Netflix's new true-crime documentary Con Man follows a story that initially feels like a dream: A 45-year-old man is contacted out of the blue by his biological mother, and they share an instant bond. However, renowned British pastry chef Graham Hornigold's miraculous reunion slowly turned into a nightmare, with his mother, known only as Dionne, leaving him on the hook for £300,000 ($388,000) in debt from five-star hotels, pricey dinners, and expensive cars.
The film from Nick Green unfolds this heartbreaking con of familial love turned misery, with Hornigold, his loved ones, and Dionne's other victims telling their stories. With the doc landing on Netflix on March 25, here's what to know about Graham Hornigold and where the chef is following the events of Con Mum.
Who is Graham Hornigold?
Graham Hornigold, 50, is a former Michelin-starred pastry chef and renowned pastry consultant based in the U.K. After starting his food career at age fourteen, Hornigold worked his way up to becoming executive pastry chef at The Lanesborough Hotel, Hyde Park Corner, at age 28, and winning UK Pastry Chef of the Year in 2007. He later served as the executive pastry chef for Hakkasan restaurant group from 2011 to 2017, supervising "120 pastry chefs working in twenty different kitchens", per his Great British Chefs bio.
Since leaving Hakkasan, Hornigold has run his own pastry consultancy, while making appearances on famed cooking shows including Masterchef: The Professionals and Junior Bake Off. He has spent the past several years developing and founding the gourmet doughnut brand Longboys, which currently has three locations in London.
We learn in Con Mum that Graham had a rough upbringing. The chef was born on a British army base in West Germany, and was "fostered at the age of two for two years," per the doc. He then moved in with his father and stepmother in the town of St. Albans, 20 miles northwest of London. Graham, who describes his father as abusive, never knew his biological mother... until he was contacted out of the blue in 2020, by an Asian woman in her 80s named Dionne. Dionne knew facts about the chef that only his biological mother would know, so after months of emails, he agreed to meet her. In Con Mum, Graham describes feeling an "instantaneous" mother-child bond upon meeting Dionne, saying, "It felt like I was somebody's baby."
What happened to Graham Hornigold in 'Con Mum'?
When she met Graham, Dionne, who is only identified by her first name in the documentary, claimed that he was taken away from her after his birth. She also told him that she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and only had six months to live, which was the impetus for her to search for her son.
Dionne also claimed that she was a multilingual businesswoman with several global enterprises, including fruit farms in Indonesia and Malaysia. She added that she was also wealthy as the "illegitimate child of the former sultan of Brunei." As they spent time together, Graham saw her extravagant lifestyle as a regular patron of five-star hotels like The Dorchester, which is owned by the Brunei royal family.
Per the doc, Dionne also started buying Graham and his partner Heather Kaniuk extravagant gifts, including designer handbags and luxury clothing. At one point, she took him to a Rolls-Royce dealership to buy him a car, where the "head sales honcho" told Graham that Dionne had previously bought two Phantoms from him. She ended up buying him a £75,000 ($97K) Land Rover, and got Heather a car as well "so she didn't feel left out."
Two months after Graham first met Dionne, and immediately after Heather gave birth to their son, Dionne told Graham that she'd had a health scare. Graham, not wanting Dionne to be in a hotel alone, moved her into his and Heather's home. Two months later, Graham and Dionne traveled to Switzerland, to do the alleged paperwork necessary to have Graham inherit her wealth, according to her. Once there, the pair attended an after-hours meeting with the manager of a private bank in Zurich where clients are required to have a minimum of 20 million euros ($21.6 million) to open an account. Graham said in the doc that this meeting is what made him believe that Dionne was legit, and that he'd "won the jackpot."
Even before they went to Switzerland, Dionne had begun asking Graham to help pay some of her bills, because "she had difficulty transferring money because of COVID." Heather discovered later that Graham had set up credit cards in his own name to help pay for her lavish lifestyle. Dionne ended up extending her and Graham's four-day trip to Switzerland to ultimately be two months, with Graham covering the bills throughout and not telling Heather, who was back at home with their newborn. Dionne later followed Graham back to England, and convinced him to stay there as Heather and their son traveled to New Zealand to visit her family.
Eventually, Graham cut ties with Dionne after discovering that she was faking her terminal disease, using red food coloring as blood, and that her medicine wasn't for cancer, but for diabetes. In the aftermath, Heather did more research on Dionne and discovered that the woman, who was originally from Singapore, had a criminal record going back to the 1980s, and multiple marriage certificates citing different dates of birth and parental names. All in all, Graham was left on the hook for around £300,000 ($388,000) total, including £200,000 in car payments.
When Heather went to the police, they told her that Dionne wouldn't be held liable for the fraud. In an interview with The Guardian, Graham explained, "Essentially they call it a bad business decision, because you know where the money is going and who to."
Is Dionne really Graham Hornigold's mother?
The end of Con Mum reveals, via a DNA test, that there was a 99.9 percent certainty that Dionne was really his birth mother. Dionne—who has gone by many names, including Dionne Marie Hannah and Theresa Haton Mahmud—declined to speak to Netflix for the documentary. Though she will likely not be held liable for the fraud against Graham, as she is his biological family, Con Mum also features some of her other victims, including start-up founders Junyan and Markus and medical rep Peng, whom she left on the hook for tens of thousands of pounds. Dionne also attempted to get money from Graham's friend Juan, but he refused to give her any. As of Con Mum's release, Dionne "has never faced criminal charges for the allegations made in this documentary," per the film.
Graham cut ties with Dionne in 2021, and he has only spoken to her once since. In the doc, Graham reveals that Dionne called him out of the blue, over a year after the last time he saw her. During the call, she said she loved him and apologized, adding, "I’ve done what I’ve done, son. I cannot change, son." Despite the DNA test, Graham no longer considers Dionne his mother. As for her grandiose claims of being an entrepreneur and the daughter of former royalty, according to Graham, "We’ll never know." (According to one of Dionne's victims, Peng, Brunei's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has no record of Dionne being related to the royal family.)
Speaking to The Guardian, Graham admits to being "blinded", not by Dionne's "wealth," but "by the fact that my mum had come into my life and she was going to be leaving again." He added that his need for maternal love "was my downfall. If you don’t receive it when you’re a kid, you have this wound you carry around … Can you honestly tell me the bond between you and your mother you haven’t seen in 45 years and who is dying wouldn’t be stronger than anything else?"
Today, Graham says that he sought mental health treatment after the ordeal, and that he did the documentary partly to encourage people with similar trauma to seek help. "I’ve done the head work, sorted out the inner demons," he told the outlet. He also explained of his mindset during the tumultuous year, "One minute you’ve got everything; the next you’ve got nothing, and on the spin of a knife you’re deciding whether you’re going to stay alive or not. And if you don’t seek help, you’ll keep attracting this cycle."
Are Graham Hornigold and Heather Kaniuk still together?
At the time when he first met Dionne, Hornigold was happily coupled with his then-partner Heather Kaniuk, a fellow award-winning pastry chef. According to the doc, Graham and Heather met at work and were colleagues before eventually beginning a romantic relationship. They later started a pastry consultancy together, and in 2020, they found out that they were expecting a child together.
Though Dionne and Heather initially got along, Heather eventually recognized that the manipulative scammer was trying to drive a wedge between herself and Graham. In addition to those two months that she was left alone with her and Graham's newborn, Heather says in the doc, "That sense of ‘I’ve just become a mum’ was robbed from me, because there’s Dionne." When she tried to warn Graham about Dionne before the scam was uncovered, he did not believe her, since he thought he needed to be there for his mother's final days.
Unfortunately, the saga ended with Graham and Heather going their separate ways. Heather and their son have permanently relocated to New Zealand; they have not returned to England since 2021. In the Guardian interview, Graham revealed that he stays in touch with his son through video-chatting, and that he plans to visit New Zealand as soon as he can afford to with his ongoing debt. He said, "I won’t let it affect him, in the sense that he won’t see his dad. I’m going to be a big part of his life."
