Original subtitles

In this episode of American Greed.

On an exclusive island, word spreads about a new arrival.

Oh, there's like your highness or his highness.

A Saudi prince has blessed Miami with his presence.

He talked the part, he dressed the part, he drove the part.

With a massive oil IPO looming.

His Highness brings in more than $8 million by promising investors a share

his unfathomable wealth. The idea that there was a Saudi prince in Miami, it

whet the appetite of very many people.

But despite the bling he shows off on Instagram... You know what it is?

You know what it is?

It turns out that this Saudi prince is just a... King of cons.

He looked like an overweight Hispanic guy from South America.

It just looked preposterous.

Preposterous. So who is this royal scammer?

And how does he pull off his princely scheme?

There could be any number of reasons why people find him to be credible. But

they do.

And they do it again and again. It's really quite a job.

Just off the causeway connecting downtown Miami to Miami Beach, there's a

driveway few have ever seen.

Here, cars board a ferry that crosses a narrow channel to an ultra -exclusive

enclave called Fisher Island.

Forget 90210.

Fisher Island has an average salary of $669 ,000 a year.

Making 33109 America's richest zip code.

You've got Tom Cruise, Oprah Winfrey, you name it, they've got residents

And you have to take a ferry to get there. And they leave on the half hour,

there's a sense of exclusivity.

In March 2017, a man in his late 40s takes the keys to his new penthouse home

the island.

When he does, he signs the papers as Khalid bin Sultan Al Saud.

He shares a last name with members of Saudi Arabia's ruling family.

And to those who catch a glimpse, he looks the part.

He's got the, you know...

Rolexes, he's got the elaborate jewelry, the Cartier bracelet.

He had all the high -end luxury vehicles, Bentleys, Ferraris, Rolls

When he hits the streets, the prince is accompanied by a bodyguard with a badge

that reads Diplomatic Security Service.

And his cars are adorned with diplomatic plates.

Among those the prince meets in Miami is Hall of Fame sportscaster Leslie

Bisser. He would dress in the flowing linen, always looked like the latest. He

wore the latest Gucci fur slippers, which I had to go home and Google. I

I'd never seen anything like that.

And, of course, he had that ridiculous necklace for Foxy, which was diamond

-encrusted like, you know, Elizabeth Taylor used to wear.

Though Visser has spent her life around the good and the great, the prince

impresses her with various stories about his royal upbringing and deep pockets.

I remember once my husband Bob asked him which one of the king's wives was his

mother, and he said, oh, the good one.

And he just didn't doubt him. You know, he talked the part, he dressed the part,

he drove the part.

So we said, wow, that's really interesting.

Soon, Fisher Island's residents are whispering about the enclave's newest

arrival.

Oh, there's like your highness or his highness.

People from Fisher Island didn't know how to respond, you know, and so he'd

one of... People in this group are like, well, you know, you can just bow a

little bit. And, you know, he is a prince after all. And people are like,

I guess I will do that.

The prince isn't just making his presence known to his neighbors.

His Instagram is an ostentatious catalog of his royal wealth.

You know what it is? We shut the pools down so that a boss can slam in private.

Yeah, you know what it is?

Presidential suite.

Tell him, Toxie, what a new bathroom looks like.

$300 ,000 bathroom.

For anyone considering doing business with him, it's ready proof that he's a

who knows how to make big money.

Like at first glance, if you were looking at it, you would just think, oh,

is another one of these just, I call them peacocks, you know, who's just

off his life on Instagram.

You know, the beautiful life, you know, the sweet life.

But the great thing about the Instagram account is he loves his dog. And he has

this dog named Foxy.

And he treats Foxy like a queen.

Show them your new bed, Foxy.

57 Cadillac. Nice display.

Says spoiled.

But Foxy isn't the only royal pictured here.

There are also photos of Saudi Arabia's ruling family with captions like fam and

uncle. If this man, Prince Al -Waleed bin Talal, truly is the prince's uncle,

he's not a bad relative to have.

According to a 2001 CNBC report, Al -Waleed has an Airbus A340,

a Boeing 767,

and a 283 -foot yacht once owned by Donald Trump.

Then there's his house.

Quaint it isn't. Its 317 rooms include 18 sitting rooms, 15

dining rooms, 10 bedrooms, 16 pantries, and one dozen elevators. The

garage is big, too. It has to be to accommodate the prince's hundreds of

There's the obligatory rolls.

And, of course, the Batmobile.

With a combined wealth in the trillions, there are two things most Americans

know about the Saudi royal family.

One, they're rich beyond imagination.

And two, their money comes from oil.

For decades, the kingdom's wealth has been intertwined with the Saudi Arabian

Oil Company, or Aramco.

We have no official evaluation of what the company's worth because it's

privately held, but it's estimated to be in the trillions.

We've talked about their IPO. In 2016, word begins to spread that Aramco is

going public.

Plus, we'll bring you an update on the timing for the world's largest ever IPO,

Saudi Aramco, a giant.

They knew comments out this morning from the Saudi crown prince. He says the

Aramco IPO will still take place next year. And the valuation of the company

could top $2 trillion.

It was definitely all over the news. And people were trying to get in on the

preferred stock. People were trying to angle to get as much stock as they

Following the announcement, the new arrival on Fisher Island begins offering

investors a way to share in the wealth.

He's claiming that he owns a percentage of Saudi Aramco.

And he tells people, I'm going to sell you a percentage of my ownership in

Aramco. And then when it goes public, you're going to make five times

the amount of your money.

With such a potential upside, there are plenty of people willing to hear out

Miami's Saudi prince.

There's no shortage of U .S., British, foreign investors and business folks

want to do business with the royal family.

Who doesn't want to at least hear what a person has to say that has all these

things at their disposal and is selling a good deal to me.

Next on American Greed.

The prince's multimillion -dollar scheme starts not in a Saudi oil field, but in

small -town Michigan.

He claimed that Dom DeLuise was his father.

And so the lies just got bigger and bigger and bigger as he grew up.

Whether it's on the hot streets of Miami or somewhere else altogether,

it's hard to forget a first encounter with the man who calls himself Prince

Khalid bin Al Saud.

I met him when I was sitting in a bar there in Eaton Rapids.

Eaton Rapids is a very small town, and it's rural country.

Here he walks in wearing a very long...

white fur coat and he has a haircut that's kind of like a bowl over his head

and he's got a lot of bling on and he's got long acrylic nails and he's

quite flamboyant and everybody in that place just stopped and looked like oh my

god what do we have here and what they have is not a saudi prince

It's a Colombian orphan named Anthony Gignac.

Lisa Whitehead was once partners with Gignac's adoptive mother, a Michigan

who's now deceased, named Nancy.

In 1977, Nancy and her then -husband adopted Anthony and his brother from

Bogota, Colombia.

They brought them to live in a nice middle -class home in Plymouth Township,

Michigan.

Gignac will later say his pre -adoption days in Bogota were filled with

hardship. And Whitehead says Nancy tells stories about Anthony and his brother

that backed this up.

I remember her saying that they would eat and they would stuff food in their

mouth, like a chipmunk, and because they...

had gotten used to not knowing when they were going to get their next food.

So they could see things like that that were kind of reminders that they had had

it pretty rough up until that point.

Having come from nothing, Gignac begins at an early age to claim he's really

quite something.

In first grade, he tells a teacher his family owns the fabulous Grand Mackinac

Hotel in northern Michigan.

The next year, he claims to be the son of actor Dom DeLuise.

A mental health professional, Whitehead says Gignac was obsessed with wealth.

I think that he's a perfect example of what happens when you have early

childhood trauma.

He could figure out from his early life in Colombia that if you have...

Money, you have power, and if you have money and power, then you have safety

respect. And I think that he will do what he needs to do in order to get it.

In the 1970s and 80s, few people in the world better represented the nexus of

wealth and power than a businessman named Adnan Khashoggi.

While Khashoggi got his start in California, the real basis for his

in Saudi Arabia.

Serving as the president of the Triad Holding Company, Khashoggi became a mega

-rich Saudi arms dealer and a deal -maker.

Khashoggi, who has no diplomatic status, does not have to go through customs.

His wealth is his free pass.

Officials of the Sudan were waiting to meet him, as someone is waiting to meet

him everywhere he goes.

After all, Triad means a whole lot of money, and people with a whole lot of

money get a whole lot of respect.

Khashoggi is a real -life walking, talking episode of Lifestyles of the

Famous.

And in Michigan, a boy who once lived on the streets of Columbia seems to take

notice.

In early 1988, police receive a report that Gignac has been cruising around

Detroit in a limo, living it up on a stolen credit card belonging to his

friend's father.

At the same time, Ann Arbor police also learned Gignac's been pretending to be

someone he's not, a Saudi prince with a familiar name.

He used the name Adnan Khashoggi, so it was obvious he was reading and paying

attention to what was going on and thought he could live that lifestyle.

why he chose the name, is what he said.

According to police reports, Gignac scams a stay at a University of Michigan

fraternity house, claiming to be Prince Khashoggi.

Sole heir to the Saudi throne.

People liked this idea. They wanted to entertain the Saudi prince. It was

something that they felt like they could get something out of it.

The scheme worked, at first.

But soon, records say, Western Union calls a fraternity member asking if he

authorized a charge of $125 to someone named Anthony Gignac.

He says he did not.

Then, reports say, the prince begins enjoying himself a little too much, and

questions arise.

He was a Saudi and a devout Arab Muslim.

Why was he drinking? Why was he partying like this?

And they weren't, maybe as he's letting loose, but then again, is he really? So

that kind of made him even more suspicious.

Eventually, Gignac is arrested, and Judge Kirk Tabby, then a prosecutor,

to the budding criminal and notices a glint in his eye.

He was very fascinated that he was able to do this so easily.

It was as if he had found a way to survive or a way to live that was so

to him, and he knew that he could get things.

and flash it and show people, I can be wealthy, I'm good at this.

He thought flaunting money and showing all of that was the way to go for him.

And he's not about to stop.

He kind of devoted his whole life, since his teen years, to just pretending to

be somebody else.

Why? Your guess is as good as mine. Why does anybody pretend to be somebody

other than who they are?

I guess to run away from who they are.

After being released on bond in his Ann Arbor case, Gignac flees to California.

There, he begins running a series of royal scams that will come to define his

life.

Over the years, he poses as a variety of Saudi princes to get what he wants, but

settles on the name Prince Khalid bin al -Saud, using it in a series of

escalating frauds.

Really, his MO was to go into these hotels, these fine hotels.

He would tell them he was a prince.

He would run up astronomical charge, staying in the best rooms that they had.

He's ordering limos.

He's shopping at the finest places around.

But whatever credit card he gave them was either tapped out already on its

credit limit or it was a fraudulent credit card.

And then eventually...

The cops are called.

That really was his game for a good 20 years.

Dubbed the Prince of Fraud by the L .A. Times, Gignac develops a loud

confrontational style that seems to work.

Nobody would really believe that if you were faking this, you would come in and

draw that much attention to yourself and scream and yell.

He was very audacious.

He was very bold and he was very aggressive. Because it's so bold and

what you normally would expect a con man to do, it's probably why it worked.

Gignac's con is good enough to overcome some pretty obvious shortcomings.

He looked like an overweight Hispanic guy from South America or Latin America.

It just looked preposterous.

Preposterous, because nobody looks like this in the Saudi kingdom.

I mean, was he swarthy? Was he darker skin?

Yes. But did he have that appearance, you know, of being from Saudi Arabia?

Absolutely not.

So why then do so many people fall for Gignac's princely con?

Perhaps there's an incentive to believe him if someone believes they're going to

get something out of it.

Or a fascination with royalty. There could be any number of reasons why

people... find him to be credible, but they do.

And they do it again and again. It's really quite astounding.

Next on American Greed, an exclusive tape shows Anthony Gignac spending a

-million dollar lie.

When I get out, you know, I'm going to buy another Ferrari.

Yeah, you are.

And you're going to go into another Neiman Marcus. No.

Yes, you are.

You might go to the back.

In December 2002, Anthony Gignac is fresh out of jail from a princely scheme

Florida when he decides to go shopping.

Once again posing as Prince Khalid bin Al Saud, he takes a trip to a mall

outside Troy, Michigan.

Here, he visits a Saks Fifth Avenue and a Neiman Marcus where he is caught on a

store security camera.

Gignac will later admit he charges more than $13 ,000 to an account at Neiman

Marcus belonging to a real Saudi prince named Khalid.

That was something I was never able to figure out, how he was able to acquire

the number, whether it was force of personality. The reports in our case

indicated that he had a passport of some sort identifying himself as Khalid bin

Al Thad. I never saw the passport. It was never recovered by the police.

So it was a little bit mystifying for me how he was able to do it.

Eventually, Neiman Marcus' employees become suspicious and decide to call

corporate headquarters.

The chief fraud investigator basically said, you know, that's Anthony Gignac.

knew immediately that it was Gignac and what the scam was. And he was on a

minute call to police, get this guy arrested. He's Anthony Gignac. It's not

prince.

On January 3rd, 2003, Gignac returns to the mall and is fitted for handcuffs.

A few months later, he sits in an interrogation room across from Jerry

then a prosecutor in Oakland County, Michigan.

In this exclusive video, the so -called prince claims that this is no scam.

He says he actually knows the Saudis.

And what he's done, he's done with their approval.

Gignac boldly says the relationship began after he had a homosexual

with the real Saudi prince.

He claims the family has been supporting him ever since to buy his silence.

They found out that I was having a homosexual affair with them, they cut

heads off. Yeah, well.

Or storm or throw them off a building.

No, it depends on if there's some... No, the Sharia says...

Means

if you see me in the practice of homosexuality, throw them from the

building or the highest wall or have a wall fall upon them.

Gignac claims the Saudis created a hush money trust fund worth millions for him

and says there are other perks too, including the ability to run up charges

certain luxury store.

Why

did he

have to tell you you can do this if you have this trust fund with all this

money?

Gignac has official -looking legal documents attesting to the existence of

trust fund. But federal prosecutors will later say he uses papers like these to

further his fraud.

And Gleason isn't buying the former orphan's story.

I've also dealt with the princes and the royal family's lawyers in Washington.

I know that there is no trust fund. I know that there's been no negotiations.

During their chat, Gleason and Gignac begin to discuss next steps and what a

trial might look like.

Realistically, you're going to try and portray me that I'm a huge con man and

that you want to use all my criminal history.

But you are a huge con man.

You are a huge con man. You are a huge con man. You're doing well, okay?

I know it's a Gleason, but let me say, I want a deal.

He gets one.

In May 2004, Gignac pleads guilty to six counts of using the real Prince's

Neiman Marcus account without his permission.

A judge sentences him to spend between 34 months and 15 years in state prison.

But his troubles are just beginning.

Back when he was first arrested in Troy, court records say Gignac made some very

bold statements about his status as a prince living in America.

He claimed that he had diplomatic immunity and he was immune from

As a result of that claim, the Troy Police Department contacted federal

authorities and the State Department sent this agent to go and investigate.

According to a memo provided to American Greed, A State Department Diplomatic

Security Service agent interviews Gignac and hears the same story about his

alleged royal love affair and so -called trust fund.

When the feds begin an investigation, an assistant to the Saudi ambassador tells

them that Gignac was not a member of the royal family nor associated in any way

with the Saudi royal family.

I believe that what turned out to be true is that his name was Anthony

After serving 20 months on the state charges from the Troy incident, Gignac

pleads guilty in federal court to a count of impersonating a foreign

and another count of attempted bank fraud related to a scheme he tried while

locked up.

But this is not the last time authorities will hear from Prince

Next on American Greed.

After a lifetime of schemes, Anthony Gignac launches his most ambitious

yet. All you got to do is give me X amount of money and I'll triple it for

in no time. And that's the game. That's the end game there.

After serving state and federal time on charges related to the incident at the

mall in Troy, Michigan, Anthony Gignac is a free man.

According to the government, shortly after his release in March 2015, his

highness gets right back to business.

And he's no longer content with the minor scores of his past.

He's running all these petty scams, $10 ,000, $15 ,000, $20 ,000.

And when he gets to Miami, he takes a giant jump.

Now we're talking millions and millions and millions of dollars.

This was the end -all, be -all, to go after this as aggressively and as quick

he could to defraud as many people and innocent victims as possible.

As he gets his operation going, Gignac seems to have learned an important

from his past royal schemes.

Anthony Gignac was smart enough to realize that if he was too accessible,

couldn't possibly be a Saudi prince.

And how he protects that is by limiting his interaction with his victims.

Some people never even physically met him, but they talked to him on the phone

or texted with him.

Obviously, it seems to lend credence to his image that I'm someone important, I

have people to do things for me, but it's also just so that he doesn't get

called out on things that he doesn't know anything about.

If he is going to hang in the shadows, Gignac needs others to help him make

connections and talk up the prince.

Soon after his release in 2015, he uses LinkedIn to connect with an Englishman

living in North Carolina named Carl Martin Williamson.

It's kind of unclear on who contacted who first, but somewhere along there,

they eventually figure out together.

that they're going to do this con.

In late 2015, Williamson travels to London, where he meets with a well

-established investment banker.

Williamson says he's working for a Saudi prince and claims they're looking for a

project in which His Highness can invest.

After being shown bank documents and a Saudi family tree,

The English banker says she agrees to help the prince find projects seeking

capital. It is the most incredible part of the story because if he doesn't con

this UK investment banker, then he

doesn't get anything else from this point on.

Anthony Gignac now really starts to see that he can make as much money as he

possibly wants.

The banker in England is never charged with any wrongdoing and says she was

duped. Along with Williamson, she brings in business people from around the

world who are led to believe the prince is going to invest his fortune in their

projects.

And Mr. Gignac would read the Wall Street Journal every single day when he

in prison.

So he was familiar with business practices. He knew what buttons to push

successful businessmen and women.

And he was able to sell that image in persona after 20 or 30 years of

people throughout the world.

Though they think they found an angel investor, the prince's money for their

project never comes through.

He does, however, offer to let them in on something even more lucrative.

Because of our relationship, because I trust you now with this, you know, back

and forth that may or may not work out, I'm willing to cut you in on this other

thing. All you got to do is give me.

X amount of money, and I'll triple it for you in no time. And that's the game.

That's the end game there.

At first, Gignac pitches investment in a fuel trading platform promising 14 .5

% returns.

Then there's his scheme offering pre -IPO shares of Saudi Aramco.

The idea that you could buy a good portion of that company, which is valued

$2 trillion at a discounted rate.

An outstanding return of investment is something that lured a lot of people to

Mr. Gignac.

If it seems too good to be true, Gignac has plenty of answers and even forms of

proof. He did have documents, and it was more than just throwaway documents that

you can just get on the street, right?

He knew the names of...

attorneys and firms, and he knew what he needed to put on these documents to

give them credibility, and he would just fabricate them completely.

By 2017, Gignac is living on Fisher Island, having fully assumed the role

been playing all his adult life.

He would wear Saudi clothing.

He would wear a thobe, which is white.

cloth that goes from the neck down to the feet. He would also wear the

headdress, which is a smog or a keffiyeh. There's different variations

He's got diplomatic license plate and he's driving openly, right? Like he's

just hiding it like only when it's parked, like he is leaving the island

these tags on.

He was just so out in the open with his scheme, with his fraud, that people are

like, this has to be real.

Gignac plays the part of a prince to a tea, down to the way he treats his lowly

servants.

He wasn't a benevolent monarch, for lack of a better term, right? Like, he was

rude to everyone he was with. He was kind of very short, almost insulting of

people that were in his own circle. And because to him, that's what he thought

he should do.

But the ultimate prop in his scheme is his condo on Fisher Island.

After hiding behind the curtain for months, he shows the place off to his

investors and on occasion lets visitors catch a glimpse of his incredible

wealth. Anthony Gigna clearly saw this as an address that he could use to

give the impression that he was of this world, that he moved in this world, and

he did a pretty good job of it.

He's got the DSS security agents with their badges. He's got the fleet of

He's got the lush penthouse overlooking the water on the exclusive island in

Miami. It's the sultan outside the door.

He kind of has everything you would expect. So why wouldn't this be true?

With his scheme firmly established, Gignac hooks in more than 20 victims,

getting them to invest over $8 million.

But none of it goes to Aramco or anything else he's promised.

He was paying some initial investors back from investors later on.

But through all of it, he was using the money to live this life.

Next on American Greed, Anthony Gignac makes his biggest bet yet.

His honor has been hurt.

But you guys can make it up to him. You have to go and apologize, and you need

to get him a gift, and the gift has to be at least $50 ,000.

In Miami Beach, nothing shouts classic luxury like the Fountain Blue.

For decades, it was the It Hotel.

And then...

It got long in the tooth like a lot of Miami Beach.

According to former federal prosecutor Trinity Jordan, after spending hundreds

of millions of dollars on renovations, the hotel's owners go looking for an

infusion of capital.

It was just kind of whispered amongst the investment community that they were

looking for someone to purchase 20 to 30 percent ownership in the Fountain Blue.

And so that kind of made its way to.

Anthony Gignac, investment banker in the UK, she heard about the opportunity,

told Anthony Gignac, and he instructed her then to make contact with the

Fountain Blue Hotel and let her get in on that.

Leading the negotiation on the hotel side is Jeffrey Sofer, a billionaire

estate developer once married to supermodel Elle McPherson.

Before long...

The prince has Sofer believing he's ready to make a major investment.

He makes an offer of $400 million to purchase 30 % of the Fountain Blue

Hotel, which they immediately accept.

To sell the lie, His Highness brings a hotel representative to Fisher Island,

showing off his garage full of exotic cars and a document that proves...

He has the means to complete the deal. He's got this letter from the Bank of

Dubai that he's got $600 million in some sort of sovereign fund, readily

available to invest in a property like the hotel.

At one point, however, the hotel team begins to ask questions about who

really dealing with.

And when Gignac gets word, he doesn't back down.

He doubles down.

Pretending his honor has been insulted, he sends his London investment banker to

talk to hotel representatives.

It's been represented to Stouffer during this period that the Saudi prince

doesn't appreciate the skepticism, that there's been some doubts about his

credibility and about who he is, and he'd really appreciate a gift. Then the

gift has to be at least $50 ,000.

So they go and buy him a Cartier bracelet.

for $50 ,000 and present it to him and apologize.

And so now the deal's back on.

Of course, the prince doesn't have the money to buy a hotel.

So while the deal might be back on, it never goes anywhere.

He had no intention of actually putting any money into it because he was always

in the business of doing the opposite, trying to get people to give him money

invest in things that really were complete.

He was always trying to get people to invest in his business opportunities,

business deals. That was always his M .O.

If that's what he intends with Sofer, he never gets the chance to set the hook.

His newest mark is starting to get wise.

And one of the things that sort of stands out is his eating habits.

He's supposed to be, you know, a Saudi prince. He's supposed to be, you know, a

believer in Islam, a Muslim faith.

And he's wolfing down all this bacon and pork product.

There were so many things that they're like, is he really a good Muslim? Is he

really a good member of the Saudi royal family?

As questions arise, a professional security firm is hired to look into the

prince. And it doesn't take them long to reach a conclusion.

This guy is not the prince. This guy is Anthony Gignac.

And he just got out of federal prison about three years ago.

To Sofer's credit, he did figure it out where others hadn't. It didn't cost him

anything more than just a Cartier bracelet.

After making their discovery, the P .I. brings what he's learned to the feds.

Investigators from the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service

digging. And it becomes apparent that Gignac has once again been committing

federal crime of impersonating a diplomat.

But they wonder, how is he doing it in such style?

We knew who we had, but as far as what questions we had is, what's the end

What is he trying to do?

And then when we started to peel the layers back a little bit, we saw this

significant financial piece.

Didn't get any less crazy along the way.

Next on American Greed, from prince to pauper, the weight of the prince's con

becomes evident.

Mr. Gignac preyed on individuals from all walks of life.

Everybody was prey.

Everybody was fair game.

Unaware he's the target of a federal investigation, in the fall of 2017,

Gignac takes an overseas business trip using someone else's passport.

Once he sets foot back on American soil, a team of agents from the Diplomatic

Security Service moves in on his Fisher Island home, and Agent Azaz Tareen is

waiting for him at JFK Airports in New York.

Right off the bat.

He's just spouting all these conspiracy theories, playing the prince thing. I'm

like, you know, I'm from Saudi Arabia. And then where's my dog? Like, what are

you doing with my dog? Where's Foxy? So I put him on speaker.

I had an agent with his dog, Foxy. I was like, is Foxy okay?

Yes, Foxy's okay. And immediately just waterworks, uncontrollably crying,

shaking, freaking out.

Once agents seize Gignac's belongings and begin to discover business

the case quickly shifts.

It was a no -brainer that we were going to transition from an aggravated

identity theft case and passport fraud impersonation of a diplomat to a larger

financial investigation that involved money and bank accounts and assets

throughout the world.

I mean, we followed the money. That's what part of the core of the

was. We were following them. Where is this money coming from? How is he

affording all this stuff?

And it was pretty easy to figure out that it wasn't coming from legitimate

means.

As their investigation unfolds, agents uncover Gignac's multimillion -dollar

investment scheme and realize how far -reaching it is.

Mr. Gignac preyed on individuals from all walks of life.

Everybody was prey.

Everybody was fair game.

He's not just scamming billionaires and large companies, but he's also scamming,

you know, salt of the earth people that are not billionaires.

A few weeks after Gignac's arrest, the feds get word about his alleged co

-conspirator, Carl Williamson, the man he met on LinkedIn who helped introduce

him to investors worldwide.

He left a suicide note.

He didn't admit his role. He admitted that he was going to go to prison.

And he told his family that if he had to go to prison and be away from them,

that he'd rather just, you know, not be around.

Following Williamson's death, prosecutors dismissed charges against

Then in March 2019,

Anthony Gignac pleads guilty to impersonating a foreign diplomat,

identity theft, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Two months later, he is sentenced to more than 18 years in federal prison.

Gignac did not respond to American Greed's requests for comment.

Despite the craziness of his story, those who've come face to face with

Gignac say his criminality and greed are nothing to be scoffed at.

For a while I thought, well, the poor thing, he must be really mentally ill.

But when he was deemed competent to stand trial, that meant he knew what he

doing.

He's a con man.

Period. For every one truth he tells, it's backed up by multiple lies.

This isn't a celebrity fraudster.

He's a predator.

He is preying on people in any way that he possibly can.

It wouldn't shock me if he was in prison.

telling people he was a prince right now.