In the summer of 2017, the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach — one of the most iconic luxury destinations in America — nearly welcomed a new investor. Claiming to be Prince Khalid bin Al Saud, a high-ranking member of the Saudi royal family, a man expressed interest in acquiring a $440 million stake in the resort. He arrived in style, trailed by a security entourage, stepping out of a Ferrari California with diplomatic plates and wearing diamond-encrusted jewellery. The man, who mingled with the global elite and showed off his Louis Vuitton dog carrier on Instagram, seemed to embody wealth and privilege.
But the man was no prince. His name was Anthony Enrique Gignac — born José Moreno in Colombia — and he had spent three decades weaving a web of high-stakes fraud by pretending to be Middle Eastern royalty. His arrest in 2017 marked the climax of a life lived as a lie, one that had deceived businessmen, luxury retailers, and even multinational corporations out of millions.
A Manufactured Royal Identity
Anthony Gignac’s early life began far from opulence. Born in Colombia in 1970 and orphaned at a young age, he was adopted, along with his younger brother, by a middle-class couple in Michigan. From childhood, Gignac displayed an unusual obsession with wealth and prestige, and by the age of 12, he was already pretending to be royalty — once convincing a car salesman to let him test drive a Mercedes by claiming to be the son of a Saudi prince.
This roleplay would become the defining act of his adult life. Over the years, he adopted the name “Prince Adnan Khashoggi,” borrowing the identity of a real Saudi arms dealer, and later, “Prince Khalid bin Al Saud.” In reality, he was simply a skilled con artist with a long criminal record and a flair for performance.
The Many Cons of a “Prince”
Gignac’s frauds began as small-scale hotel and shopping scams. In 1991, he stayed at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel, where he racked up over $10,000 in room service and limousine bills, promising staff that his royal family would foot the bill. When the bills went unpaid, he was arrested — earning him the nickname “The Prince of Fraud” in the Los Angeles Times. The deception was convincing enough that hotel staff addressed him as “Your Highness”.
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Gignac continued his royal masquerade. He ran up tens of thousands of dollars in fraudulent purchases from luxury retailers, used forged documents to secure high-limit credit cards, and even tricked American Express into issuing him a Platinum card with a $200 million credit limit. In 2003, he charged $29,000 to a Neiman Marcus account belonging to an actual Saudi prince — how he obtained the account number remains unclear.
Perhaps the most audacious of his early claims was during his 2006 conviction when he told investigators he had engaged in an affair with a member of the real Saudi royal family, who were now paying him off to remain quiet. Authorities found no evidence to support the story, but the boldness of the claim was vintage Gignac.
The Fontainebleau Fraud
By 2015, Gignac had graduated to more sophisticated operations. Partnering with Carl Marden Williamson, a British asset manager, he established Marden Williamson International — a fictitious investment firm that offered lucrative stakes in fake businesses, including a jet fuel trading platform and a casino in Malta. The duo managed to dupe investors out of millions.
In 2017, Gignac saw his biggest opportunity yet: the purchase of a massive stake in the Fontainebleau Hotel, a deal worth over $400 million. This time, he wasn’t scamming shopkeepers or hotel clerks. He was courting billionaire developer Jeffrey Soffer, who offered him flights on his private jet and showered him with expensive gifts.
But Soffer became wary. While dining with Gignac, he noticed the supposed devout Muslim prince ordering pork, an inconsistency too significant to overlook. Concerned, he hired a private security firm to look into Gignac’s background. The investigation quickly unearthed the truth. With help from the FBI and the Diplomatic Security Service, Gignac was arrested.
Among the assets seized were luxury cars, $80,000 in cash, $450,000 worth of jewellery, an autographed Muhammad Ali photo, and his most cherished companion, a chihuahua named Foxy, frequently featured on his Instagram account @princedubai_07.
The Sentencing and Legacy
In March 2019, Anthony Gignac pleaded guilty to impersonating a foreign diplomat, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He was sentenced to 18.5 years in federal prison. The Department of Justice stated that he had defrauded victims of at least $8.1 million — money used not for investments, but for sustaining the illusion of royalty.
“The entire blame of this entire operation is on me, and I accept that,” Gignac said at sentencing. “I am not a monster.” Perhaps not a monster, but certainly a master of deception.
His crimes were so outlandish, they became the subject of a CNBC American Greed episode titled The Fake Prince’s Royal Scam, which aired in January 2020. The show chronicled how his carefully crafted illusion ensnared victims, some of whom remained unaware for months — or even years — that they had been conned.
A Career Built on Audacity
What makes Gignac’s story so compelling is not simply the scale of his fraud, but the sheer bravado with which he carried it out. He didn’t hide in the shadows; he flaunted his lies on social media, yelled down sceptics, and lived among the rich and famous, utterly convinced of his role. His ability to mimic wealth — the look, the sound, the paperwork — was both a performance and a psychological manipulation.
Gignac’s tale is a cautionary one, not just about trust or due diligence, but about the intoxicating nature of wealth and the power of appearances. In an era where luxury and status are flaunted online, his fraud reminds us how easily illusion can be mistaken for reality — especially when it is clothed in gold and crowned with a title.
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