True Crime Campfire - Prince of Thieves: Con Man Anthony Gignac

Episode Date: August 20, 2021

There’s a Latin phrase, “Fortune favors the bold.” Con artists understand that better than anyone, I think. It always takes some degree of boldness to do what they do, from Bernie Madoff’s billion dollar Ponzi scheme to the three-card Monte guy on the street. But once in a while, we get ourselves a true master of the art—a con artist so audacious, so arrogant, so bold that they leave everyone they meet feeling like they just got swept up in a hurricane. We’re about to tell the story of one of the most outrageous con games ever played in this country—an unlikely con made even more bizarre by how completely people fell for it. Sources:Mark Seal, Vanity Fair: https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2018/10/how-the-fake-saudi-prince-anthony-gignac-was-exposedhttps://www.vanityfair.com/style/2018/10/he-actually-believes-he-is-khalid-the-odyssey-of-a-counterfeit-saudi-princeTom Huddleston Jr. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/06/how-fake-saudi-prince-anthony-gignac-conned-investors-out-of-millions.htmlCNBC's "American Greed," Episode "The Fake Prince's Royal Scam"Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]: https://shop.spreadshirt.com/true-crime-campfire/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. There's a Latin phrase. Fortune favors the bold. Con artists understand that better than anyone, I think. It always takes some degree of boldness to do what they do, from Bernie Madoff's billion-dollar Ponzi scheme to the three-card Monty guy on the street. But once in a while, we get ourselves a true master of the art, a con artist

so audacious, so arrogant, so bold, that they leave everyone they meet feeling like they just got swept up in a hurricane. We're about to tell the story of one of the most outrageous con games ever played in this country. An unlikely con made even more bizarre by how completely people fell for it. This is Prince of Thieves. Conman Anthony Gignac. So, campers, for this one, we're going to start out at a mall in Troy, Michigan. At the Shishy Department Store, Neiman Marcus, where even a pair of socks can set you back more than I normally spend on a nice anniversary dinner, security cameras captured the image of a quirky-looking dude on a lavish spending spree. The guy was dressed to the nines, lots of big jewelry, acrylic fingernails, fur, and he was sparing no expense, buying himself one of everything that caught his eye. Fancy watches, fancy clothes, expensive shoes.

He told the staff at Neiman's that he was going to put it all, all $13,000 of it and counting, on his personal charge account. The name on the account? Prince Khalid bin Sultan al-Saud. Oh, yeah, did I forget to mention? Our boy was a Saudi prince. Plenty of money to burn. And when a store employee looked up the name, lo and behold,

there was an account on file for Prince Khalid with a ginormous credit limit. so all right great everything seemed to be in order but as the prince continued racking up charges going through the store like an unsupervised nine-year-old at a Toys R Us one of the managers started getting a tingly feeling in the old spidey senses and she decided to call their corporate headquarters just to double check that this was all okay corporate transferred her to the chief fraud investigator

and when she described the situation and gave him a gander at the dude they had in their store the investigator was like okay, shut it down. I know this guy, that's no Saudi prince. That's Anthony Gignac. Y'all need to call the police. So, instead of the kind of emerald-encrusted gold bracelets Anthony went there to buy, he ended up leaving in handcuffs. Much cheaper, but not nearly so snazzy. Later, in an interview room with Detective Jerry Gleason, an indignant Anthony Gignac insisted that he had full permission to use that charge account. He wasn't trying to steal anything, perish the thought. I know the Saudi royals, he said. I could call the Saudi Arabian embassy right now

and get the ambassador on the line and have him explain the whole thing. It's very simple, he said. A few years ago, I had what you might call a little encounter with a Saudi prince. You know what I mean? And what with homosexuality being illegal in Saudi Arabia and everything, that would look pretty bad for the prince if it became common knowledge. He said, if they found out that I was having a homosexual affair with him, they'd cut their heads off or stone them or throw them off a building. When Detective Gleason expressed skepticism at the idea of a Saudi royal being thrown off a building, Gignac interrupted him. No, no. The Sharia says, and at this, he launched into a tirade of gibberish that bore a resemblance to the kind of fake Arabic you might find in a super racist

B-movie or cartoon. I don't know how Detective Gleason kept from just bursting out laughing. That's how absurd it was. And then Gignac translated. He said, it means if you see thee in the practice of homosexuality, throw them from the highest building or the highest wall or have a wall fall upon them. Okay, so Gignac's story here was that the Saudi royal family had set up a trust fund for him to keep him quiet about his trist with the prince, a trust fund worth almost 500 mil in U.S. dollars. Plus, he was given carte blanche to charge whatever he wanted at Neiman's. Seems legit, right?

So, Gignac went on, the prince told me I could spend $25K on his Neiman's account to get some new clothes and stuff. There are people at Neiman's who will vouch for me. When Gleeson asked why he'd need to use a charge account, if he already had this $500 million trust fund at his fingertips, Gignac changed the subject. He had papers to prove all this stuff, he said. Oh, he had papers, all right. Official looking forgeries to prove the existence of the trust fund. And when Gleason talked to the attorneys for the Saudi royal family in Washington, D.C., they were like, uh, nope, we have no association with this guy whatsoever. He's a con man. Yeah, I love that Gignac was like, they're paying me half a billion dollars in hush money, so I won't tell anybody about my homosexual affair with the prince.

Well, I mean, anybody except you, you know, or any other crop who tries to arrest me, obviously, or like the fraud investigators at Neiman's, but other than that, I'm a vault. Yeah, I'm sure the prince is toots cool with that. Hey, hey, buddy, don't tell anybody we had sex unless you really need to get out of jam. In that case, go nuts. Detective Gleason wasn't buying any of Gignac's bullshit, and he told him so. Look, dude, he said, you're a con man. You know it, I know it, and you're damn good at it, but you're not associated with any Saudi prince. Gignac paused for a moment.

I want a deal, he said. And he got one. He ended up pleading guilty to using the Saudi prince's Neiman Marcus charge account without permission. He was sentenced to 34 months to 15 years in prison. Now, campers, this was by no means the first time that Anthony Gignac had been in trouble with the law, not even close. In fact, on the day he tried to scam Neiman Marcus out of 13 grand,

he'd only been out of jail for two days after serving time for a similar scam in Florida. Anthony Gignac had been scamming his entire life, and his scam of choice had always involved pretending to be somebody else. He was born in Bogota, Columbia in 1970, at a time when poor kids often, in the words of vanity fairs, Mark Seal, became foot soldiers in the country's brutal drug war. It was a nightmarish life for these kids. They lived on the streets.

They went hungry a lot. Life was about survival, day-to-day. In 1977, Anthony and his younger brother were adopted by a couple from Michigan, Nancy Fitzgerald and her husband, Jim Gignac. Nancy and Jim tried to give them as happy and normal a childhood as they could to make up for the poverty and uncertainty they'd known so far. There were little signs of that trauma. Nancy said the two kids ate like little starving wolves at first and hoarded food. Understandable for two kids who spent the first party. of their lives not knowing where their next meal was coming from.

Anthony was a smart kid, though. He picked up English as fast as lightning, and he had a vivid imagination. A little too vivid, it turns out. As early as first grade, he was making up stories to big himself up in the eyes of teachers and classmates. He told everybody his mom owned the fanciest hotel in town. He told people the actor Dom Deloese was his father. And this is Bananas.

When he was in middle school, he conned a car salesman into giving him a test ride and a Mercedes. He said he was a Saudi prince and his daddy was going to buy it for him. After the test ride, Gignac was like, we'll take it. And when nobody showed up to pick up the car, or more importantly, pay for it, the dealership called Nancy like, ma'am, your car is ready. Okay. I want to know what car salesman is taking a 12-year-old's word for this shit. I'm sorry, dude.

I know you must be hard up for that commish, but you deserved whatever you got. Yeah, I'm sure his manager was not happy with him. For God's sake. But that little incident is foreshadowing for something that would help Anthony Gignac succeed as a con man for years to come. Audacity. You'd think most con artists would try to fly under the radar, not attract any unnecessary attention, but that was not how our boy rolled. he was all about flamboyance when he didn't get what he wanted

he'd make a big splashy scene rant and rave and say stuff like this is an outrage my father the king will be displeased and say shit you not and so on and so on and it worked I guess if you're going to throw a fit like a toddler you might

as well throw something so ridiculous that it has to be true in the middle of it right do you know who my papa is is the second funniest thing to say to anyone right behind, don't you know who I am? Especially if he pronounced a papa.

Papa. Anthony's adoptive parents put him in therapy to try to work through his obsession with money and prestige and his constant drive to masquerade as somebody else, but it didn't seem to help much. When he was 17, Nancy and Jim divorced, and Anthony took it hard. He was in a mental health treatment center for a while,

and then he ran away from home and officially began his life as a con man. and he began it in a pretty big way. He befriended an Arab family and confided in them that he was a Saudi prince. He said he needed a place to stay for a while and he wanted it to be with them. When they showed some reluctance, as most of us would, if some random kid asked to move in with us, he said that the king's secret police would be after them if they didn't let him stay with them, which is just why would he need is just the weirdest, dumbest story I've ever heard.

And the fact that they bought this is a testament to how good, good Gignac was at this stuff, even back then. And he lived with this family for some time, and while he was there, he attracted the attention of the fuzz for the first time, using a stolen credit card to joyride all over Detroit in a limousine. Stole the card from a friend's dad, by the way. Wow.

Nice, dude. Yeah. He pulled another stunt not long after this, scamming his way into a room at a University of Michigan Frat House by posing as the son of filthy rich Saudi businessman and arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. Now, at first, the frat bros were totally taken in by Prince Kishogi. I mean, what aspiring young business boy doesn't love the idea of befriending the heir to the Saudi throne? And what was in 1980s fraternity house but a breeding ground for little businessman larva?

I know. Before long, though, even through the ever-present haze of Natty Bow and weed smoke, the frat boy started to get a little suspic. For one thing, Prince Adnan was doing an awful lot of partying. Now, these guys didn't know a ton about Saudi Arabian culture, but they knew enough to wonder if a practicing Muslim really ought to be drinking till dawn every night and wolfing down bacon for breakfast.

And then one of the brothers got a call from a clerk at Western Union, asking if he'd authorized a $125 charge to an Anthony Gignac? He was like, no, and the transaction was canceled before it could go through, but it got everybody's antennae kind of twitching. Wow, that's surprising, don't you think? I mean, usually, you've got to do something really bad to get frat guys suspicious. Like, I don't know, refuse to do a kegstand or reject them on Tinder. Yeah, that last one especially, that'll do it.

So finally the police showed up to haul him in on some scam or other he was running and the jig was up with the University of Michigan anyway. but as a con man, Gignac was just getting started. After all, con men are like the Michael Myers of the true crime world. You think you got him when you threw him out the window, but he just keeps getting back up. Impossible to keep down. Over the years, he refined his skills. He quickly settled on the Saudi prince identity

as the foundation of his M.O. and changed his fake name from Adnan Khashoggi to Khalid bin Sultan al-Saud. His main thing was to check into a five-star hotel, tell him he was a prince, run up some ungodly bill staying in the presidential suite, and ordering gobs of room service and pay-per-view movies, and having the concierge arranged for limo service, and anything else he could get his mitts on. He'd shop at Cartier and Louis Vuitton and Prada and every other absurdly expensive place he could find, and for everything, he'd either use a stolen credit card or one that was already

maxed out or some line of credit that these places were willing to give him based on his alleged status as a prince. Eventually, the hotel would catch on. The cops would be called and the party would be over for a while. This was basically his life for the next couple decades. In and out of prison, in and out of fancy hotels. For the attorneys of various Saudi royals, he became a constant annoyance. They were always fielding calls from police detectives.

I bet. God, he had some adventures over the years. One time, after scamming a Disney resort out of $14,000 and going on a monster shopping spree with stolen credit cards, he met a couple of guys at a bar and invited them up to his hotel room to drink and hang out. They beat him up and robbed him. And when somebody in a neighboring room heard the commotion and called the cops, they ended up nailing Gignac for the crime spree he was in the middle of committing. Womp, right? Talk about a one-star stay. You get beat up and robbed and then arrested for the crimes you're committing.

Yikes. One of Gignac's favorite things, apparently, is committing crimes from jail. As he sat in the jug waiting to go to trial on the spending spree in Florida, he reached out to an attorney claiming, as always, to be Khalid bin al-Suit. He promised this attorney that if he'd help him post-bail, his father the king, His papa, the king, would pay him back. Plus, the king would keep him in mind for any future legal problems his family might run into. Ooh, ka-ching. Exactly.

That's quite a carrot to dangle in front of a lawyer. So this dude contacted a couple of bail bondsmen, O'Connell and Marty. Straight out of central casting to postpone for the prince. It came to be a little under 50 grand. so our boy has just managed to scam his way to $50,000 worth of free bail money. These bail bond guys, O'Connell and Marty, picked Gignac up from jail, drove him back to the bond office, sat and waited for the wire transfer to come in from the royal family. As you can imagine, they were waiting for quite some time.

Finally, they realized the money was not on its way. So they loaded the prince in the car and told him that they were taking him back to jail, but Prince Khalid said he had a better plan. Take me to the American Express office, he said. I'll sort it out. Somehow, our boy convinced these two bondsmen, who are not fools, to wait for him in the car.

Maybe they are fools. I don't know. He burst into the Amex office, all disheveled and crying. His name was Prince Khalid bin al-Soud, he said. He'd just been mugged. The king, my papa, was going to be furious. Oh, my God. The poor people at Amex didn't know what hit him. They calmed to the prince down, and then they told him, look, it's okay.

We can issue a replacement card if you just answer a security question first. Now, for most of us, this would be it. We'd be fucked. We'd know we're fucked. We'd start sweating bullets. We'd get the question wrong. And that would be that. but not our boy Anthony

when the Amex agent asked what were your last two purchases Anthony was able to rattle them off no problem Wow actual real life last two purchases of the actual real life Prince Khalid And that was that Amex gave him a platinum card with

200 million million dollar credit line Holy shit as you can imagine the bail bond guys were impressed that is just that's an insane credit line like who needs that much credit never needs that much money ever in their lives i just i don't understand these people and i never will where do you people buying islands give me i don't get it give me one of those millions and i will never ever ask for any more money ever again fine for the rest of my life exactly geez louise anyway so how did he work this little magic trick well it's actually it's

actually easy. It's just bribery. See, Gignac had a couple little secret squirrels at Amix. They'd helped him out of a jam once or twice before. He'd throw him a Rolex or something like that as things, and they'd make sure he could call up whatever classified info he needed to convince some poor dupe that he really did have access to the royal family's credit lines. So now that Gignac, aka Prince Khalid, had the bail bond guys convinced that he really was Saudi royalty, the three guys had a grand old time together. Kignaq took him on a shopping trip, racking up 22 grand's worth of jewelry and watches.

But, of course, it didn't take long for American Express to figure out they'd been had. And before long, the bondsman got a frantic phone call from Gignac's attorney. He's not a prince. Oh my God, go get him, go get him. Swarm! Swarm! So they're like, shit, shit, shit.

They put the grievous on him in an airport, and never a man to go down easy, Gignac tried to shake him by shouting at a nearby car, Help, help. I'm Saudi Prince Khalid and I'm being kidnapped. He pointed at the bond guys and said, he's got a gun. So this bondsman ended up with like guns pointed at him, trying to explain the situation, while Gignac screamed for any of his, quote, loyal subjects in the airport to call the embassy. And the media.

Good gravy. Now, obviously, this ploy only worked long enough for the bondsmen to show the police their paperwork on Gignak, but it just goes to show what a set of brass nuts this dude has on him. Yeah, you know, I've noticed a lot of conman's strategy is just creating as much chaos as possible and just seeing what people will believe. And it's, it's so easy for them because for non-scummy people, like you, me, and campers listening, the idea that someone would believe that we're royalty is ridiculous. And the thought of causing such a scene would be humiliating. Yeah, I think that's a really, really good point. And he was, he excelled at that

particular element of the game. Absolutely. So it didn't work, you know, but he gave it the old college try and the bondsman hauled him back to Jalen Miami. And Anthony went right back to scamming. He wrote to the administration at Syracuse University, as Prince Khalid, of course, with a little proposition. He said he'd just love to donate the princely sum of 45 mil to the school, because, you know, that's just the kind of guy he is. Just always looking for ways to make people happy. He just needed one little thing from him before he could make the donation. No big deal.

Just a mere 16K for taxes, of course, just a little percentage of the total. It's so funny to me because this is exactly the kind of scam you hear about all the time now with the Nigerian prince or whatever. It's basically a 419 scam, and Syracuse University fell for it. Sent the 16 grand to a bank account that Gignac's brother had set up. up back home in Michigan. Now for this little stunt, Gignac got an extra four years added to his sentence for wire fraud and his brother got arrested too. Well, this must have pissed Anthony off good because his next shenanigan was to cover his cell floor in shampoo and then set a fire.

Thinking, I guess, that the guards would like smell the smoke, come running in to put the fire out, slip on the shampoo like the three stooges or something and like get tangled up together on the floor while Gignac just slipped out the cell door and onward to freedom. How could a plan like that fail? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's icily logical as far as I can see. But somehow, for some reason, it didn't manage to bring home the bacon, and my dude stayed right where he was and served out a sentence. And when he got out, he went to visit his mom and her new partner Lisa back in Michigan.

Lisa told Vanity Fair writer Mark Seal about taking him out to dinner, quote, At the only restaurant we had here in Eaton Rapids, full of rednecks and their families, he comes in wearing a white fur coat and driving a white Cadillac. He had acrylic nails and all this gold around his neck and silk shirts. Man, I bet that was a record scratch moment, don't you? This dude walks in and it's like, everybody's just... But of course, that's what he wanted. I mean, he wanted to be looked at.

He was all about spectacle. It was part of his MO. And we haven't even talked about the haircut yet. Oh, my God. Yeah, it really has to be seen to be believed. It's sort of like a cross between freaking Sir Galahad or something and like 90s era, Emo Phillips.

It's like a bowl cut, but also kind of a mullet, a bullet? It's a bullet. You know, never trust a man with bangs. I've said it a million times, and it has never failed me yet. They're straight across bangs, too. Like, there's something. hostile about them. It feels like a hate crime, but I'm

not sure against who. Against everyone, Katie, just against all things good in the world. And that haircut is a choice. Don't get mad at us for making fun of it. He chose that haircut year after year. Yeah.

We, that's not something, like, that's something you can change. You can change a haircut, right? We're not, we're not being rude. The other thing Lisa remembered from that visit was that they went to see the movie Catch Me If You Can where Leo DiCaprio plays the legendary con man Frank Abingnail.

Abingnail's thing was impersonation. He conned people into thinking he was an airline pilot, a doctor, all kinds of stuff. You know, the infamous scene, I concur. Do you concur? But Gignac thought he was an amateur. He was like,

eh, I can do better than that. And he might have been right, swanking around his Prince Khalid. Gignat got traded like an A-list celebrity at restaurants, boutiques, salons, hotels. Everybody was always super impressed up until he skipped out on the bill. Yeah. So this brings us up to 2002 and Gignac's visit to the Neiman Marcus in Troy, Michigan. We talked about that at the start of the episode. He ended up serving a little less than two years.

in state prison for trying to use the real Prince Khalid's charge account without permission. But while he was inside, federal investigators dug up more dirt. Specifically, they had evidence that he'd been claiming to have diplomatic immunity, which is just super illegal for obvious reasons. Oh, yeah. Not only that, but while he was in prison, he tried another bank fraud scam. All this resulted in yet another plea and yet another prison sentence. All told, this time he stayed.

prison until 2015. Yeah, I think he got out early at one point in there somewhere, but ended up breaking the rules of his parole and went right back in. Shocking. I am shocked, Whitney. Shocked and disappointed. Okay, so finally in 2015, Anthony got out of prison again, and it seems like all that time behind bars got him thinking. So far, he'd been doing mostly small-time cons, or at least medium-sized time. He'd ended up netting a bunch of fancy jewelry from the shop or 10 to 20 grand in cash. That wasn't enough for our boy anymore. He was ready to go big or go home.

And by go home, we mean go to prison again. Prison was his home. Obviously, he couldn't like go get a real job or anything ridiculous like that, right? Ugh, this guy. So anyway, he was determined to take things up a notch. He headed back to Miami, home of some. of the priciest houses, fanciest hotels, and biggest bank accounts in the world. Prince Khalid bin Sultan al-Saoud was back, baby, and ready to take a whole bunch of people

for everything they had. And this time, he'd learned a little bit from his past mistakes, enough at least to realize that he needed a buffer between him and his marks. For one thing, a real Saudi prince probably wouldn't be super easy to get FaceTime with. And for another, spending too much time one-on-one with the victim gave him lots of opportunities to ask uncomfortable questions that he wouldn't know the answers to. Stuff like, which one of your father's wives is your mother? Somebody asked him that one time, and he had to think fast because he had no idea. He just ended up saying, ha, ha, the good one, and the person seemed to buy it, but it was a close call,

and he wanted as few of those as possible. So he reached out online for a partner in crime, and it didn't take him long to find one. Carl Martin Williamson, a polished, charming British expat living in North Carolina. He worked in asset management, and he had an impressive network of connections all over the world. Lots of bank managers and investment bankers and brokers and such folks like that. People who could open doors. Williamson was also an expert liar and bullshit artist, just like Anthony Gignac. It was a match made in heaven, or in hell.

Probably a better way to put it. Carl Marden Williamson's posh-sounding British accent alone could go a long way towards selling the idea that he was the personal financial whiz for a super wealthy Saudi prince and let me tell you, if there is one thing we Americans are suckers for campers it's a sexy British accent I can vouch for this

I knew I wanted to marry my husband the minute I heard his voice okay it's a panty peeler that's all I'm saying okay that was lewd I apologize it's true though it's true so Williamson and Gignac hooked up with dollar

signs in his eyes Williamson agreed to vouch for Prince Khalid, claiming he'd known him in the royal family for 20 years. He set up a quote-unquote investment company for Gignac, Martin Williamson International LLC. The company had a fancy logo and an even fancier New York address, but that's really all it was, a name, a logo, and an address, just window dressing to legitimize Prince Khalid. Williamson also helped Gignac get diplomatic plates for his cars, a rolls, and a Ferrari. They bought him on eBay. Isn't that lovely that you can just get fake diplomatic license place on eBay?

That's insane. And then it was time for Williamson to really step into his role. He traveled to London to meet with an investment banker he knew, a woman with impeccable credentials. He told her he was working for Prince Khalid bin Sultan al-Sahoud, and his royal highness was casting around for a project to invest in. He showed her official-looking bank statements and a family tree of the Saudi royals showing Prince,

Khalid's name. As the TV show American Greed pointed out, this was a crucial point for Gignac. If he couldn't hoodwink this investment banker, that was going to be pretty much it. She was the key to open all the doors he needed opened. And, bless her heart, she bought it. Not only did she agree to help the prince find investment opportunities, she also lent him $150,000 as a gesture of goodwill. I'm sure her face is read about it now, but, I mean, she's in good company.

Prince Khalid was about to scam. a hell of a lot of people out of a hell of a lot of cash. So you might be wondering, okay, if his goal was to steal money, why was he offering to invest in other people's businesses? Well, here's how the scam worked. He would lure somebody in with the promise of funding their project. And then, as they're waiting for the money to come through, spoiler alert, it ain't gonna, the prince takes him aside and says, hey, you know what, I like you. Now that we've got this business relationship, I want to let you in on a super-duper secret exclusive investment deal. If you invest with me, you're going to triple your money in no time. Now, if an average Joe offers to get you some astronomical return on

an investment, you're probably going to be a little bit dubious, but when a Saudi prince does it, different story. Yeah. One of the opportunities he dangled in front of his victims was the chance to get in on the ground floor with Saudi Aramco, the multi-trillion, trillion with a T, dollar oil company that was supposed to go public around this time. He claimed he was part owner of Aramco and offered to sell a percentage of his shared in the company. If it had been real, it could have made his investors filthy rich. Now, Camper's, we cannot stress enough how much Anthony Gignac did not resemble a Saudi prince. Not at all. Okay. Anthony, and Gignac resembles exactly what he is, which is a dude from Columbia. He looks nothing like the

Saudi royal family. So this raises a really interesting question, i.e., how the ever-loven flip did anybody fall for this shit? I mean, it's just absurd. But the thing is, people did fall for it, again and again and again, and again. And some of these people were very smart and well-educated and sophisticated and experienced. So why did his ludicrous schstick work so well? tell you. For one thing, Okay, please do. For one thing, Gignac made sure to lay the princely persona on with a trowel.

He took a condo on Fisher Island, one of the most outrageously expensive zip codes in America. He flashed an obscene amount of jewelry, about half of which later turned out to be fake, but the people gopping at his Instagram feed didn't notice that. He

drove around in his Ferrari and his Rolls Royce with his diplomatic tags. He threw tips around like candy. hundreds of dollars at a time. And everywhere he went, he brought his pride and joy, his little chihuahua, Foxy. Oh, Foxy, bless her little heart. It wasn't her fault, you know, that her daddy was a twat. I'm sure she's a good girl.

Foxy's definitely a good girl. Yeah. She went everywhere with the prince, and he lavished her with toys and treats and dog beds that looked like pink 57 Chevys and diamond collars. and Louis Vuitton leashes. For God's. If there's one thing Anthony Gickneck actually does seem to care about in this world

besides himself, it's foxy. And for the record, this just stuck in my craw, so I have to share it. Dogs are considered haram in Islam, which means that they're forbidden because they're considered unclean, so Homeboy was carting around a dog that no Saudi prince would actually own.

It's like he did research for his role. It makes me crazy because, like, I over-research things. I do too much research. And yet it worked. That's the crazy thing. It's still worked. In addition to the ostentatious displays of wealth, Gignac wore the clothing of a Saudi prince, the thob and the headdress. He hired bodyguards and tricked them out with DSS badges, which is diplomatic security service. And he acted like royalty, barking orders at the plebs and throwing temper tantrums anytime something wasn't to his liking. My father, the king, would be most upset.

My papa. Exactly. Like you said earlier, most con artists would probably try to fly under the radar a little bit, but not Anthony Gignac. His audacity was part of the con. People thought, surely, this has to be real. Who would act like this if it wasn't? Yeah, I mean, he was basically a con man hiding in plain sight.

There's this concept in psychology called social feedback. Basically, it's a fancy way of saying word of mouth. Once you manage to get your foot in the door of a place like Fisher Island, once you successfully con a few members of this exclusive community, it's a lot easier to con the rest. We talked about that a little bit a couple episodes ago with our Albrecht-Muth story. Right. In Muth's case, he was interested in social capital, power, and influence. So he name dropped a lot, found shortcuts to get to powerful people,

sucked up to the people he wanted to get in good with. In Gignac's case, it was all about the green, the money. So he took this incredibly luxe condo where he could bring potential investors and let them see how rich he was.

And he cultivated this Instagram feed that was just pure bananas. He'd post a video showing off gifts from the family and it'd be like a hundred thousand dollar watch sitting on a huge pile of cash. He'd show off Foxy and her Cartier caller, and he'd post pictures of his alleged royal relatives with captions like fam and uncle.

Again, just audacity. So as more and more people invested with him, his scam essentially became a Ponzi scheme. He'd used new investor money to pay off earlier investors, and the rest went into his pocket and Foxy's toy box. There was no shortage of people eager to invest with the prince. Before it was all over, he managed to bilk over two dozen victims out of $8 million. Finally, though, Gignac overplayed his hand. He got when that the OG Grand Miami Hotel, the Fontainebleau, was going up for sale, or at least a percentage of ownership was.

In its heyday, this hotel was the place to be for celebrities, royalty, everybody from Frank Sinatra to Grace Kelly to the Regens. It's also got a pretty interesting murder case in its history, actually. the Batman-obsessed son of the family who originally owned it ended up horrendously murdered by his gold diggin wife and I mean it is it's one of the gnarliest murders I've ever heard of it is seriously dark

and so wild story we're probably going to end up covering it someday I have a book on it that's just been sitting on my nightstand for months like just wait until I have time to get into it so anywho the current owners had just poured hundreds of millions of dollars into renovations and they needed a cash infusion basically The Gignac saw this as a golden opportunity, not to actually buy a share of the hotel because he didn't have the money for that and he didn't have any interest in doing it anyway, but it would give him a chance to pretend he had the capital to do it, thereby impressing the pants off the current owner who he hoped would be willing to invest with him. Now this was Jeffrey Soffer, a guy Vanity Fair refers to as the Prince of Miami, and it's not hard to see why. He's handsome, he's a billionaire, and he used to be married to Elle McPherson, the supermodel.

Like, God, stop it already, dude. This guy was everything Anthony Gignac dreamed of being. He was an irresistible mark, basically Gignac's Great White Whale. So he had his people call Soffers people, and he started working his bullshit magic, showing up with the whole entourage, Foxy included, and a fraudulent document, supposedly from the Bank of Dubai, showing an available balance of 600 million smackeroonies. Damn. But Jeffrey Soffer and his staff were not born yesterday.

They didn't quite know what to make of this flamboyant dude with his little dog and his temper tantrums and his gigantic diamond rings. They started to ask some uncomfortable questions of the prince's people. And when Gignac found out, he reacted in classic Gignac fashion. Instead of saying, never mind, I'll see myself out, bye, and scuttling under the nearest rock, he threw a hissy fit. sent word that Prince Khalid was very displeased at this lack of trust. The king was very displeased. They had insulted his honor, his family's honor, the honor of the great country of Saudi Arabia. Basically, he acted like this was going to turn into an international incident if Soffer and his people didn't make it right.

And as it had so many times before, the audacious approach worked. Oh, no, we're sorry, we're sorry, what can we do to make it up to His Highness? Good God. Lucky for them, though, the prince was willing to overlook this terrible breach of manners. It was the custom of his people, he said, that when you have wounded someone's honor, you buy them a little prezzi to say sorry. And the prezzi should cost at least 50 grand, by the way, so just go ahead and do that, and it'll all be water under the bridge.

And campers, they actually did it. Mm-hmm. they went out and bought this ridiculous little buffoon a $50,000 cardier bracelet so this non-existent deal wouldn't fall through. They also ended up giving him a hundred grand's worth of other gifts before it was all over too. I mean, obviously Gignac knew he wasn't going to be able to invest in this hotel, so he might as well milk Saffer for whatever he could get until it all fell through. so sovereign staff may have played nice and apologized for their lack of trust in his highness but the skepticism didn't really go away and then one afternoon at a lunch meeting gignac made little oopsie that validated every ounce of suspicion software had he ordered a huge plate of prosciutto and went to town on it as if he hadn't eaten in weeks prosciutto as in ham now why would a follower of Islam

a Saudi royal be scarfing down ham so that was it for software he hired a security firm to do a little digging into his royal weirdnesses background and lo and behold found out our Saudi prince is none other than conman Anthony Gignac who just got out of federal prison a few years ago for pulling this same kind of shit so of course the jig was up

for our boy, Anthony. Yeah. The security firm called the State Department, and the State Department realizes Gignac has been impersonating a diplomat again, and before long, they uncovered the financial fraud, too. When diplomatic security service agent Aizaz Tareen, who is a haughty pants, by the way, arrested him. Gignac put on a whole, unhend me, you peasant performance.

You cannot do this. I have diplomatic immunity. Yeah. Yeah, sure you do, bud. Always go down fighting, man. Once they got him back to police headquarters, though, he kind of deflated. He asked about Foxy so many times that Agent Terrine finally called over to the condo where agents were executing a search warrant and put Foxy on the phone. And this is the saddest thing I've ever heard.

When he heard her, he burst into tears. Oh, man, see, he loves Foxy. She's the one thing that this man loves besides money. I hope Foxy's gone to a good home. I worry about Foxy's. You know, I'm sure she's not going to miss her Tiffany callers. She just wants walkies and love. You know, I'm not going to lie.

I think I would cry too if I was being arrested and they put my dog on the phone. Oh my God, absolutely. I would sob. But mostly because my dog doesn't talk to me. He only barks at people outside the window. If only Anthony could have learned to be happy with one. walkies in love, too. But no.

We should make something clear, by the way. Gignac didn't just prey on the super wealthy. Some of his victims were, but not all. He stole from all kinds of people, from all economic backgrounds, including people who could most definitely not afford to lose that kind of money. Yeah, I mean, you can be tempted to think, well, shit, these people are multi-million or billionaires. Screw them.

They can spare a few bucks. I mean, I wouldn't say that, because if we're going to be stealing from rich people, I feel like we ought to be handing it out to people who really need it. Not just some asshole who wants to film himself rolling around in money like a dragon on a pile of gold. Yeah, you got to look for the Robin Hood. It's not the dick next. But even if you're tempted to feel a sort of schadenfreude about the idea of wealthy people falling for this ridiculous scam, remember, he preyed on middle class people too.

He didn't give a shit. All that mattered to him was himself, getting as rich as possible. yeah and the thing is he's obviously smart i mean he's obviously got balls on him he's got good qualities if he had just turned all that energy and intelligence to something positive god knows what he could have achieved yeah greed's a sickness man so anyway in 2019 gignac ended up pleading guilty to impersonating a diplomat aggravated identity theft conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

A sad p.S. to the story, by the way, Carl Martin Williamson, the British asset manager who helped Gignac run his last con, killed himself when he realized the feds were on to him. He left a note saying he couldn't stand to go to prison and didn't admit any guilt. He just said

he couldn't bear the thought of going to jail, which is really sad. He had a wife and family and I'm sure they miss him. It's just too bad he didn't make different choices. And it's too bad he ever had to meet Anthony Gignac. I have sympathy for the child that Anthony used to be, you know, trying to survive out there on the street in Columbia.

I'm sure that trauma is part of what drives him to do what he does, but, you know, we can't excuse it. The guy is a predator, pure and simple, and the fact that he's so good at what he does makes him really dangerous. I'm sure he's in prison right now, probably pretending to be somebody he's not, whether it's Prince Khalid or somebody new, I'm sure he'll get out someday, and I'm sure when he does, going to go right back to scamming. So I don't think we've seen the last of Anthony Gignac. Watch your back, y'all, and remember, if it seems too good to be true, it is.

So that was a wild one. Right, campers? You know we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the True Crime Campfire. And we want to send a shout out to a few of our newest patrons. Thank you so much to Maria, Lisa, Krista, Jill, Amy, and Jennifer. we appreciate y'all to the moon and back and if you're not yet a patron you're missing out patrons of our show get every episode

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