Where is the ‘Con Mum’ Dionne Hornigold From Netflix’s New Documentary Now?

The new Netflix documentary Con Mum is once again providing Netflix viewers with that sweet, sweet scammer drama. We never do get tired of it! Directed by Nick Green, Con Mum tells the true story of British chef Graham Hornigold, who was scammed out of upwards of $300,000 to a woman who claimed to be his mother.

Graham Hornigold, a successful pastry chef from London who has appeared as a judge on Junior Bake Off, was contacted by a woman named Dionne in 2020. She claimed to be his mother. Hornigold had grown up with his father and stepmother, had never known his birth mother or what happened to her. Though skeptical at first, Dionne knew many personal details about Hornigold’s life that seemed impossible for her to know, unless she was telling the truth. When Hornigold agreed to meet up, the family resemblance was obvious. He was sold: Dionne Marie Hanna was his long-lost mother.

Soon after they re-united, Dionne dropped a bomb on her son: She had terminal cancer, and only had months to live. Hornigold was determined to make the most of his few months with his mother. She said she was a wealthy businesswoman, and seemed to prove it. She stayed in five-star hotels and bought Hornigold expensive gifts, like a car. Not only that, but she also bought a car for Hornigold’s partner, New Zealander Heather Kaniuk, who was pregnant with his baby.

But as the documentary goes on, it’s revealed that Dionne was lying to Hornigold about her wealth. It’s also revealed that many of the “gifts” were being paid for by Hornigold. He believed her when she said she would pay him back and then some. He believed when she said the COVID-19 pandemic was making it hard for her to access her money.

Hornigold was scammed, and it cost him more than just his money. Kaniuk left him when he couldn’t seem to snap out of the spell his mother had him under. She took his son and moved back to New Zealand. But what happened to Dionne Hornigold, aka Dionne Marie Hanna, aka the Con Mum?

Who is Graham Hornigold’s mother Dionne Hornigold?

As we see in the Con Mum documentary, Dionne Marie Hanna is the biological mother of chef Graham Hornigold, as was proven by a DNA test that showed with 99.9 percent certainty that Dionne is Hornigold’s mother.

At first, Dionne didn’t want to do the test, but after the scam was uncovered, Hornigold insisted. “Part of me didn’t want to be related,” he said in the film. But he is. “This is the hardest thing to understand. Why would you do this to your son?”

The Con Mum filmmakers eventually uncovered a past criminal record for Dionne. A 1982 news story identifies a 41-year-old woman named Dionne Hornigold, who pled guilty to “obtaining cash and jewelry by deception,” aka the same con she would eventually run on her son and many others: Presenting herself as a wealthy woman, and making promises to pay back her loaners that she couldn’t keep. The news story said Dionne was born in Malaysia and came to the U.K. in 1971, and was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 1980, again, for cons.

It’s not known how much of what Dionne told Hornigold is a lie. But Hornigold’s ex, Heather Kaniuk, discovered that, Dionne had scammed many other people over they years, including a man from Indonesia who paid her $40,000 for a pilgrimage to Mecca that never happened. This particular scam happened just weeks for Dionne reached out to her son for the first time. Kaniuk also uncovered that Dionne frequently lied on official documents, listing many different names as her “father” on various forms.

It seems highly unlikely that Dionne was really the daughter of the sultan of Brunei, as she told Hornigold she was. In the documentary, Hornigold frankly asks Dionne if the story is true, and though she says it is, her word is hardly convincing.

“We’ll never know,” Hornigold told The Guardian in a recent interview. But in the documentary, another victim of Dionne’s scams, Peng, wrote to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Brunei, and got the following reply: “To the Embassy’s knowledge, there is no person named Dionne Marie Hanna or Theresa Haton Mahamud, as stated in your email, who is related to Brunei royal family.”

It’s also not clear if Dionne was really diagnosed with a terminal illness. As we see in the film, Hornigold discovered red food dye in his mother’s suite, which he suspect she used to fake a photo of bloody urine that she sent to him.

“In my mind, there is no cancer,” he says in the film.

Where is the Con Mum Dionne now?

We don’t know where Dionne the con mum is now. Once it became clear Hornigold knew he was being scammed—shortly after the DNA test—she disappeared from his life. In his interview with The Guardian, Hornigold said he hasn’t spoken to his biological mother, Dionne, in three years. She could be back in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, or anywhere in the world.

In the documentary, there is a moment where Hornigold confronts his mother in a voicemail message.

“You’ve done what you’ve done, it’s cost me, it’s cost my family, it’s cost everyone,” Hornigold says over the phone. “I’ll never really understand, Mum.”

In turn, we see a FaceTime call between Hornigold and Dionne that takes place over a year after the scam came to light. In the call, Dionne claims she is in Malaysia, and tells Hornigold, “I love you son. I really love you.”

“Really?” Hornigold replies, skeptical.

“I’m sorry for what happened. I’m really sorry what happened,” she tells him.

“Yeah, it was kind of life-changing, Mum.”

“That’s alright. But sorry. From the bottom of my heart, sorry. I done what I done. I cannot change, son. I cannot change.”

Hornigold tells his mother to take care, and quickly ends the call. Dionne did not reply to Netflix’s requests for comment, and has not faced criminal charges for taking money from Hornigold.

When asked by The Guardian if he believed she ever loved him, Hornigold replied, “No.” When asked in turn if he had any love for her, Hornigold said, “Apart from the fact that she brought me into the world, no.”

He added that he no longer refers to has “mum,” only “Dionne,” and, “sometimes something else.”