The days of the Saudi prince's branded clothes jostled in jail

Miami:

A Florida man who pretended to be a royal Saudi for three decades and who cheated 8 million dollars will spend 18 years in prison for fraud, authorities said Friday.

Anthony Gignac, 48, built a personal luxury world out of his royal scam involving false diplomatic references and a coterie of bodyguards.

Under the pseudonym of Khalid Bin Al-Saud, he lived in a condo on Miami's sumptuous Fisher Island, drove a Ferrari with a fake diplomatic license plate and eagerly sought out investors and donors.

He was accompanied by bodyguards wearing fake diplomatic papers and required to be treated in accordance with the royal protocol, which he used to justify requests for gifts from potential investors.

Dozens of people were depositing money into his bank accounts, thinking that Gignac, whose apartment had a sign saying "Sultan" on his door, would invest him.

Instead, he spent it on everything from designer clothes to yachts to private jet rides.

Gignac moved to Miami in 2017, but Prince Khalid appeared long before.

Born in Colombia, Gignac was adopted by a Michigan family at the age of seven. His alter-ego appeared for the first time ten years later, at the age of 17.

Since then, Gignac has been arrested and sentenced on several occasions for fraud, but that was not enough to arrest Prince Khalid.

Surprisingly, his years as a fraudster began to collapse like a house of cards around him when a real estate developer saw Gignac happily eating ham, bacon and other products-based Pork meat that would normally be banned for a devout Muslim prince, according to the daily Miami Herald.

In November 2017, he was arrested and charged with 18 counts, including electronic fraud and aggravated identity theft.

"Over the last three decades, Anthony Gignac has been touted as a Saudi prince in order to manipulate, victimize and ransack countless investors around the world," said US Attorney Ariana Fajardo Orshan in a statement.

"As the leader of a sophisticated international ploy involving several people, Gignac used her fake character to sell false hopes," she said. "Dozens of unsuspecting investors have been deprived of their investments, losing more than $ 8 million."

Judge Cecilia Altonaga pronounced the heavy sentence, claiming that Gignac's luxury crime life had been "truly extraordinary".