The Fake Saudi Prince
Once upon a time…
This is how every fairy tale starts: once upon a time, there was a Prince, 7 dwarfs, unicorn and happy ending.
And here is the story of a fake Prince who lived and still lives in our day; he pretended to be king for years, but was finally revealed and sentenced…
This is the tale of Anthony Gignac’s exposure as a fake Saudi Prince.
Who is Anthony Gignac, also known as ace “Prince Khalid”?
Anthony Enrique Gignac (José Moreno) was born in Colombia in 1970. Anthony and his younger brother, Daniel, were born in Colombia and orphaned at a young age.
Gignac’s rough childhood and his forced job as a carer for his brother have been considered contributing factors to his subsequent criminality.
In 1977, at the age of six, the United States adopted Gignac and his brother.
Criminal life
Gignac began impersonating royalty at the age of 12, convincing a salesman at a Mercedes dealership to let him test drive a car by claiming to be the son of a Saudi Prince.
Consider a twelve-year-old boy as an example. He didn’t stop at these con games, though.
Using the identity “Prince Adnan Khashoggi” at first and then “Prince Al Saud” later, Gignac has been detained eleven times since 1988 for scams in which he pretended to be a member of Saudi or Middle Eastern royalty.
The LA Times dubbed him the “Prince of Fraud” in 1991 after a scam that resulted in a two-year prison sentence and involved him falsely accruing large hotel and limousine bills while claiming that members of the Saudi royal family would pay them.
Throughout the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s, Gignac persisted in committing similar frauds, running up debts totalling tens of thousands of US dollars and forcing costly “gifts” out of victims under the pretence of making advantageous transactions in the future.
Under the guise of the real Prince Al Saud, he was able to persuade American Express to issue him a platinum card with a $200 million credit limit once, claiming that his old card had been lost and that refusing to give him a new one would infuriate his putative father, the King.
I wonder, along with you, how this is possible.
In 2003, authorities detained Gignac for allegedly attempting to charge $29,000 in department store fees to the account of the real Prince Al Saud. In 2006, the court found him guilty and sentenced him to 77 months in prison.
Gignac admitted during his interrogation that he had an illicit gay encounter with a real Saudi Prince and that the royal family had offered him a real line of credit as hush money.
In 2015, Gignac founded Marden Williamson International in collaboration with Carl Marden Williamson, a North Carolina business partner.
Gignac used the company to raise money for a number of fictitious foreign investment opportunities, including an alleged Saudi corporate private offering.
In 2017, Gignac contacted billionaire Jeffrey Soffer with the intention of purchasing a $440 million holding in the Fontainebleau Hotel.
At first, Soffer accepted Gignac’s deceit, giving him flights in his private jet and spending more than $50,000 on jewellery as gifts to gain the so-called Prince’s favour.
But after witnessing the alleged Muslim Prince order pork at a restaurant, Soffer started to have doubts about Gignac. He then hired a private security company to look into Gignac, which eventually revealed his true identity and resulted in his imprisonment.
The fact that the truth always finds a way to surface and cannot be suppressed—as we all know—meant that “Prince Khalid” could have known his mask would be blown.
A charade in Aspen
In the foyer of the St. Regis hotel in Aspen, “Prince Khalid” bin al-Saud was having a violent tantrum, screaming and cursing about a transgression against him: disrespect.
He cried out, “You have insulted my honor!” “My father, the king, is going to be furious!” You don’t conduct business with royalty in this manner!
This reminds me of a scene from a movie. Allow me to pause for a second.
The Prince, the son of the Saudi king, was accustomed to receiving respect.
A few days prior, he had arrived in Aspen on billionaire Jeffrey Soffer’s private plane, with the intention of selling him thirty percent of the renowned Fontainebleau hotel in Miami Beach for $440 million.
Now, with Foxy, his diamond-encrusted Chihuahua, by his side, the Prince was growling at Soffer’s emissaries and threatening to sue them for their arrogance.
There was an apparent reason for the outburst.
Soffer’s team was about to reveal the Prince’s secret—that he was not actually a member of the Saudi royal family.
He was not even a king.
He was a serial con artist, whose true name was Anthony Enrique Gignac. He was a Colombian orphan, adopted by a Michigan family, and had embarked on an extraordinary 30-year ruse.
Pork discovered him
Sofer and his family became suspicious of Gignac after seeing him purchase prosciutto at a restaurant, as pork is forbidden to Muslims.
Muslims do not consume pork.
The next major red light came when Gignac misled Soffer’s staff into believing he controlled the entire structure, including all 54 luxury units, in the exclusive 216-acre Miami enclave.
However, a Miami insider informed Gignac that Soffer’s team was interested in his Miami holdings.
Gignac must have realised he was in trouble. If they discover he rents one unit and does not own the complex, he lied.
The gift
Gignac, aware of the potential for exposure, intensified the deception. He threatened to withdraw from the agreed-upon investment, claiming that if they wanted to reset everything and keep him in the game, they needed to give him a gift.
Imagine how much courage, or, to use a harsher term, “the balls.” one would need to continue playing this game.
The Prince frequently clarified that lavish gifts were a token of respect and a component of the Middle Eastern negotiation process.
Soffer had already gifted him pricey artwork, a $5,000 dog collar set with diamonds, and other mementoes for Foxy.
His Highness now desired a more expensive item. “It must be $50,000 or more.”
Over lunch the following day, Soffer and his group gave the Prince a $50,000 Cartier bracelet.
Gignac answered with his gift in hand, sharpening his deceit even more.
The insider asserts, “He either receives a phone call or pretends to receive one.” Then, in an odd code, he says something like ‘Zulu Red Echo 33.’ He then informs the entire table, “That was the State Department, and they are checking on me.”
Because I wear a computer chip around my neck, they always know where I am.
His manager then adds, “I also have a chip in my neck.” Carl then asks, “See that guy right there?” pointing to an unidentified patron of the eatery. The Secret Service employs him.
Because of the peculiar nature of all the transactions, Soffer’s team began to believe that he was involved in a scam.
Consequently, they assembled a team under the leadership of former federal agent Page, who carried out an investigation and revealed that Gignac’s claimed diplomatic status was false.
Agent Page received the response, “No.!” in just two words when he contacted a buddy who is a member of the Saudi royal family to find out if Gignac was truly a Prince.
On Google, Page also looked up the diplomatic license plate on Gignac’s Ferrari. He claims to have received a pop-up advertisement encouraging him to purchase the exact licence plate on eBay for $79, which is indeed where Gignac had found it.
According to the findings of Page and his study team, Gignac “truly thought he was this persona that he made up.”
- The initial step in the scam was to associate with influential individuals.
- That made it easier for the scam to swindle investors out of their money in the second part.
To assert his closeness to the Soffer family, he made an effort to establish a rapport with them. When he meets with potential investors, it gives him legitimacy.
Rotten teeth and hair
They initiated an inquiry after composing a comprehensive report and delivering it to the FBI and the prosecutor.
After presenting the case to two operatives, they immediately recognized the scraggly-toothed Prince with the bowl haircut as a fake.
“What really gave him away were his teeth,” he says, “because Saudi Arabians and other Middle Eastern royalty take good care of their teeth.”
In this instance, it is quite odd and astounding how one individual was able to trick people for such a long time.
Not only did common people entrust him with their life resources for fictitious investments, but multimillionaires and accomplished businessmen, who are accustomed to undertaking substantial tasks and possess teams to manage all their investments, also trusted him.
Agents found that Gignac was travelling on someone else’s passport in addition to pretending to be a diplomat—a charge for which he had been arrested in Michigan in 2003.
They began following him on his circuitous journey from Dubai to Hong Kong to London, and when he arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport with a substantial sum of cash in his possession last year, they took him into custody.
Gignac was remarkable to those who investigated and prosecuted him for his ability to fully assume the Princely role. Jordan remarks, “The guy is a master with people.”” He fulfills the role, whatever it may be at that particular time.
Approximately half of the pricey jewellery Gignac was flaunting on Instagram turned out to be phoney, the agents found. In order to maintain appearances, he frequently purchased the cheapest Rolexes available and had a jeweller sell them cheap diamonds.
Under various guises, he rented or borrowed expensive automobiles and yachts, which he eventually said he was “tired” of when they vanished.
One component of Gignac’s con even pleased the Diplomatic Security Service agents.
A child, who appeared to be around nine or ten years old, approached one of them while they were carrying out the search warrant on his Fisher Island condo. He questioned, “Are you a D.S.S. agent?”
The agent was surprised; most individuals had never heard of the D.S.S. “How did you know that?” he insisted.
“Oh,” the boy replied. “The prince living up there has D.S.S. agents.”
The prince had given his personal bodyguards phoney Diplomatic Security Service credentials to pin on their lapels. “We looked at Gignac’s counterfeit badges,” a source told me, “And they looked better than the real thing.”
Epilogue
Anthony Enrique Gignac is a convicted fraudster and scam artist. Over a 30-year career, Gignac employed affluent, high-ranking personas, most notably Saudi Prince Khalid bin Al Saud, to fraudulently gain funding in a succession of schemes, presenting them as supported by a huge personal fortune.
After defrauding investors of $8.1 million, Gignac was arrested in 2017 after billionaire Jeffery Soffer, the owner of the Fontainebleau Hotel (in which Gignac had falsely claimed to be investing), became suspicious of the alleged Muslim Prince ordering pork at a restaurant.
He was imprisoned for more than 18 years in 2019.
How easy it is to deceive people; how readily we take things for granted and fail to think or ask questions; how easily we believe what we see on social media…
How naive are we?
This post was written by Mario Bekes