‘I met my mum when I was 45. Then she swindled me out of £100k'

Telegraph

24-03-2025

In 2020, Graham Hornigold received an email out of the blue from a woman named Dionne, claiming to be his mother.
Hornigold, then aged 45, had been raised by his father and the subject of the woman who brought him into the world had rarely been broached. 'Is this for real???', he wrote back. 'No jokes, scams etc?'
In the ensuing back and forth, she confirmed things only Hornigold's mother could know: his middle name (he doesn't have one), that he was born on a British military base in West Germany.
When they met in a Liverpool hotel in between pandemic restrictions, Hornigold was 'euphoric... It's something you can't really prepare yourself for', the 50-year-old reflects now.
'That mother-child bond becomes instantaneous.' Seeing his mother for the first time was like being in love – when 'you look at their face, and all you can do is smile'.
Dionne was warm and friendly – and deeply generous, too, intent on treating the son she had so long been without. It would take a year, however, for Hornigold to realise that the lavish hotel stays, cars and gifts she was buying him would ultimately come out of his own pocket, leaving him over £100,000 in debt, and costing him his young family.
Hornigold unpicks the events of the past five years in Con Mum, a documentary film airing on Netflix.
When they met, the former chef at Hakkasan, judge on Junior Masterchef and founder of doughnut shop Longboys, was happily married and awaiting the birth of his first child. That anticipation was only heightened by his mother's entrance into his life, Hornigold recalls, a multi-generational family suddenly becoming his reality for the first time.
Dionne said that Hornigold had been taken from her at birth and heaped gifts upon her boy.
'I'm going to buy you a present and take away 45 years of pain,' he remembers her saying. 'Those were her exact words. 'Let's go and get yourself a car.''
Luxury gifts and Swiss bank accounts
They first visited a Rolls-Royce dealership where everyone knew her by name (the sales manager disclosed to Hornigold that she had previously purchased two Phantoms, typically around £500,000 apiece), before settling on a £75,000 Land Rover. This was followed by another for Hornigold's wife, Heather, so that she didn't feel 'left out'.
Then there were the tens of thousands spent on cashmere sweaters and Prada shoes, personalised bags, and regular dinners at the Dorchester Hotel, where staff were equally well acquainted with the septuagenarian, originally from Singapore, who was always given the best seats in the house.
Dionne's wealth, she said, came from a raft of global businesses including fruit farms in Indonesia and Malaysia, and payouts from being the illegitimate child of the ex-sultan of Brunei. Hornigold would catch her on phone calls that appeared to back up her claims.
'All that business acumen and the way she talked made you believe that they were completely viable businesses,' he says.
Just as she had entered Hornigold's life in a blaze of luxury rentals and champagne dinners, Dionne soon came to him with another thunderbolt – she was terminally ill with bone marrow cancer, and had six months to live.
So began the 'permanent battle' between his mother and young family that would irreversibly change his life. Constantly, he found himself 'making a choice between a life partner and somebody you've just met who's going to be passing soon', and the fear of how little time he had left with his mother pushing her to the top of the priority list.
Never was that more apparent than late in 2020, when she urged him to join her in Switzerland under the guise of finalising her financial affairs before she died. She was to put everything in his name, she said. That was something he didn't question as they sat above a private bank in Zurich with the manager after hours, the establishment requiring that clients hold a minimum of €20m (£16.7m) to open an account.
'That's what got me,' he explains. 'That's what made me think it was real.'
In Switzerland, Dionne's web started to unravel. Hornigold invited a friend to their opulent meals out (which routinely featured £300 bottles of wine) – Dionne began calling him her grandson, and promising to buy him a £5m house.
Only after that did she add that she needed money to tide her over while her funds were being released – and made him swear not to tell her son.
'I started to think, something smells here,' he tells the documentary.
Lies exposed
Hornigold was in Switzerland for two months, during which time – also unbeknown to him – she met a pair of start-up founders, promised to invest in their business, and insisted they take her on a shopping spree by way of thanks. This was the least they could do, they thought, for the kindly old woman who was about to make their dreams a reality.
Hornigold was also covering for her financially, which he did not disclose to his wife, who remained at home with their newborn son.
'It's not that you don't want to go home,' he says of why he stayed. 'It's just, how do you leave someone sitting in a hotel room in Switzerland on their own, to then go home with the thought that they might pass?'
When he finally did extricate himself on Christmas Eve, Dionne went to the hotel balcony threatening to kill herself, later telling anyone who would listen that he had only ever wanted her money, and that 'I don't give a f--- about him anymore.'
Heather found bills revealing how much her husband had fronted, and began investigating Dionne online, learning that she had a criminal record dating back to the 1980s, and multiple marriage certificates citing different ages and parental names.
They later found red food colouring in her drawer – the real cause of the 'blood' she said was in her urine – and researched her medication, which it transpired wasn't for cancer, but diabetes.
Dionne wasn't dying at all. Nor was she investing in any of the businesses she had promised to stump up for, leaving numerous people with £100k holes in their bank accounts.
When Heather attempted to tell the police about what her mother-in-law had done, including £300,000 in car repayments they were apparently on the hook for, she was told that the case wouldn't be seen as fraud, because she was Hornigold's mother.
'She came to destroy us'
'The way that things have panned out is regrettable,' Hornigold says today, somewhat underplaying the disastrous effect his mother has had on his life. 'She came to destroy [us]. She came to separate, and she came to destroy and she's done that.'
Heather and Hornigold's son, now four, have left London for New Zealand. He hasn't seen him since he dropped them off at the airport in January 2021, the same year he spoke to Dionne – who he no longer refers to as 'mum' – for the last time.
He doesn't like to use the word 'scammed' to describe his story, despite the vast sums haemorrhaged, and the fact he lost his house.
To him, what has passed is less about money, rather 'emotional blackmail, manipulation and controlling methods to live out her fantastical world at the expense of others', he says of Dionne, who a DNA test confirmed is his biological mother. 'There is no remorse.'
Dionne did not respond to requests for comment from the film's producers, and has never faced criminal charges for the allegations made in the documentary.
Hornigold has had therapy and rebuilt his life, he says, yet there remain questions: whether there was ever really money in the Swiss accounts (or whether the various bank managers and lawyers he met there were simply actors); if, had pandemic restrictions not led to Dionne's return flight to Singapore being cancelled, they would have ever met at all.
One query hangs heaviest in his mind. 'I can understand you want to do it to somebody that you don't know,' he mulls. 'I'll never understand why you would do it to your son.'