income in a single day. He shopped at designer stores, flew in private jets, and stayed in luxury hotels. All the while, he'd carry suitcases full of cash in one hand, and a chihuahua with a diamond collar in the other. That evening, the prince invited two men for a drink in his penthouse suite at the Grand Bay Hotel in Coconut Grove, Miami. But this was no regular cocktail hour.

As soon as they arrived, the men beat the living daylights out of the prince, robbed him, and fled. The hotel staff immediately called the police, and then the Saudi embassy. But, to their shock, they were told that Prince Khalid bin al-Saud was the 79-year-old governor of Mecca. So probably not sinking cocktails in Miami. No. So obviously this realisation by the hotel begged the question,

who then was this flashy playboy having been beaten up in their penthouse? And things only got more mysterious. Because before the police arrived, the pretend prince had vanished. This is the story of Antony Gignac, one of the most audacious con artists in US history. He spent three decades grifting the world's richest people out of millions, and was eventually brought down for good after a simple slip-up in a restaurant. His story begins in Bogota, Colombia, where he was born Jose Enrique Moreno in 1970. At the time, the country was in the midst of a brutal drug war that was wreaking havoc on the Colombian people.

Throughout the 70s, the power of Colombian drug barons really took off, fuelled by a massive demand for cocaine in the US and in Europe. And then of course in 71 Richard Nixon declared the War on Drugs a global campaign led by the US federal government which just made the ongoing Colombian conflict all the worse. As the Colombian government warred with far-right paramilitary groups, drug cartels and far-left guerrilla groups, thousands of the nation far-left guerrilla groups, thousands of the nation's children were recruited as disposable soldiers on the front lines.

So despite living on the streets with no parents and no family, Jose and his little brother were arguably two of the lucky ones. By the age of just five, Jose was spending his days scavenging the streets of Bogota for food and scouting out safe places for him and his little brother to sleep at night. He learned early on, the hard way, that life was about the survival of the fittest. But in 1977, José and his brother's lives were changed forever. It was then that Jim Gignac and Nancy Fitzgerald flew to Bogota to adopt them. Upon arrival in the land of the free, Jose's new parents decided to white up his name, and they changed it to Anthony Gignac. But new name or not, it wasn't easy for the former

Colombian street kid to adapt to life in the predominantly white suburbs of Michigan. He was short, overweight and had a bowl cup that he would rock for the rest of his life for some reason. But Gignac was smart. He picked up English faster than anybody expected him to and soon also developed the gift of the gab. And with it came an insatiable desperation to become known as a somebody. Reminiscing about Gignac, one of his former childhood classmates said that if the boy was talking, he was lying. In first grade, Gignac told anyone who'd listened to him that his mother owned a chain of palatial hotels. In second grade, he told people that his biological father was actually the actor Dom DeLuce,

who's in All Dogs Go to Heaven and Smokey and the Bandit, etc. And in the sixth grade, Gignac started his grifting career in earnest. One day, his mum answered the phone to a man telling her, your Mercedes is ready. It turned out that Gignac, at 12 fucking years old, had managed to convince an adult salesman from their local Mercedes dealership

that he was a Saudi prince. It only gets more mental from here. But, like, how did this even happen? Like, how did this even happen? Do you know how hard it is to get a mortgage when you're self-employed? How did this 12-year-old get somebody to believe him that he

could buy a Mercedes? If this was a movie, it would be unbelievable. The salesman had even picked Gignac up at the mall and driven him around. After which, the 12-year-old Gignac told him, I'll take it. This is what I mean. It's not even like he just phones people up and he can put on a voice that doesn't make him sound like a fucking 12-year-old. He's in the car. He's in front of the salesman. And he's just like, yes, like a little 12-year-old prince. 12-year-old Saudi prince. Sure. And I'll call his mum Nancy Fitzgerald. But then, when no one turned up at the dealership wearing a thwob

and holding a suitcase full of cash, the sheriff's deputy turned up at the Gignac house. A lot of parents may just have laughed the whole thing off as a hilarious story to tell in the future of what their precocious 12-year-old had once done. The sort of thing you say for a first girlfriend, that kind of thing. What would your reaction be to that? Your 12-year-old son has gone and convinced a Mercedes dealership that he is a 12-year-old Saudi prince. And they're like, your car's ready. Are you laughing?

Are you crying? What's happening? Deep down, I'd be a little bit impressed. I would be slightly impressed. And I would probably find it quite amusing. But I'd also be scared. Yeah, I think that's... Scared and impressed.

Scared, impressed and and confused it's like that really terrible joke of like this door-to-door salesman and he knocks on a door and a toddler answers the door and he's wearing a smoking jacket and he has a pipe and the salesman goes excuse me are your parents home and then the toddler goes does it look like my fucking parents are home? Yeah, OK. Anyway, Jim and Nancy did not find this situation very funny at all. Instead, they decided to send their son to a clinical therapist in order to deal with the traumas he had experienced in his formative years on the streets of Bogota.

And at first, he did seem like he was getting into it. But all the therapy in the world couldn't prepare little Antony for his adoptive parents' messy divorce that rolled around just a few years later. The worst part of it all was that Antony Gignac's little brother was sent to live with his dad dad while he stayed with his mum. Nancy, by the way, quickly got into a new relationship and settled down. With Anthony's therapist.

It's not at all pertinent to this story, but you can't leave a detail like that out. That's pretty wild and inappropriate and boundary crossing and other therapy speech, etc. That sounds like someone needs to be struck off, to be honest. So this separation from his little brother, the only person Anthony had truly ever cared about, caused him to suffer a mental breakdown. Anthony was sent to two psychiatric hospitals and eventually lived in a halfway house as a ward of the state, from which he eventually ran away at the age of 17. And so, once again, Anthony found himself alone on the streets. Only this time, as he emerged from this period of mental turmoil, something had changed in Antony Gignac.

He refused to go back to the life of a poor street kid. And either consciously or unconsciously, Antony decided to completely reinvent himself. And I mean that in almost the most literal of literal senses there is possible to do with my mouth. Because from that moment on, Gignac took on the role he'd first played all those years ago as a 12-year-old child. He became a Saudi prince.

And that very same year, in 88, Gignac had what would be first of many, many run-ins with the law. Without a penny to his name, the 17-year-old managed to rack up a $10,000 bill from a limousine company in LA. He used a fake credit card, under the name Prince Adnand Khashoggi, a notorious billionaire arms dealer, and the wealthiest man in the whole world at the time. And by the age of 21, in 1999,

Gignac was dubbed the Prince of Fraud by the LA Times, after he was arrested for a series of small-time hustles. He had conned the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel out of $3,500 in room and food charges over the course of just four days. He played the role of a prince so well that all the hotel staff addressed him as your highness. Oh my god. Again. Impressed? Like a bit, yeah. Definitely.

Like, two things. Firstly, can't call an honest man. Yeah. And hustle. And secondly, am I crying that the fucking region Beverly wilshire hotel is out like three and a half grand not really this is the thing i just feel like look if you are running a luxury hotel or whatever sort of hotel this is um and if you're selling mercedes and running a limousine hire company etc etc do your fucking due diligence check this person's credentials get a fucking

credit card on file i can't even make a reservation in London for a table without giving my credit card details to a fucking Orland Sundry. So I'm like, how is this person just able to stay in your hotel without putting down any kind of collateral? I kind of feel like that's on you. Yeah. And it was during those four days at that hotel that Gignac racked up almost $8,000 in limousine bills. He also managed to convince shopkeepers on Rodeo Drive to give him a set of Louis Vuitton luggage and a rare coin collection. Why? What's happening?

He promised them that his father, the king of Saudi Arabia, would take care of the bill. Again, look, that's on you. I think, not defending him, I still think this is all quite funny not defending them either but i do think it isn't completely unheard of in places like that for people to just come and take what they want and say send me the invoice i think that does happen quite a lot see i'm not rich enough i'm not richy fucking rich enough to know how these people

deal i'm still making my reservations online under fake names like a fucking pleb but what I would say is I watched the world's greatest hotels yes the documentary series that is on channel four starring Monica Galetti and Giles Corrin who I I enjoy the show it's very fun I love the like back room workings of a hotel and in that they went to this very fancy hotel i cannot remember which one it was but they were basically saying how they're like we actually hate it when saudi royals turn up here because they literally don't pay and they were like the next time they come and they just expect the room to be ready for them blah blah blah and then at the end we are like staring at each other of like who is going to have to be the one to battle with them about paying the bill before they leave and they were like they'll just go six months a year without

paying because to them it's like oh what's a cash flow for a business yeah you know because obviously i'm not like condoning conning people obviously the hotels will suffer and even if it's a fancy hotel they've got to pay their staff they've got to pay everybody who works there but like apparently it's like quite a well-known industry thing especially in hotels that the Saudi royals just come don't pay and you can just expect to get paid when when you do or just not at all yeah I have quite a lot of friends who used to work in Harvey Nicks who said exactly the same interesting so maybe he just knew instinctively and went with that narrative or Oh, he's been watching World's Best at Home. I've got it.

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who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. And so based on everything we've just told you, if you think about it, impersonating a Saudi prince is kind of the perfect con. The Saudi royal family consists of around 15,000 members

and although they obviously keep a count of who those members are, that information is not made public. This makes it pretty hard for outsiders to know who the royals actually are and it also makes it very easy for somebody like Ginyak to pretend to be one. And yes, Gignac was caught and arrested time and time again. So we're not here pretending that he just got away with it. He was arrested all the bloody time. They called him the bloody Prince of Fraud. But every time, he'd just plead guilty, serve a year or two, and simply move on somewhere else in the US.

Only to do the same con again, just bigger. And that's it. He's very like, only to do the same con again, just bigger. And that's it. He's very like, is restrained the right word? Because he's going after like 3,500 here. Yes, right, yeah. Like this here, rare coin collection here, all of which like some of those things can even be recovered and returned. And as we know from having done our hit limited series,

Filthy Ritual, the police don't give a fuck unless the fraud is over a certain amount of money, usually in the millions. And, uh, Gignac isn't the only person who would gain infamy for playing at being a Saudi royal. In fact,

if you Google fake Sheikh, you're much more likely to come across Mazza Mahmood, also known as the King of the Sting. This is... We had to include this.

We had to. Yeah, we had to. this we had to we had to it's got nothing to do with the case absolutely nothing that he just pretends to also be a shake and it's a good story so uh while we are at it in the the fake shake area of the internet here is a very quick red-handed rundown of the other fake shake mamood wasn't a con man. He was a journalist. Just like I say I am on mortgage applications. Mahmood single-handedly changed the face of British tabloid journalism during his time at the now-defunct News of the World newspaper. Mahmood used his cover, as a fake shake,

to expose the secrets of the rich and the famous. Under the guise of a Saudi royal, he would gain access to the upper echelons of society and then sell all their ill-gotten stories to the tabloids. Over the course of his 33-year career, the fakeshakes undercover journalism sent dozens of people to jail, landed almost 100 convictions,

and destroyed numerous lives. Like, he used the same fucking get up to get all these people. It was just like him in one of those, like, Saudi Sheikh outfits. How are you having a 33-year career that sends that many people to prison? Like, how do you not realise that this guy sitting in front of you is the bloody News of the World journalist who pretends to be a Sheikh? Like, how is that career lasting 33 years? I had the same thought, and I'm afraid I have no answers.

But Mahmood was so good at it. He was so good at putting people away and ruining lives. He won Reporter of the Year, and for a short while was lauded as some sort of hero uber-journalist. And that's the thing. Some of the people he put away, like, those people deserve to go to prison, because they were doing corrupt shit and they needed to get caught, and that's why he was king of the people he put away like those people deserve to go to prison like because they were doing corrupt shit and they needed to get caught and that's why he was king of the stink but he also just like got nasty stuff on people and like outed them and did horrible stuff and like

got you know ruined people's lives so it's like the people he sent to prison good the people whose lives he ruined by just like recording them saying salacious things not so good confusing and in reality some of the stories that he broke were very real and very big news. But most of them were nothing more than gross cases of entrapment. And sure, the people were doing those things. They did deserve to get caught, but not like that. Yeah. And his shady career came to an end in 2014 when he was working on a story of British pop star Talisa Constavlos. Talisa! Talisa.

So I don't know if people outside of the UK know who N-dubs are. She's on the panel of Britain's Got Talent now. She's really famous now. Oh, is she? She recovers. Yeah, good for her. So during this Talisa con, he didn't actually use his fake shake get-up. Mahmood posed instead as a Bollywood movie producer

and offered Taliza a fake role starring alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. And he flew her out to Vegas. And like he had done numerous times before, Mahmood asked Taliza to get him 800 pounds worth of cocaine. This is one of those examples of not a good situation that Mahmood pushes, because he does this while secretly recording the entire interaction. He then broke the story that Taliza had provided him with drugs, and she was arrested for dealing cocaine. Though she said she had believed that it was part of the audition.

The case did fall apart when it was revealed that Mahmood had withheld the rest of the recording that he'd made of Taliza, because despite agreeing to get him cocaine, she'd also said that she hated the stuff because a relative was addicted. Mahmood was convicted of perverting the course of justice and sentenced to 15 months. This conviction then shone a light on the numerous other legal cases the fake Sheikh had testified in over his 30-year career

as a quote-unquote investigative journalist. I don't think it counts as journalism if you're making it happen. So Mahmood once claimed to have stopped the crime of the century by foiling a criminal gang's plot to kidnap Victoria Beckham and her children. But in the end, it turned out that he'd paid a convicted criminal to pitch the idea to the gang in the first place. I think what happened is he starts doing this and he gets some doing this and he gets

some good stories and he gets some good stings. And then he's like, I've got to keep the fucking mill running here. I've got to keep things ticking over. I need more and more stories. So he just starts to make the stories so that he can be the one to crack them. Yeah. It's like what people say to us all the time. Like, what are you going to do when you run out of material? You're just going to start murdering people. I'm like, no, obviously not. What a weird thing to say. But it's been said to me so many times. So let's leave that where it is.

And let's pick up where we left off with Anthony, the fake Sheikh Ginyak. He'd been beaten up at the Grand Bay Hotel in 93 and vanished just a few minutes before the police arrived. He managed to make his way to Chicago, but eventually he was arrested there and sent back to Florida. He had, after all, scammed the Grand Bay Hotel out of 27 grand and Saks Fifth Avenue out of 50 grand on a shopping spree. He was sentenced to two years, but even when in prison, Gignac managed to keep up the act,

contacting attorneys pretending to be Prince Khalid bin Al Saud. And that is how he met Miami attorney Oscar Rodriguez. Gignac convinced Rodriguez that he was a member of the Saudi family and that his father, the king, would pay all of his fees. Naturally, Rodriguez almost jizzed his pants. He thought he was going to become the attorney for the Saudi royal family. That is a big paycheck. So then he hired two bonds agents to bail out Ginyak for $46,000. The bondsman drove Ginyak back to their offices to await the payment from the king, which obviously never came. What the actual fuck? Again, I get greedy. He's like, I'm going to become attorney to the fucking Saudi royal family. That's why I'm doing this. But like educated people, right? And I'm like, He's like, I'm going to become attorney to the fucking Saudi royal family. That's why I'm doing this.

But like educated people. Right. And I'm like, what's going on? Why does nobody? I mean, obviously people must have. Why do these people in this story not have even an iota of cynicism or like skepticism about what this man is saying to them? Well, the bondsmen do. They're like, you can't leave the fucking office, mate.

Yeah. I need that Western Union immediately. So the only ones with their heads screwed on, the bondsman, told Gignac that they were just going to have to take him back to prison. He assured them that there had been a terrible mistake, and he asked them to drive him to an Amex office.

Which, inexplicably, they did. I take back everything I said. Gignac walked into the American Express office in tears, shouting that he'd been mugged and needed a replacement card immediately. He even threatened employees that his father, the king, would be so angry if they refused him. Oh my God.

And so, American Express, who probably have quite a bit of experience dealing with angry Saudi princes, told Gignac that they would give him a new card if he could verify the last two purchases made by the real Prince Khalid. And amazingly, in a Derren Brown move, he somehow managed it. And to find out how he pulled that off, you're going to have to wait.

Blue balls for you, sorry. Stick around to the end of the show. The very next day, Amex sent Gignac a platinum card with a $200 million credit limit. What? The fuck? Do you know?

Do you remember how long we had to wait for them to just send me and Amex after you set up the business account? We waited like six months and they made me fill out like 1,700 forms. Yeah. I'm upset. Immediately after he received this platinum card,

Gignac booked two limousines and spent $22,000 at a jewellery shop on Miracle Mile in Coral Gables. And then he bought two Rolexes and a diamond and emerald-encrusted bracelet. Escorted by the bondsman, he then flew to Michigan and New York, booking out the entire first-class cabins on each flight. This was enough to convince his escorts that he was indeed the real deal. That was, however, until one of the agents received a call from the Amex fraud department. They were in New York at this point and the bondsman quickly handcuffed Ginyak. They then booked themselves on the next flight to Miami to send him back to jail and to

get their bail money back. But as they led Ginyak through LaGuardia airport, he suddenly started screaming, I'm Prince Khalid bin Al Saud, I've been kidnapped, they have a gun. And in the blink of an eye, the bondsman was surrounded by airport police pointing shotguns at their head. And it was only after they had shown airport security their IDs and paperwork and explained the entire situation that they were allowed to leave. But by this point, they'd missed their flight. So the bondsman decided that the best way to avoid Gignac trying something like that again was to rent a car, throw him in the trunk and make the 24-hour drive to Miami. It's like some sort of hangover-esque movie. Truly, truly. So halfway on their journey, the bondsman stopped at a rest stop.

Big mistake. They let Gignac out of the boot to stretch his legs. Big mistake. And he told them everything. From his real name to his life in Colombia, Gignac even revealed how he'd answered the security questions for Amex. Turns out that the two Rolexes he'd bought were bribes for two insiders he had at Amex, feeding him the answers. After being returned to jail, in news that will surprise absolutely no one,

Gignac just carried on grifting from behind bars. In 1994, he phoned up Syracuse University, once again claiming to be the very same prince. He told them that he wanted to donate $45 million, but that they'd have to wire him a portion of the taxes for the donation. Oh my God, it's the oldest trick in the book. That's straight out Juliet de Souza's handbook, that one. Yeah.

And they did it. Oh my God, somebody help me. Syracuse University happily sent $16,000 to a bank account, which turned out to belong to Gignac's little brother, who was recently back on the scene. This little con landed the pair of them a 46-month sentence. Gignac got himself an additional 37 months for a failed escape attempt. Then he set his cell on fire.

He had covered the floor of his cell in shampoo, hoping that the guards would slip and fall, allowing him to make a miraculous escape. But it did not go to plan. But he can't quit. He cannot stop. Can't stop, won't stop. During his stay in prison, Gignac even fooled celebrity lawyer Johnny Cochran into believing that he was related

to Al-Waleed bin Talal Al Saud, the grandson of the King of Saudi Arabia and the seventh richest man in the world. He had Cochrane contact him, asking for money he supposedly owed to Gignac. Needless to say, Cochrane did not hear back from al-Walid and later said he felt like a fool for having even listened to him. He said,

I had Khalid derangement syndrome. I cross-examined liars for a living and I could not trip him up. Honestly. I'm still very impressed. Yep, yep. So after being released in the early 2000s, Gignac decided to lay low for a while. He went to Michigan to stay with his mother and her

partner, his old therapist, Lisa Whitehead. Now looking back on this visit, Lisa told Vanity Fair, we took him to dinner at the only restaurant we had there in Eaton Rapids, full of rednecks and their families, those are her words, not mine. And he comes in wearing a fur coat and driving a white Cadillac. Lisa also recalled that when they went to watch Catch Me If You Can together at the cinema, Gignac had shouted, I'm so much better than this guy.

Why is that a family outing? It's a great film. It is a great film, but still. It's like rated 12 or still. It's like rated 12 or something. It's like, everyone will enjoy it. No, no,

I didn't mean as like why is it a family one. I mean like, he's a con man. He's a con man. And we're like, should we go watch Catch Me If You Can?

So as you might have guessed, Laying Low didn't really suit Ginyak. And he soon found himself back in New York, where this time he charged $11,300 at Saks Fifth Avenue

to the account of the real Saudi princess, Fadwa al Saud. Now I've just got the opening credits of Catch Me If You Can in my head. Every time he pulls off a con, please repeat. So that same day he also charged $18,000 to the account of the real Prince Khalid at Naiman Marcus, where he also made a scene threatening the employees for not properly respecting a royal. I mean, honestly, like, he is out of control. Just completely on one.

And not long after this, officers pulled Gignac out of his white Cadillac in 2003 and put him in cuffs, ignoring him as he shouted, You cannot do this! You must call the embassy! You just, he can't stop. No, he doesn't know how. During his questioning, Gignac came up with even more crazy stories, crazier than we have already heard. He reminded me of like Casey Anthony.

Yes, yes. You know when she just like walks the police around fucking Disneyland, Disney World, whatever, like headquarters. And then it's finally when she gets to the last door and she's like, all right. Turns around like, OK, I don't actually work here. What the fuck? Here's what he said. He told officers that he had once been the gay lover of a Saudi prince and that because homosexuality is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia,

this prince had given him access to a $480 million trust fund to keep him quiet. He also added that the Saudis had used him as a mule to traffic money to terrorists, as though he believed that this tied up his preposterous little story into a little neat bow. There is something quite pathological about Anthony Gignac's relentlessness. It's like he had a complete inability to control the impulse to attempt cons, even when he'd already been caught. He is the perfect example of like a compulsive liar. Absolutely. This is the definition of a compulsive liar. Absolutely. He can't lie. And it just... This is the definition of a compulsive liar. Yeah. And in the same way

that like people start small crime-wise when we're talking about killers, it's exactly the same thing. Yeah. Harvard is the oldest and richest university

in America. But when a social media fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the, wherever you get your podcasts.

You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada,

as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. And indeed, whilst in jail awaiting his trial, Antony Gignac posted a letter to Citibank demanding that $3.9 million from a very real Saudi prince's trust fund be wired to him. And understandably, a very frustrated judge slapped Gignac with a 77-month sentence in federal prison. He walked out of that prison

in December 2011, and he got himself sent right back in a year's time. And this time, when he got out, Antony Gignac upped the ante even further. No longer satisfied with scamming hotels out of huge bills, he now wanted to own the hotels themselves. As soon as he was released, the Colombian-born Saudi prince headed to the Florida Keys and offered the owner of the Chica Lodge and Spa $200 million to buy the whole place.

But the head of hotel security saw straight through. Thank you. Finally. And think about it. A huge part of his con, apart from his confidence, jewellery and the designer clothes, is banking on the hope that white Americans would be unable to tell the difference between a Colombian and an Arab. Which doesn't fly in Florida.

This guy's just like, he's a Colombian. So it was because of that that Gignac found himself standing in front of a judge for the tenth time. This time, the FBI also had some new evidence on him. They'd found Gignac's secret weapon, a big black binder he'd used to store all of his official looking notarized letters, legal correspondence, faxes and wire transfers, complete with seemingly genuine stamps and seals. These fake documents helped Gignac numerous times to convince people

that he was indeed the real thing. After the judge sentenced him to yet another year in prison, Gignac had the audacity to ask if the court could return his binder. After what was now his 10th stint in prison, Gignac walked out in 2015 and decided it was really time to go big or go home. The very first thing he did was start an Instagram page, at least he's moving with the times, which by the way is still running. You can go and have a look at it. It's PrinceDubai underscore 07. I'm going to have a look. Okay. I thought I'd save it for the record just to collectively bask in it. Prince. Oh, here we go. Prince 07 you know when you could have like your handle but then you can still have like a name uh it's Foxy it just says Prince Dubai 07 and then under the

picture just says Foxy oh man and um it's just got like a football player I think holding a puppy and yeah just loads of pictures of like a hand doing various things. So like eating at a fancy restaurant and a hand on the steering wheel of a fancy car and like a luxury whatever. He never has his face in any of the pictures. It's pretty terrible. It's a pretty terrible Instagram. I'm not going to lie. And then just lots of like this.

I've got it on my laptop. And just like luxury luggage. It's very like rich kids of Instagram. It's very that vibe. So tackytastic. It's just like, look at this luggage. Look at my wrist. Oh my God, it makes me sick.

It's so tacky. Gross. Anyway, there we go. It's exactly what I thought it was. So you can all go and look for yourself. And he did this because creating an Instagram personality in the age of Pixar It Didn't Happen meant that it would be a thousand times easier for Antony Gignac to gain the confidence of his marks.

He is smart. So in the next phase of his conman evolution, Gignac attempted to gain access to the truly uber-wealthy. To do that, he needed some connections. He needed someone who was credible. And he found this in 51-year-old British-born asset manager Carl Marden Williamson. Carl moved to the States in his 20s

and had married a girl from North Carolina who he had met while serving in the British Navy. Carl had no criminal record. He was good-looking and charming, knowledgeable about finance and law. He knew a lot of people. And, as we know, very valuable to Americans, British accent. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Carl was therefore the perfect person to give Gignac the legitimacy he needed. After Gignac showed him an abhorrent $600 million bank balance, Carl didn't need much convincing to get into bed with the fake shake. And together they set up an investment company, Marden Williamson International LLC. MWI announced its opening on LinkedIn in 2016 with a bizarre post full of grammatical errors. It began, in the name of Allah and it ended,

It is with great honour that I am introducing Martin Williamson International to the world and asking Allah to guide him and his company and bring him and his client much success, God willing. Cool. It's unclear how involved Williamson was in Ginyak's con. But we do know that he was prepared to life him. Williamson put Gignac in touch with a high-flying British investment banker, telling her that he'd been friends with the prince and his family for 20 years. Ding, ding, ding, legitimacy.

This banker then connected the pair with some serious players. And before they knew it, MWI had $8 million from 26 investors. These investors believed that the prince was selling them a stake in his share of Saudi Aramco, one of the world's most valuable companies. I think it is actually the richest company in the world today. Sounds it. I'm convinced. Yeah. Saudi Aramco, look it up.

They've got all the oil. And a year before its supposed IPO, Antony Gignac had now graduated to the big time. He was no longer a simple con man. He was now involved in some very high-level, complex international white-collar fraud. Gignac celebrated by posting a picture of himself next to a suitcase of cash

captioned, with his new favourite catchphrase, getting that chicken. Look, the only person who can make that kind of thing work is Cardi B. Like, you cannot just invent. The only person who can do it is cardi b with

shmoney that is it no one else is allowed so getting that chicken getting that chicken sorry is not a is not an internet turn of phrase for getting money this is something he's purely made up he wants it to be sure sure he's trying to make it happen i mean maybe i'm blissfully ignorant stop trying to make fetch happen sure sure. Sure. Sure, sure, sure. Love you, Cardi. Anyway. Now with the dollar bills to back up his Insta lifestyle, Ginyak beelined

for one of the most exclusive postcodes in the USA. Fisher Island, Miami. 90210. I'm kidding. I know that's in California. He arrived on Fisher Island

in Saudi style, draped in jewelry clutching his diamond studded chihuahua muslims don't like dogs no they don't this saudi prince loves them i mean it's a very uh obvious flaw in his character to characterization well there you go but this chihuahua haram or not is called foxy. Now it makes sense. That's why the Instagram name is called Foxy. And the fake Saudi prince his Haram Chihuahua and all of their diamonds

were surrounded by an entourage of bodyguards. This entourage by the way were actually shopping centre security guards that Anthony Gignac had hired and kitted out

with suits fake diplomat badges and guns. It's all you need. It's just the look. It's the vibe, right? Of course. Gignac couldn't actually afford any of the apartments, which started at $20 million and were owned by the likes of Oprah and Tom Cruise. So this is what Fisher Island is made up of, I see. So, in the least Saudi move possible, he just rented one for $15,000 a month,

filled it with IKEA furniture and told people that he owned it. And then, still not satisfied, he set his sights on the biggest mark of his career. Billionaire Jeffrey Soffer, real estate magnate and Elmick Pearson's ex-husband. Soffer wasn't a Saudi prince, but he was dubbed the Prince of Miami, and he had everything Gignac wanted. Luxury cars, private jets, palatial homes, mega yachts. A profile written about Sofa in Ocean magazine credited him for turning the Fontainebleau Miami beach into one of, quote,

the hottest hotels in the world. But the truth was that Fontainebleau was in a lot of debt and had been causing Soffo problems for years. All of this is why, in March 2017, he was thrilled to receive a call from a British investment banker, telling him that Prince Khalid bin al-Saud wanted to invest $440 million into the hotel. The con began from the moment the pair met. Gignac rolled up in a Ferrari California bearing US diplomatic license plates. And the second he showed Sofa a fake statement from the Bank of Dubai alleging he had a balance of $600 million, Sofa was hooked.

And the two agreed on a deal. The con was simple. Gignac had Williamson explain to Sofa that it was customary in Middle East business deals to show respect with luxury gifts. The idea was, of course, to rack up as many of these luxury gifts as possible before getting the fuck out of there. Gignac delayed the ongoing negotiations for months, and in August 2017, Sofa flew him and his entire fake security from the supermarket entourage out to Aspen, where they stayed at the St Regis Hotel

and visited Sofa's gigantic mansion that was, funnily enough, once owned by the real Saudi prince. And it was here in Aspen that the prince, quote-unquote, royally fucked up. During a family dinner, Ginyak forgot that he was Muslim and ordered the prosciutto. You'd have thought somebody who'd spent basically the better part of 30 years of his life impersonating a member of the Saudi royal family,

he'd have at least known that the prosciutto is haram. After this, Sofa grew suspicious and hired a private security firm to investigate Ginyak. Sorry, excuse me. This Saudi prince is feeding pig to his dog. Can you please? I think something might be up here. But like what I would say to that, though, is I feel like there must have been other things that made Safa suspicious before this, because I do also think that the Saudi royals are definitely drinking and definitely smoking and probably definitely eating tasty tasty bacon and prosciutto because prosciutto is tasty.

I don't believe for a second that they're all like super. No I don't either. You know abiding by the laws. I think Safa was just like the final straw that broke the fucking mangled camel's back at this point. Because there were a few other things that didn't add up. First of all, the condo on Fisher Island. The thing was, Gignac had told Soffer that he actually owned the entire high-rise of 54 luxury condos on Miami's exclusive 216-acre enclave. But Soffer had overheard Gignac taking a phone call about renting said singular condo. And then Gignac got a call from a close friend of his who told him that they'd just been questioned by one of Sofa's investigators about whether or not he really owned the building. Knowing that he was close to being rumbled, Gignac reacted in the same way that he always did. He doubled down.

He went down to the lobby of Soffer's Aspen Hotel and began screaming about how disrespected he felt. He was shouting so loudly that his business partner, Karl Mardin Williamson, and his British accent had to come and calm him down. Tirade even reduced the female British investment banker in his team to tears. To be honest, as Hail Marys go, this was a pretty good one. It's exactly how you would expect a spoiled Saudi prince to behave, and the exact opposite of how you would expect a combat to behave. After this public meltdown, Sofa's team was told the following. This deal is going to fall through. You've insulted the prince's honour.

Here is how you need to get back in business with him. He is requesting a gift. Oh my god. So Gignac's people explained that he now needed to be given something in the $50,000 range to make up for disrespecting his royal highly highness-ness. So the following day over dinner, Soffer, who apparently had been suspicious but now was not suspicious, presented Gignac with a $50,000 Cartier bracelet. How romantic. As Gignac took the gift, he doubled down once again and pretended to take a phone call.

He then said, Zulu Red Echo 33, before explaining to the table that the call was from the state department and that they were simply checking on him but he just gave away his code word in front of all of them and like the only people who say red instead of romeo whiskey tango foxtrot my god so after the skinny act pointed to his neck and said that there was a computer chip implant in there which allowed them to always know where he was williamson then announced that he too had a chip in his neck then pointed at a guy sitting a few tables away. Williamson then said, see that guy right there?

He's with the secret service. Look at me, obviously point at him. Yeah, I know, I point at my neck. I point at him in front of everybody in this restaurant. So Gignac was convinced that this elaborate set of theatrics had been enough to curtail any suspicions from Soffer about his legitimacy. But all it did was motivate Soffer's investigative team to redouble their efforts. The last straw came when they learned where Gignac had acquired his US diplomatic license plates from.

eBay. For $79 a pop. Now this is where it gets interesting. And again, very reminiscent of Juliet de Souza a la Filthy Ritual. Because impersonating a diplomat is a federal crime. So the case was handed over to the Diplomatic Security Service. And the DSS are serious business. They're like the FBI, but with extra military training. And diplomatic immunity. Yeah. So the two DSS agents headed up the investigation. And the second they saw the photo of the would-be prince, they knew he was full of shit. Presumably one of them was also Colombian. It wasn't his chubby physique, his bowl cut, or even the fact he clearly didn't look like an Arab that gave Gignac away.

It was his teeth. The two DSS agents had worked extensively in the Middle East and they knew for sure that Saudi royalty took exceptional care of their teeth. It's like the scene out of Inglourious Bastards where Fassbender puts his fingers up the wrong way and they're like, German would never do that. They're like, look at his teeth. No Saudi would have teeth like that. Because Gignac's teeth were a fucking state. Presumably it's quite difficult to con a dentist.

Clearly. So quickly the DSS uncovered Gignac's true identity and his enormous criminal record dating back more than 30 years. And so on November the November 19, 2017, Gignac was arrested at JFK after a trip to Dubai, Hong Kong and London, where he'd been squeezing other victims out of their cash. The following month, just days before Christmas, officers raided Carl Williamson's home at 6am in North Carolina, where he lived with his wife and his twin sons.

He was interrogated for six hours, during which Williamson insisted that he was just another unwitting victim of Gignac's con. The story we just told you, and lots of other evidence of course, told a very different story. And later that day, after eating dinner, Carl told his wife and his twin sons that he was going to bed. His wife found him hanging by his neck at 7.30pm. He died two days later. As for Gignac, he spent two years insisting that he was completely innocent, and his attorneys claimed that his criminal behaviour was a symptom of mental illness. According to them, Gignac had been diagnosed with mixed personality disorder

during the time he was institutionalised as a teen. Either way, the prosecutors and investigators working on Gignac's case all agreed on how masterful Gignac was at playing the part. Whatever the part was, at the right moment. And almost always knowing the right exact thing to say. And Gignac had told officers during questioning, I'm charming, but I'm really not that smart. I really don't know what I'm doing, which is exactly what a smart person would say. Yeah. In May 2019, Gignac

eventually pleaded guilty to all charges, including identity theft, impersonating a foreign diplomat, and scamming his victims out of $8 million. For this, he was sentenced to 18 years in federal prison. And chances are, when he's eventually released, he's just going to do it all over again. He's doing it now, I bet you. He's running like a postal scam. He's like Morello in Orange is the New Black. He's just like ordering really expensive shoes and sending them back and demanding a cash refund. Like he's doing all of it. He's doing it all. 100%.

100%. And I know like it's hard with cases like this because obviously Gignac has like a psychopathic disregard for like anybody else. He's just interested in doing what he's doing. And he's very good at it, which is very addictive. And like you said, he escal escalates escalates and it is borderline impressive because more than borderline it's incredibly impressive what he manages to do but at the same time grifters like this con artists like this are narcissists yeah are psychopathic and they do destroy the lives of other people like williamson who i don't think he knew the full

extent of everything i don't but i do think he was just shady enough to go along with stuff without asking too many questions um but yeah that is the story of Anthony Gignac and I do think it is a fascinating one yeah me too so there you have it the fake shake prince of fraud turns out to be a Colombian child with a bowl cut and shit teeth say Say what you like about the British. No one said anything about Carl's teeth. So take it all back. Including the Simpsons episode. And we will see you all

next time for some other things. Bye. Bye. So, get this. The Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. Bonnie who? I just sent you her profile. Her first act as leader, asking donors for a million bucks for her salary. That's excessive.

She's a big carbon tax supporter. Oh yeah. Check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here. She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes. She sounds expensive. Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you. A message from the Ontario PC Party.

I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part,

Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues

around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.