The former Hakkasan Group head pastry chef and Longboys founder was the target of a sophisticated confidence fraud that is the subject of Netflix documentary Con Mum.
In the early days of the pandemic Graham Hornigold opened an email from a woman purporting to be his long-lost mother. Adopted at the age of two, the high-profile pastry chef had no memory of his birth mother and had recently tried to find her online. She claimed she was gravely ill and wanted to reunite with him before it was too late.
At the time, life was looking pretty sweet for Hornigold. Longboys – the gourmet finger doughnut brand he had recently launched with his partner and fellow pâtissier Heather Kaniuk – was transitioning from a pop-up brand to bricks and mortar and his consumer profile was in the ascendancy following appearances on Masterchef: The Professionals and Junior Bake Off.
Yet less than a year after the woman – who called herself Dionne – showed up in his inbox, Hornigold’s life was in tatters. The confidence trickster had extracted around £100,000 and, worse of all, had cost him his home and his family too.
The documentary Con Mum is available to stream on Netflix now. Joe Lutrario, from British Baker’s sister brand Restaurant, caught up with Hornigold to find out about the impact the events of the documentary had on his life.
This all happened a few years ago. How are you doing?
Headspace wise I’m a lot better than I was at the time it was going on. I’m more in tune with myself. But it’s been very hard to deal with the loss of my partner and our son (who have returned to Kaniuk’s native New Zealand). I’m lucky to have gotten through it. Men in general and especially men in this industry don’t seek help, we’re too macho. Especially chefs of my generation. But people will help you get back up again, you just need to talk. If you don’t address the things that happen in your life they can manifest within your personality. Alcohol abuse and drugs go hand-in-hand with not sorting out the mind. I’ve had some therapy, but I’ve also done a deep-dive myself. You could say I’m self-taught. I’ve come through the dark space. Some people don’t.
The Netflix documentary concludes with a phone call from your mum during which she apologises to you. Have you had any contact with her since then?
We haven’t had any contact since that call. And I have not sought contact with her either. She was in my life for less than a year having got in touch with me in July 2020 around the time hospitality was reopening. She has ripped a lot of other people off, and she utilised her tradecraft to decimate everything for us. We did look at taking legal action but when you know the person it’s essentially viewed as a bad business decision.
How did your story become a documentary that’s going to be seen all over the world?
I’m a big talker. I told my friends about it. They were like ‘wow. man’. No matter how hard the story is you need to get it out there. One of them happened to have a production studio. We had a conversation and three-and-a-half years later we’ve made a film.
The documentary explored how the scam affected your personal life. How are things with Longboys and your other businesses?
Dionne came into our lives when Longboys was just starting out. I have worked very hard to grow the brand because it was my only source of income while fighting bankruptcy. I ended up writing off a car because I kept having accidents due to being exhausted from working nights preparing the doughnuts. I now have a new investor and have worked out a way to do a bit less. In 2023 we acquired Pretty Sweet from Claire Clark and I also have my consultancy business Smart Patisserie. It’s been a bit touch and go but that’s due to the current climate rather than this stuff with Dionne.
Why do you think you were so susceptible to Dionne’s scam?
It’s that age old question. Who am I? What is my purpose? I grew up in an abusive violent home and I didn’t have any answers to those questions. When you’re missing something, you go looking for it. She was the only person that could give me answers. It was also a very sophisticated con. She took me to a private bank in Switzerland and there were a cast of characters who were real: lawyers, bankers and private equity people. If it was just an old lady in a wheelchair, we would not be sitting here talking about it. This was not a normal con.
How did it feel to watch the documentary for the first time?
It was devastating. It’s a great piece that tells the story effectively, but it brings it all back. I wanted to share the story because she has caused countless other suffering and who knows what the consequences of that were. I’d lost my home, my partner, my child, and my mum, and I was staring down the barrel of bankruptcy. At one point I was sitting there wondering what the point of it all was. Sadly, a lot of people in similar situations don’t make it. It’s not about vengeance; it’s about raising awareness of mental health and how unprocessed trauma can manifest in your personality.
You’ve created a special doughnut to mark the documentary…
It’s called the Conboy and it’s a gold, diamond-encrusted Longboy doughnut. It’s glam on the outside but dark and sour on the inside. At the end of the day, it’s a horrible story but one that needs to be told. I’ve lost everything and everyone due to the choices I have made.
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