Anthony Gignac, a fake Saudi prince operating under the alias "Prince Khalid," conned investors out of nearly 8 million dollars.
A man who lived his entire life as a con artist was finally caught attempting to con one of the most powerful real estate tycoons in Miami.
- Anthony Gignac is a characteryou could not inventin the wildest fiction.- Starts off life as an orphan in Colombiaand sort of shot forthe stars, so to speak.Are con artists born,are con artists made?I think it is really a combination.- In his mind I believe thathe thought he was a Saudi Prince.[dynamic music]- Rich and powerful people will commonlyaccept another person theyperceive as rich and powerfulwithout asking too many questions.- If we're talking aboutputting all of theseextremely wealthy 1% peoplein a fish pond, for example,the Saudi royal family would bethe biggest fish in the pond.- The Saudi royal family is huge,has hundreds of princes.Nobody knows who they are,but it's commonly assumed thatthey're all fabulously rich.- The Saudi royal familykeeps its own accountingof its own household, so theyknow who's in and who's out,but this is never shared with the public.So it would be virtuallyimpossible for somebodyoutside of the royal family,or outside of the kingdom,to even check to see if someoneis a member of the royal family.- [Nev] Jose EnriqueMoreno was born in Bogota,the capital city of Columbia, in 1970.At the time a brutal drug warwas tearing the countryapart at the seams.And some 13,000 childrenwere born into this chaoswithout homes, and oftenwithout names or families.Jose spent much of his childhoodforaging for food or stealing.- He was one of the thousands of kidswho lived on the street.And had a really, really tough,brutal existence in the beginning.- [Nev] In 1977, Jose andhis brother were adoptedby Jim Gignac and Nancy Fitzgerald,a middle-class couplefrom Plymouth, Michigan.- When this couple fromAmerica adopted him,it was like a rescue, like a lifeboat,it was just an incredible thingthat happened to this young man.- [Nev] But for Jose,whose name was now Anthony Gignac,the survival instinct wouldalways be a part of him.- Anthony Gignac is anexample of a con artistwho came from anabsolutely awful background- [Nev] At school he would lie frequentlyabout his adoptive parents wealth.He told classmates that his motherowned the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island.In second grade, he bragged thathis father was actor Dom DeLuise.In sixth grade, he convinceda local car dealershipthat he was a Saudi prince.The salesman at the dealershiphappily picked him up atthe local shopping malland gave him a test ride.- And from then on it justkept getting bigger and bigger,escalating more and more.And it soon took him far from Michigan.- Are con artists born,are con artists made?He was already an outsider.And as an outsider you tendto observe people around you,you try to figure out their behavior,what they're interested in.It gives you an interesting vantage point.- [Nev] Anthony's mentalstate rapidly declinedwhen his adoptive parents divorced.Anthony's brother was sentto live with their father.And Anthony spent time attwo psychiatric hospitals,suffering mental breakdowns.He ran away from his halfway home at 17and ended up back on the streets.- I don't think anyone can pinpointthe exact point when aman turns to fantasy.But at some point this happened to him.When he emerged fromwhatever he was going throughhe was no longer AnthonyGignac, an orphan from Columbia.In his mind I believe that hethought he was a Saudi Prince.And that belief enabled himto just go into the worldand create havoc in a way.- On December 30th, 1993,a wealthy 23 year oldnamed Khalid Bin Al-Saudinvited two men up to hispenthouse at the Grand Bay Hotel,complete with a view fit for a prince.A member of the House of Saud,Saudi Arabia's massive royal family,Khalid lived a life ofunimaginable luxury and opulence.He went on five figure shopping sprees,stayed at luxury hotels,dressed himself in designer brands.And his Chihuahua evenwore diamond collarsand traveled in a LouisVuitton dog carrier.That night, as the door closed,the two men beat Khalid, robbed him,and left him bloodied in his room.The hotel called the police,who then called the Saudi embassyto inform them that oneof their ruling elitehad been assaulted.But the Saudi embassy was puzzled.They didn't know who Khalid was.The House of Saud has some 15,000 members,but none of them were this23 year old Miami playboy.Whoever this man was, hewas not a Saudi prince.Before the police couldfigure out their next movethe man had disappeared.- If his goal was tolive an opulent lifestylehe couldn't have picked a betterroyal family to impersonate.- [Nev] Things began relatively small.He stiffed the Regent BeverlyWilshire Hotel in Californiafor nearly 4,000 in room and food charges.He took limousines to Malibu,racking up thousands of dollars in bills.And persuaded Rodeo Drive shopkeepersinto giving him Louis Vuitton luggage,all because he was able toconvince people he was royalty.- He knew what to wear.First of all, the wristwatch.He had dozens of wristwatchesthat he showed off for the camera.The second thing is the jewelry.He always had massive amounts of jewelrydraped around his neck.Then the cars, Ferrari's,Lamborghini's, Rolls-Royce's.Bodyguards following him,an entourage at all times.And finally, least but not least,my favorite part of hisentourage, his Chihuahua, Foxy,who he draped in diamondsand dressed in Burberry dog clothes.So you look at the wholepackage and you think,this guy's a Saudi prince.- He really sort of chosethis amazingly perfect role,being a Saudi prince, andhe played it to perfection.There's one instancewhere it's pretty clearhe's going to be exposed, andhe throws this complete fit,and then demands that the people,the only way that they can make up to himis to give him a gift worth $50,000.So, I mean, that showsincredible audacity,but it's very cleverbecause that is what peoplewould think a spoiled,rich Saudi prince would do.- The Saudi royal family was reallyalmost the perfect con for him.He kept going back to it,over, and over, and over,because it worked.- Over a period of three decadeshe was arrested 11 times forprince relating activities.Each time his consbecame more extravagant,from cheating high-end hotelsout of tens of thousands of dollars,to collecting investmentsfor made up oil companies,to racking up shopping billsover $50,000 at a time.Over and over again he wascaught, pleaded guilty,sentenced to probation, anddisappeared, once again,to start a new con somewhere else.- You'd be amazed at howsuccessful con artists can beif they keep up this persona.In a country as big as the United Statesit's pretty easy to pick up and move,people don't know who youare, and pull the same con.- [Nev] Eventually hewas charged with fraudand grand theft, and sentencedto 616 days in prison.He started contactinglawyers from his jail cell,and convinced them thathe was a Saudi prince,and that should they representhim, the king of Saudi Arabiawould personally pay their services.Oscar Rodriguez, a Miamiattorney, bought it,and got two bail bondsmanto post a $46,000 bondto release the young prince from prison.So Gignac got two men to drive himto a local American Express office,and miraculously got hishands on a credit cardwith a $200 million limit.- With the Saudi familythere's kind of an expectationthat they can get away with things.And I wouldn't be surprisedif American Expresshad experienced this kind of thing before.- It wasn't long beforethe American Expressfraud department caughton to what was happening.They phoned Gignac's bail bondsmanand informed them that he wasnot in fact a Saudi prince,and was currently committingcredit card fraud.He was thrown in jailand sentenced to 46 months for wire fraud,which turned into 83 monthsafter he attempted to escapeby lighting his jail cell on fire.He was released in the early 2000sand returned to hismother's home in Michigan,where he arrived in a whitefur coat, driving a Cadillac.Things slowed down for Gignac in Michigan,and he served out the terms of his parole.But he was far from done.- Gignac came to Miamiand rented a condominium on Fisher Island.If you're living on FisherIsland you must be somebody'cause it's not easy tolive on Fisher Island,and not cheap.And in the garage he had his Ferrari's,and Lamborghini's, and Rolls-Royce's.And one of the peoplethat was working with himcontacted somebody who wasworking with Jeffrey Soffer,and said, Prince Al-Saud would like to buya portion of the Fontainebleau Hotel.And that's how it all started.- [Nev] He duped Jeffrey Soffer,one of the most powerfulreal estate tycoons in Miami,by saying that he wantedto buy a sizable percentageof the Fontainebleau, aluxury hotel owned by Soffer.- Even in the world ofthese very high rolling CEOswho are in charge of these mega companies,who you would thinkwould not necessarily be seduced by this.But there is this perception of the crownand of royalty of havingthis magnetic pull.And you could see it playing outin every con that Anthony Gignac played.- [Nev] The game was tokeep Soffer on the hook,Gignac promising a large investmentwhile Soffer gave him expensive gifts,for as long as he could.- His lie started toget really out of hand.He claimed that he had diplomatic status.This was a foolish thing to lie about.- The jig was up though, when Gignac,out to dinner with Soffer and his family,made the fatal mistake of orderingprosciutto for his appetizer.What kind of Muslim eatspork, thought Soffer.Who then enlisted hissecurity team to investigate.- A team that was lookinginto his backgroundsimply contacted a Saudiassociate and said,look, is this guy a diplomat?And apparently they sent hima two word response that said, no!- [Nev] Again Gignacfled, this time to Paris,Hong Kong, and London.When he arrived back in Americafederal agents arrested him.- He was incarceratedin New York for a timeand then flown to Miami to face trial.That's where I came into the story.I went to the hearing in Miamijust to see who this man was'cause I couldn't believe heexisted, to tell you the truth.And I wanted to see who hewas and what he looked like.He stood up in court, hetold his story, he testified.He was always eager toget up and speak in court.And watching him incourt that day in Miami,I just thought, wow.He was just so insistentthat he was innocentand that he should be freed.And he was just, it was justlike a grand performance.- [Nev] In May of 2019, Gignac was foundto have defrauded investorsto the tune of $8 million,and was convicted in a Miami court.- He was repeatedly arrested, imprisoned,photographed, fingerprinted,but every time he seemedto be able to get out.And now he's serving 18 yearsin a federal penitentiary.I'm wondering when we'regonna see him again.