British pensioner made famous in Netflix's ‘Con Mum' faces fraud charges
An 84-year-old British woman made famous in Con Mum, a Netflix documentary, has been charged with fraud in Singapore.
Dionne Marie Hanna faces five counts of fraud involving three people, and appeared in court via videolink on Saturday.
The documentary, released on March 25, told how Ms Hanna upended the life of her son Graham Hornigold, a successful pastry chef, by contacting him in 2020 to tell him she was his long-lost mother.
Her claim was proved by a DNA test, but Mr Hornigold says after their reunion, she conned him out of hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Ms Hanna, who told her son that she was a successful international entrepreneur, appeared in court from a hospital bed in Singapore's Tan Tock Seng, according to local media reports. It is not clear why she is in the hospital.
According to court documents in Singapore, one of the charges involved Ms Hanna allegedly telling a man in Singapore, identified as Paiman Bin Supangat, that she was from the Brunei royal family.
Police in Singapore said they had received several complaints from alleged victims after the documentary was released on Netflix.
They added that preliminary investigations showed Ms Hanna was alleged to be involved in at least five cases of fraud with losses amounting to more than £115,000.
'As part of the arrangement to receive monies for the investment and inheritance, the victims were asked to transfer money for legal fees and opening of overseas bank accounts,' police said.
'The victims believed her investment and release of inheritance to be genuine and made several transfers to her.'
If found guilty of fraud, Ms Hanna could face up to 20 years in prison.
Her next court hearing is on April 11.
The documentary told how Mr Hornigold, 50, who was born on a British Army base in Germany, was raised in St. Albans by his violently abusive father, who would only say of his mother that she had left.
He said Ms Hanna told him when they were first reunited that she was dying from cancer, and spoiled him and his partner, buying each of them cars and lavishing them with gifts.
With her health apparently declining, she told her son that she wanted him to have her money but said they would need to travel to Switzerland and set up a bank account in his name.
Mr Hornigold's partner, Heather Kaniuk, was sceptical, especially after discovering he had transferred £100,000 into his mother's accounts.
'I started becoming very afraid of who this woman was. I realised I was on a train heading for a wreck and I needed to save Graham,' Ms Kaniuk, who subsequently split up from Mr Hornigold, said in the film.
The chef, who has made television appearances including as a judge on Junior Bake-Off, finally realised that his mother had been lying, including about her cancer diagnosis.
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