On the French Riviera and Italian coast, in the yacht clubs and shimmering ballrooms, everyone, including Pamela Anderson, wanted to get close to the prince. So did investigators.

Juan Tamenne was neither spy nor detective, but he was on a mission in the spring of 2015 as he watched a scene unfold at Monaco’s Yacht Club, a four-story playground for the impossibly wealthy on the sparkling blue Mediterranean. Tamenne, 46, with straight blonde hair, narrow elegant eyes and a quick, almost feverish way of speaking, owned a public relations firm in the French Riviera principality, where one in three residents were millionaires. As a publicist, he was used to finding the spotlight, not hiding in the shadows.

In the cafe, he was watching an elegant Serbian woman in conversation with a prince, a tall man in his late fifties with abundant charm. The prince was telling her about coveted diplomatic passports that he could secure for her wealthy friends for a few thousand euros each. (The prince denies talking about the passports.) Diplomatic passports, in theory, would allow easy passage through most of the world as well as other rarefied perks. The woman was surprised that these could be purchased.

The prince had to go in a hurry, saying he had an important phone call, in the process leaving behind the bill. Tamenne saw his chance. He approached the woman. He told her there was reason to believe the prince was a fake, profiteering off of unsuspecting people.

Him? The prince? How was it possible?

Tamenne urged the woman to report the prince to the Yacht Club and the police.

He couldn’t possibly tell her the whole story–the Pamela Anderson part alone, which was still in the works, would be too wild to explain. Tamenne was also emotionally conflicted about passing on the warning. The prince was once his client, and Tamenne had defended him from allegations that he was fake. Now that the two had a falling out, he was plotting to stop him.

The Mediterranean’s wealth and influence shined brightly on the prince, Stefano Cernetic, until the question of his identity became the eye of a storm. Tamenne was only one of many obsessed sleuths–including police, diplomats, royalologists, aristocrats, journalists–trying to chase down the truth. Whether embattled royal or hardened trickster, his adversaries and obstacles multiplied, forcing the prince to stay one step ahead.

His Imperial Royal Highness Stefano Cernetic, Prince of Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania, Serbia and Voivodina and Hereditary Titular Emperor of Constantinople, Romania and Greece, had become a staple around the Principality of Monaco. He was invited to glamorous events, glitzy dinners and private birthday parties around which the life of Monaco’s super-rich revolved. He was a regular at the Yacht Club. Even in these opulent circles, people would murmur in awe when he passed by.

He was hard to miss. About 6’4”, he stuck out in a crowd, with his warm, inviting eyes and low-key charm. He spoke six languages and could recognize a premium cigar on the spot. He knew Italian fine wines from A to Z, could talk European and Balkan history with intimidating precision and was a master of high-class etiquette. From his knowledge of how to dress for any occasion, to his refined gala manners, to his grasp of minutiae like how to fold a tie into a bow tie, his aristocratic upbringing was obvious, according to people who met him. He lived elegantly with what the French call savoir vivre, a “knowledge of life.” He also seemed to enjoy every moment, which was infectious. Accompanying him on many of his outings was his much younger Italian girlfriend. Dating him came with some unusual perks. For example, he granted her the title of Marquise.

On his website, princeofmontenegroandmacedonia.eu, and on his Facebook profile, visitors could see ever-growing numbers of photos of him side by side with royals, including Monaco’s Prince Albert, archduke Karl Habsburg of the former Austro-Hungarian empire, and Empress Farah of Iran. Recently, he appeared to have received the collar of the Order of Saint Sylvester, a prestigious knighthood awarded directly by the Pope.

Juan Tamenne, like many others, took notice. “You couldn't go to any party, cocktail, or art event in Monaco without seeing him,” he said. The two crossed paths at art galleries, vintage car events, and gala dinners with French embassy staff. Tamenne sensed an opportunity. Monaco was the perfect spot for public relations, with its Jazz Age blend of natural beauty and lavish wealth, not to mention the casinos and favorable tax rules, attracting moguls and celebrities.

Tamenne’s company held keys to Monaco’s scarcest asset: access. He had experience working with members of deposed European royal families long past their families’ primes. Monetizing name and prestige, some set up foundations and lived off of donations and invitations, or were paid to attend events, which Tamenne’s services facilitated.

He saw potential in the popular and amiable prince, and helped him make new contacts. In one of their first events together, he accompanied the prince to Bavaria for the annual event of a chivalric order, at the order’s expense. The prince exchanged honors and medals with members of the order. As Monaco’s busy high season approached, highlighted by the Formula One race, the Cannes Film Festival, and the world’s biggest yacht show, Tamenne gradually scored the prince invites for events across the Riviera. When he wasn’t dashing through Monaco’s high society, the prince traversed Italy and France as a guest of honor. In the southern Italian region of Campania, he met mayors, businessmen and bishops while promoting Montenegro. Pictures posted on one of the prince’s Facebook accounts chronicled encounters with high-level political gatekeepers, including the U.S. Ambassador to Malta, Italian local politicians, a German military advisor, and the French ambassador to Monaco.

With Tamenne’s help, the prince of Montenegro could be brought “to the sky.” He could be more than a royal figurehead, he could become a global political force. Tamenne had ties with the Republican Party; perhaps he could even get the prince invited to Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Making plans for the prince was not always simple. The prince sometimes suggested that Tamenne, a car collector, bring a vintage Rolls Royce to drive him around to events. Another time, the prince casually suggested Tamenne whip up a charity event in his name–a 100 person buffet in an exclusive hotel overlooking the deep blue Mediterranean.

Then there was the prince’s splashiest step into the limelight yet. He was going to bestow the title of countess on Pamela Anderson, an honor he felt she deserved for her environmental activism. Santa Margherita Ligure, where the event would take place, fell into a frenzy. Though she was a few years removed from the height of her Baywatch days, Anderson was a household name and an international icon of glamor. The event would be the ultimate intersection of celebrity and nobility, a new era of relevance that marked the end of stodgy aristocracy and the ascendancy of approachable royals epitomized by the prince.

When a package arrived at Tamenne’s office from the Monaco branch of the high-end apparel brand Brooks Brothers, he found a VIP card, chocolates and a free jacket, all for the prince. Tamenne noticed that the prince had printed business cards with the office address on it without asking him first.

Perhaps the prince didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that he didn’t actually live in Monaco. Rather, he lived with his girlfriend in her apartment in Cap d’Ail, a more affordable town in France on the border of the Monaco principality. For purists, it was like someone partying in Manhattan but living in New Jersey.

The prince seemed to have popped up out of nowhere, like a mushroom in the rain, with few having heard of the Cernetic family. Doubts simmered. At cocktail parties and dinners, some whispered that Stefano Cernetic couldn’t be the legitimate prince of Montenegro. Montenegro had recognized the Petrovic-Njegos family as its legitimate royals. And Cernetic was not even a Montenegrin citizen, he was Italian. It was unclear if he had ever been to Montenegro. Meanwhile, people noted how he was bestowing titles upon ordinary people not born into nobility and selling diplomatic passports for annual fees—even advertising these on his website.

But every discrepancy had a sometimes tortured explanation. He said he came from the Crnojevic family, which descended directly from Julius Caesar and rulers of the Eastern Roman Empire, and ruled over swathes of present-day Montenegro in the 15th and 16th centuries. He also claimed to have family ties with the British and Italian royal families, as well with the real Count Dracula, Vlad Dracula, 15th century ruler of parts of present-day Romania. As centuries went by, the name morphed into Cernetic, and a glorious past turned into a tormented present. He would sometimes say that his father was born in Trieste, a town on the Yugoslavian border, and fought as a pilot in WW2 alongside the Allies, before his return to Trieste where Stefano was later born. After the war, political turmoil uprooted his family from the former Yugoslavia. The communist regime and civil war erased historical records and all but erased the Cernetic family itself.

To fascinated companions, he seemed to be a lost prince from a long-forgotten and victimized royal family that managed to resurface through sheer resilience. Everyone wanted a prince in their life, and who better than this one with his warm, wide smile. As for offering to sell aristocratic titles, one source said, “Monaco is a funny, funny place. There are a lot of people who have some money and they want to have a title, or a medal or order.” Seeking out a title was an expensive exercise in futility as well as absurdity, since they granted no tangible benefits.

Many in Monaco’s high society had never heard of the titles the prince was awarding, with bombastic names such as the Angelico Sacro Imperiale Equestrian Order of St. George Orthodox Constantinian. The anonymous blog Fake Titles and Orders grumbled that the prince was “a liar and a fake” and that “his claimed links to European royalty are obscure and not to be relied upon.” Another blog, Royal Musings, called him a “fraud.” Such specialized websites and forums weren’t necessarily on the top of the reading list of the Riviera’s super rich.

After the event in Bavaria attended by both the prince and Tamenne, Rupprecht, the chivalric order head, was contacted by a member of his order with knowledge of Montenegro and the former Yugoslavia. He advised Rupprecht to “be careful” around the prince. Rupprecht wanted to get to the bottom of it. He phoned the Montenegrin embassy in Germany. The person at the other end of the line, he remembers, refused to give him more information about the prince or his claims. But he likewise told him to be careful.

Rupprecht had come to know and like Juan Tamenne, and he tried to warn the publicist that his prince might, in fact, not be a prince at all. Infused with stubborn loyalty, Tamenne refused to believe it. Sometimes, he would post defenses on online forums and on social media, pointing out that the prince had connections even to the Vatican, as proven by his induction into the prestigious Order of Saint Sylvester.

Tamenne had an idea of how he could prove the doubters wrong without having to ask the prince any disrespectful questions. He told the prince that in order to help plan the prince’s next event, he needed a copy of his birth certificate. The prince said he didn’t have it with him, but he would have it sent from his office in Turin, Italy. (The prince denies Tamenne ever asked for his birth certificate.)

Weeks later, a copy arrived on Tamenne’s desk of a baptism certificate from the Christian Orthodox Church of Trieste, the prince’s hometown. Tamenne showed it to an acquaintance who had experience verifying authenticity. Right away, the acquaintance suggested that something seemed off in part because some sections of the document seemed to have been tinkered with. It also appeared to contain a suspicious combination of fonts, indicating that multiple typewriters were used.

That was enough for Tamenne—the rumors, the obscure family history, even some of the bizarre titles. He discovered that the prince had not received the collar of the prestigious Order of Saint Sylvester after all, but the relatively worthless collar of the similarly named Association of Saint Sylvester, a different organization with a far lesser pedigree. Exaggeration was one thing, deceit was another. He had believed in the prince. With the Riviera awash in so much money, the currency with the greatest value was honor and trust.

Tamenne was furious, and knew time was running low before the sensational event meant to seal the prince’s place in high society. He had to find a way to put spokes in the prince’s wheels.

On the balmy evening of June 20, 2015 in the northwestern Italian seaside town of Santa Margherita Ligure, partygoers from around the world flowed toward the faded 17th century facade of the Villa Durazzo. Excitement was palpable in the air. Paparazzi stood between the gleaming Rolls Royces outside the Villa to catch a glimpse of the group in tuxedos and colorful long dresses. The star of the night, Pamela Anderson, stepped out of a Mercedes sedan in her high heels, her wavy blond hair caressing a long, low-necked white dress.

The guests crossed through the pastel-colored stuccos, 17th-century frescos and trompe l’oeils, dark marble floors and airy Belle Epoque-style chandeliers, into what was once a noble family’s private chapel. At about 6:15 pm, Anderson knelt on a leopard-skin stool, hands resting on her thighs. The prince stood in front of her, while guests and photographers huddled around them. He lifted a long sword and flicked it on her right shoulder, then on her left, and said, “As prince of Montenegro, I nominate thee Countess of the Lilies.”

With that, Stefano Cernetic presented Anderson with a certificate of the title, signifying time for celebration. The guests poured into the garden among palm trees, magnolias and camellias in the falling evening sun for the Italian tradition of aperitivo, pre-dinner cocktails, then back inside for a seven-course banquet, complete with red and white Italian wine with limited edition labels bearing the name “Prince Stefan” and his royal coat of arms. The guests—three or four dozen Hollywood producers, Chinese heiresses, judges and PR professionals—enjoyed the performance of Phil Palmer, a rock guitarist who toured with Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton, and his wife, the Italian singer Numa.

News and pictures from the event would soon cover the pages of tabloids and newspapers spanning four continents, announcing that the Playboy playmate and Baywatch star was now an imperial countess.

Few noticed one discordant development that night. A journalist of the local Secolo XIX newspaper had also entered Villa Durazzo. After taking pictures of some of the guests, she began telling them, to their astonishment, the prince was a liar and a fake. Quickly, the ball’s organizers were upon her. “You have to get out of here,” she remembers being told.

She didn’t resist the stern request for her exit. But as she lingered outside, she repeated her claims—“the prince is fake”—and watched for reactions from guests who had trickled out to smoke. At first, they got angry at her. Then they grew embarrassed. Then, invariably, they refused to comment.

The moment came courtesy of Tamenne, as well as Cristina Egger, the Serbian woman from the Yacht Club, and a Yugoslavian royal who also developed suspicions about the prince. Together they had tipped off journalists. The Anderson event was a double edged sword, giving the prince his widest audience but also giving Tamenne the chance to spread his subversive message to that audience. It wasn’t the only trick up his sleeve as he went from believer into dogged enemy. When the prince was invited as guest of honor of an official event in the French southern region of Var, Tamenne warned local authorities, and the prince’s invitation was canceled. Cristina also informed the Yacht Club that he had been using their exclusive setting as a hunting ground.

Surely, Stefano Cernetic would not be brazen enough to keep up this routine.

Tennis champion Novak Djokovic, the tough-as-nails, world-class athlete, squinted as he posed for a photo op with the man who introduced himself as a prince. The prince, when he posted the photo, branded himself as “your friend in Monaco.”

He hadn’t missed a beat by early 2016. The coordinated attempt to expose and obstruct the prince by Juan Tamenne had hardly made a dent, and the prince found new facilitators. Stefano was now accompanied by a Greek woman he sometimes introduced as his assistant while his earlier companion, the so-called Marquise, gradually disappeared from his traveling party. His high-profile spree of publicity capped by Pamela Anderson’s countess ceremony had spurred additional interest, which worked out quite well as he toured Italy and was showered with favors, gifts and trips. “If you googled him, there were 25,000 photos of him everywhere in the world with very noticeable people,” says Franco Cricchi, a businessman who invited the prince to spend a summer weekend in the central Italian city of Perugia at his expense. The prince helped to celebrate Cricchi’s birthday, met local authorities and politicians and visited the region’s major wine producers.

Vincenzo Frigulti was a 49-year-old businessman with a stern gaze and wavy black hair who worked in communication and tourism in the southern region of Puglia. He heard about the prince of Montenegro from other professionals in Milan. “He seemed like an authoritative figure who could open markets,” remembers Frigulti.

After the two met, Frigulti began to receive texts from the prince updating him on his movements: holding an hour-long meeting with a Sicilian bishop, opening a consulate in Turin, traveling to Rome with a police escort, knighting the ambassador of the tiny country of San Marino and conferring titles to new recipients. Reassured by the fact that so many luminaries associated themselves with the prince, Frigulti decided to invite him to a new resort in Puglia near Fasano in order to promote the resort and other businesses in the area and to improve its ties with Montenegro. The prince said he would invite other VIPs from his circle, including Italian heiresses, the San Marino ambassador, and mogul Flavio Briatore.

The prince made plans to travel to Puglia with his Greek assistant, who soon became his girlfriend, and a bodyguard and security expert named Massimo Ghilardi. They had met through business contacts, and the prince had asked Ghilardi to use his Mercedes CLA as the “diplomatic car” to travel down to Puglia. The prince proposed not compensating Ghilardi but paying for gas and tolls and introducing him to important people who could advance his career. Ghilardi agreed, later remembering that the prince then tried to haggle. Would Ghilardi pay for half the gas? How about 20 percent?

The prince instructed him to apply Montenegro flags to the front of the car and a sticker bearing the letters “CD” near the plate at the back. Ghilardi was perplexed. He remembers asking the prince if he was allowed to use the flags. (The prince says the flags were Ghilardi’s idea, and that they were not Montenegrin flags but his family’s.) The stickers made the plate resemble diplomatic plates, which in Italy start with “CD” followed by four digits and two letters. His was a regular plate with a sticker next to it, but Ghilardi thought someone unfamiliar with official plates could mistake it for a diplomatic plate. The prince pointed out CD didn’t stand for Diplomatic corps but “Club Diplomatique International,” an organization that, its website says in rickety English, was founded in Argentina “to help human beiings [sic] but also to support the members of the Club world wide.”

About a week before the prince’s arrival, Frigulti met with one of the prince’s ambassadors, Santo Santaniello, an elegantly dressed man whom Frigulti recalled introduced himself as a lawyer. “Vincenzo,” Santaniello reportedly said, “have you made arrangements for the prince’s security? The prince must have a police escort.” Frigulti dutifully forwarded some of the pictures and documents he had received to local law enforcement to point out a VIP was arriving in the area. (Santaniello didn’t respond to Truly*Adventurous’s interview request.)

The carabinieri escorted the prince’s diplomatic car to the resort when he arrived in late July. Frigulti was upset to find out that not one of the celebrities the prince had invited had been able to come. The prince said they were scared and refused to travel in the wake of a terrorist attack in the city of Nice, close to Monaco. Still, the prince impressed him at first as stately and serious, and Frigulti had invested some of his social capital and personal resources to plan a program—it was too late to back out.

Everywhere the group went, the police (Italy’s civilian law enforcement) and the carabinieri (Italy’s law enforcement with military status) took turns escorting them, and local authorities and the crowd gave them a majestic reception. When they visited the local bishop, a crowd gathered to applaud the prince and princess, which is what they called his Greek girlfriend. She was a tall, well-mannered woman with an eye for detail and style. A shopkeeper gifted her a $300 Borsalino hat. When they ate at a restaurant, crowds would sometimes push their noses against the window to see the couple, and women even asked the assistant-turned-lover-turned-princess to take photos while holding their children. Once, when they left the restaurant, the crowd was so large that it filled the streets and blocked the group’s cars, forcing the police escort to blare its sirens to carve a way out.

Frigulti had worked hard to plan the itinerary, but the prince and his companions seemed more interested in having a vacation and generating headlines.

“When are we going to eat?” Frigulti says they often asked. “You’re here to work,” he would reply.

When they did eat, several witnesses say that except for the princess, who ate little, they were a spectacle to behold. They consumed multiple courses, often asking for seconds, and washing food down with champagne, fine wines, whiskeys and cigars. Frigulti always picked up the bills, costing him well over €10,000 of his personal funds over the course of the week. Once, the group even invited the carabinieri escorts to dine with them and sit at a nearby table. By one report, they couldn’t leave their machine guns in the car, so they took them to the restaurant and laid them next to their chairs. The group, which complained about the busy program, napped after lunch and sometimes asked to chill by the pool.

In the same week, Madonna holidayed at a nearby resort to celebrate her birthday. The prince asked Frigulti to arrange for him to meet Madonna, suggesting that he could award her a title. Frigulti wasn’t happy with the request: they had plenty of institutional meetings left, which was what he’d brought him there for. The prince threatened to leave. The Madonna-fueled tension between Frigulti and the prince escalated until the last day, when Frigulti had arranged for the prince to visit Bari to see the remains of Saint Nicholas, the inspiration for Father Christmas himself, an important icon for Orthodox Christians. In protest against the busy schedule, the prince refused to grace Santa Claus’s tomb with his presence, instead taking another dip in the pool.

All the while, the same law enforcement officers who had been persuaded into following the group around now had front row seats to the prince’s activities. Frigulti noticed that the marshal, or commanding officer, had a long face, and the officers appeared to go about their job more briskly, as though they didn’t want to be there.

Frigulti, like Juan Tamenne, was not merely left embarrassed by the prince. He felt they had far more at stake, motivated by a need to protect their reputations. By the end of the trip, he felt they had been used and exploited by the prince.

At one point, the prince brazenly decided to bestow more titles on people at Villa Durazzo—the very same spot he had knighted Pamela Anderson, the same spot where a journalist, tipped off by the prince’s formerly loyal publicist, had tried to expose him.

It was the fall of 2016 when the Stefano Cernetic file ended up on Matteo Bianchi’s* desk at the provincial headquarters of the carabinieri, the force who had escorted him, in Brindisi, Puglia. This case seemed a long way off from the cases Bianchi was used to working on. In recent months, Bianchi’s office had carried out 58 arrests related to mafia violence and conspiracies. They had busted a 48-strong drug trafficking ring, caught a local mafia boss in possession of 13 kilograms of weed, explosives and several firearms, and cracked the case of a violent jewelry heist.

There was no murder this time, and if there was a heist, it was an ingenious one, swiping a royal persona that brought an air of privilege and power with it. The prince was accused of attesting a false identity and possession of false identity documents. The case stemmed from a note by the embassy of Montenegro in Rome to the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who had in turn passed it down the carabinieri chain of hierarchy via certified email. The note asked whether Stefano was impersonating a diplomatic agent, using diplomatic stickers and Montenegrin flags and promising to promote products in Montenegro.

Bianchi and his team spoke with the embassy of Montenegro in Rome to understand the situation better. He found that the country had a sole crown prince, recognized in 2011 as Nikola Petrovic-Njegos. The investigators spent weeks painstakingly retracing Stefano’s steps through the southern region of Puglia, speaking to those who had met him and scouring his plentiful social media channels for photographic evidence. Even as the investigation tightened, the prince attended a ball organized by a pro-Kremlin organization in Rome and knighted several more Italians. After marrying his Greek girlfriend, he was spending more time in Greece. In Athens, he shared a table with Princess Irena of Greece and Denmark.

Bianchi saw the case as one of the most novel ones he had worked on. The target of their inquiries had accomplished something singular. His claims could sound ostentatious, such as his supposed ancestral links to Julius Caesar or his promises to bring orthodox Christian relics back to Montenegro, but he was likable, carried himself well, spoke eloquently and had enough charm to infiltrate political, diplomatic and religious circles.

In June 2017, the carabinieri filed their discoveries with the investigative judge. They announced false identity and documents charges in a press release, which called Stefano’s titles and passports “strictly fake” and characterized his publicity machine as an “intricate pantomime” aimed at receiving free goods and luxury vacations across Europe. Newspapers across four continents carried the story, headline after headline serving readers a version of the same declaration: “Prince of Montenegro Stefan Cernetic is Conman.” “‘Prince’ Raided by Police for Possible Fraud.” “The Truth About Pamela Anderson’s Fake Knighthood.”

* Not his real name. He spoke on condition of anonymity citing the need to protect his identity in the event of future undercover investigations.

The prince was still in Athens on a “diplomatic” tour when his ringing phone woke him up at 6 AM. On the other end of the line was his brother in Turin. He said the police had come and searched Steanfo’s place for four hours, taking away his diplomatic stickers and the seals and stamps he used to produce the titles and diplomatic passports he distributed.

The antagonists who had lined up against him felt both vindication and regret. Vincenzo Frigulti, the Italian publicity agent, felt guilty and confused about his time with the prince. “It was one of the worst periods of my life,” Frigulti told me. “No one had ever created such an embarrassment for me.” Juan Tamenne, who had been so instrumental to the prince’s rise in the French Riviera, said he felt “abused” and seemed shaken when revisiting the events in our interviews. Cristina Egger, the Monaco Yacht Club member, reflected on how the prince “had studied this part well” of being a royal, and stated that “he knew how to manipulate.” She had no qualms about turning to the authorities.

Once the charges hit the press, the prince’s phone was ringing every five minutes for weeks, with journalists and news producers asking him to tell his version of the story.

There are few certain facts. We know Stefano Cernetic was born in 1960 in Trieste, Italy, the first of two sons. The family moved to Turin when the kids were young. His father, Onorato de Cerne, worked at a national sports newspaper.

Stefano’s royal musings began early on. His brother Nikola, who owns an art gallery in Turin, does not publicly claim to be a prince. There are no records of their father claiming to belong to a royal family, either. (Stefano says he kept a low profile to avoid possible political backlash from Yugoslavian communists.) One theory alleged that, in his youth, Stefano served as an assistant to an Italian aristocratic elder, during which time he learned his manners and etiquette. Another claims that it was his father who worked with this man. Stefano told me that as a young man he worked as a radio journalist in Germany covering diplomacy, a job that took him close to popes and diplomats. Those who believe Stefano fabricated a persona in pursuit of an easier life see these experiences as having provided him a template.

By 1987, at age 27, Stefano went to a ball near Turin to which several aristocrats were invited, already introducing himself as a prince. “He said he belonged to Montenegro’s royal family and was related to the recognized royal family,” remembers Pier Felice degli Uberti, then the ball’s planner and currently president of the Italian Heraldry and Genealogy Institute. Degli Uberti knew of no such family ties, but he decided to let the claim pass—after all, he thought, claiming to be a prince is no crime.

By the 1990s, Stefano lived in Monaco for a few years, working for a now defunct agency that represented athletes called Advantage International. For years, he seemed to be figuring out how promotion worked. In 2006, he appeared to run for election in the Italian Senate but did not get a seat. Between 2008 and 2015, as he began publicly claiming to be both descended from Eastern Roman emperors and the crown prince of Montenegro, Macedonia and a growing litany of other countries, he worked as a food and wine journalist for media outlets in Italy, which “didn’t pay much but was a lot of fun because they would invite me to grand hotels and restaurants, sometimes for free, for I did not have the money and wouldn’t have been able to pay.” He also set up a marketing company, Gotha del Gusto, which specialized in paid written and video restaurant reviews, some of which are still live on YouTube. In 2013, he visited a restaurant in Tuscany, introducing himself as a TripAdvisor journalist and asking the manager if he would be interested in an official TripAdvisor review in exchange for a free meal for two and the nominal fee of €50. The manager asked him to wait outside while he called TripAdvisor to verify the program—then he called the police. The restaurant later decided not to press charges.

By the time he moved closer to Monaco, diplomatic work and promotion had become his full-time job. Stefano gained entrance through his press card or others’ invitations. Others describe how Stefano pursued opportunities to be seen with royals and VIPs. When he attended the 2015 Bal de la Rose, for example, witnesses remember him hardly sitting at his table, wandering around looking for photo ops with any member of Monaco’s royal family—prince Albert, his wife, children, nephews.

Several of the royals pictured with him deny knowing who he is. Michel of Yugoslavia, who is also a photographer, said a picture Stefano had posted with him must have been taken during the opening of one of his exhibitions—Stefano had walked up to him like any other fan. Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy, whom Stefano had called “cousin” and “long-term friend” in Facebook posts, also denied knowing him. As for a photo with Archduke Karl Habsburg, an Italian representative told the local press that Stefano had tried to crash a reception organized for the archduke. The representative sent him away, but Stefano must have been lurking nearby when the archduke came out because he ultimately got his photo.

And his Prince Stefan wine labels? The prince had made unannounced stops at several Italian wineries in Italy, where he convinced owners to label hundreds of bottles with his name and coat of arms. The Montalbera Winery in Piedmont labeled 1,200 bottles for him then never heard from him again. The owner reported what he called the “scam” to his lawyers.

The “Pamela Anderson deal” was brought in by Linjie Chou, a PR professional close to the prince who says he had met acquaintances of some of Anderson’s agents serendipitously while renting a car in Florida. The knighting ceremony was organized for publicity—and Hollywood attendees did not pay expenses because they helped generate more publicity. Hong Kong celebrity Josie Ho, the daughter of Macau’s casino titan Stanley Ho, attended the event, bringing scores of people while paying for “certain expenses.” Chou says these practices are customary in the event marketing business. He has since moved to California and says the incident hasn’t damaged his relationship with Anderson, who had appeared on the Ellen show to announce her title of countess given by the prince. “We still succeeded in a way,” Chou says. “She got her press, and well, it wasn’t positive press. But as we say, better than no press.”

Stefano says he left Monaco not because of Tamenne’s attempts to expose him but because the mother of his previous girlfriend, the one whom he had declared a Marquise, had started to heed the allegations surrounding him. Within months, her daughter did, too, and the prince could no longer stay in her apartment in Cap d’Ail. “So I found another woman and I married her,” he later told me, referring to his Greek assistant.

Santaniello, the lawyer-ambassador who asked Frigulti to make arrangements to provide a police escort in Puglia, is in fact a post office manager, according to media reports. The carabinieri deny they provided an escort to Stefano, contradicting eyewitnesses.

Several sources alleged the prince brazenly lived off of the proceeds of selling worthless titles—dame, knight, count, prince—in exchange for ‘free’ donations for the Cernetic royal house, as well as passports for a few thousand euros each. But when I spoke to several people who had received the honors, all denied paying.

Only one person admitted to paying a solicited “free donation” of a few thousand euros to “join” the Cernetic royal house but saw this as normal, like paying to join a golf club or Rotary Club. Cristina Egger noted that someone might gravitate to the prince “because they have their own shortcomings and frustrations about not having gone where they wanted to go.”

Many of the two dozen people interviewed for this story either still believed he was a real prince or said they could not make up their mind. One man who still worked with him to organize events in Montenegro remained certain he was a royal, though he conceded he might be a “self-declared prince.” Chou, who engineered the Pamela Anderson deal, also thinks Stefano Cernetic was a real prince, but he conceded that “maybe [Stefano] didn't keep his paperwork so clear” and no longer works with him. Even many of his self-professed enemies admit appreciation for him, and three people joked that he was “a genius.”

One beer producer said the prince had helped him find a dealer in the French Riviera without even asking for a cut. Another source said the prince had helped him with a charity fundraiser: “If there are more people like Stefano Cernetic, the world will be a better place.”

As my train rolled ahead into the northern Italian flatlands crowned by the Alps, a text came in.

Hello very kind Doctor Perrone, how are you? Confirmed our meeting today at 11 am?

I wanted to ask you for a kindness: normally, when I give interviews, I kindly ask, in case we order something to drink or eat, that you provide for it on behalf of your newspaper. thank you.

Sincerely yours,

Stefano of Montenegro and Macedonia

It was a cold, clear day in the winter of 2022 when I traveled to Turin to meet him. When I messaged him on WhatsApp to arrange our meeting, he said he was about to leave for Greece to promote his new book in which he explains how to build a lasting legacy. The title: “Legacy Legends: Building Unshakable Legacy to Create Strong Heritage.” He said it was already an Amazon bestseller, but from what I could find, the book had zero reviews and only one five-star rating on the platform.

I walked toward a pizzeria that sat on an eight-lane boulevard surrounded by 10-story apartment blocks, a DIY megastore, and a gas station. I couldn’t help but think it felt very different from the lavish 17th-century villa where he had knighted Pamela Anderson years before.

The establishment was closed, but somehow the prince was already inside. He signaled me to come in and explained he was friends with one of the owners, who wasn’t around today. Having the restaurant to ourselves, I took in the man who had been at the center of the firestorm: very tall, pale, only slightly paunchy. Rosy cheeks, narrow nose, bright eyes. His attire was elegant, if somewhat garish, highlighted by a dark green cardigan, a pink shirt, a purple tie with blue and white stripes, a red handkerchief, and a massive gold ring engraved with his family’s coat of arms. The design is similar to the two-headed eagle that dominates Montenegro’s flag.

Sipping both a cappuccino and sparkling water, then a beer, he told me that the turning point of his life came in 2000 when his father died and he took over the “heavy burden” of promoting his house. “There were many things I didn’t know at the time,” he said, “like the fact that I have familial ties to the British royal family and Count Dracula.”

He told me how his recent legal ordeals had destroyed his life. He lost scores of business partners, scared by the bad publicity. “I’ve had financial problems,” he told me. “I have had to pay lawyers with my heart pounding.” Many people he believed to be friends, too, distanced themselves. When he was invited to attend a poolside gala dinner in Monaco, he saw other people stand up and leave when he took his place. “Many other people would have killed themselves for far less. They assassinated me.” He said he was still unable to work on his important diplomatic work and royal house promotion. People Google his name, he told me, and assume he is a criminal.

The 2017 charges spawned three different trials in Italy related to whether he impersonated a diplomat. When I visited, all were waiting to begin. Stefano’s lawyers told me they were sure the cases would be thrown out, but the legal process will likely take years. Stefano argued that he never said he was a Montenegrin diplomat but served on behalf of several international organizations. He acknowledges that his family crest is similar to Montenegro's but insists his family’s crest actually predates the nation’s. He believes Juan Tamenne was, among many other things, jealous of his status, his height and his success with women. But he refused to discuss how he earns income, which might have cleared a few rumors swirling around him.

It will not be the job of the court to decide if he is really a prince, and the fact is that royal claims in Montenegro have been a quagmire since at least 1766. It was then that a pale young physician in his thirties named Šćepan arrived on the Montenegrin coast. A group of citizens started a rumor that the newcomer was Peter III, the deposed czar of Russia who ruled for a short time before his abdication and death. Rumors circulated in Russia that Peter III had not died but fled. Šćepan was no exiled Russian czar, but he encouraged the rumors, exciting Montenegro’s population, who were flattered that a Russian royal would move there. So strong were the rumors that even some of those who had met Peter III in person began to believe that Šćepan was the Russian czar.

In 1767, Šćepan became Montenegro’s ruler. The country’s legitimate ruler fought him: he obtained a letter from Russia stating that Šćepan was an impostor and tried to convince the population they were duped. He was stripped of his possessions, locked up, and had his property pillaged by the fake prince—or, according to some sources, by the country’s angry citizens themselves. Šćepan was proclaimed Montenegro’s absolute ruler, or czar. He fought off Venetian poisoning attempts, an Ottoman invasion and Russian attempts to expose him as a fraud, and he remained beloved by its people until his death by poisoning in 1773. His true identity has never been discovered.

Stefano has come to see his adversities as a conspiracy against him not unlike those faced by his purported ancestor Julius Caesar–or, for that matter, Vlad Dracula, who met his end when he was ambushed by Ottoman patrol. “I’m not a conman, I’m a victim,” the prince said, his voice growing fervent. He said the conspirators included shadowy lobby groups close to other royal families, the Montenegrin government and embassies who had tipped off Rupprecht and the Italian carabinieri, the Freemasons and the Montenegrin and Italian mafia. “The carabinieri surely received bribes from Montenegro's mafia via the Italian mafia. I’m sure of that, even though I have no evidence.” The murder weapon, he said, was the same one used against Donald Trump, whom he admired, used to convince people of the lie that Russia was about to invade Ukraine (at the time of our sitdown the invasion had not yet happened) and used to set up a vaccine dictatorship during the COVID-19 pandemic: fake news.

Conspiracies aside, despite purporting to set the record straight, it’s true that most of the brief newspaper articles about Stefano generated and regurgitated errors from each other, including the claim that Stefano had been taken into police custody (he wasn’t). There was also the questionable anecdote that the prince's downfall began when he asked the luxurious resort to send charges to the Montenegrin embassy, which several sources denied.

The prince told me his ordeal has silver linings. The media attention, newspaper headlines and TV invitations have made him more famous than ever. He said people sometimes stop him on the streets to take pictures together. He says, “I would go to a coffee shop and they would say, ‘I’ve seen you on TV, can we take a selfie?’”He also said the publicity made him into “a bit of a legend.” In his typical style, he took this sentiment a step too far. “It’s a bit like when Nazis killed someone: that person becomes a legend, a martyr.”

Toward the end of our conversation, the restaurant filled up for lunchtime. All in all, he seemed to be doing fine, still remaining active in the promotion of his royal house. He said he would like to move ‘back’ to Montenegro and was hoping to speak to Russian and Chinese agents and the country’s Orthodox church about restoring his monarchy or launching a political career there. “If I play it right with the church, I will get 80% of the vote in Montenegro’s elections,” he said. (It is unclear if he could run for office, since he is not a citizen of Montenegro.)

I remembered the drinks were on me so I stood up. The prince didn’t—he said he would stay for lunch. A dark-haired young woman smiled at me at the cashier's desk and told me there was nothing to pay: the owner had said that everything was on the house. I wondered if he had overheard our conversation and the prince’s royalty claims, or if he had known he was a prince all along. Flabbergasted, I told the prince, who smiled and thanked the owner.

As with the mysterious Šćepan who became a czar, storytelling and royalty are intertwined in European history. Kings, emperors and even local rulers have almost invariably been accompanied by claims, made by them or their apostles, to descend from mythological figures, iconic royals of the past and Greek and Roman gods. “Genealogy has always been the science of fairy tales,” Degli Uberti, the genealogy expert, told me.

Real or fake, Stefano Cernetic excelled at storytelling. His Facebook posts, pictures with royals, genealogy claims, knightings and institutional meetings all seemed geared towards building that story. What the carabinieri called an “intricate pantomime” he called promotion. His efforts embody the rise of social media and the erosion of official royalty and aristocracy. Outside of Britain, Montenegro and a few other countries, royal families are no longer recognized in most of Europe. The titles they bestow have no legal value, and examples of prominent royals bickering over titles have been met with increasing bemusement by the public. Simultaneously, backlash has grown against the idea of genetics defining our identity. Maybe this prince was the quintessential royal of our era. All signs point to Stefano genuinely believing in his princehood and sticking to his story in private and public. So many others around him continue to accept the story that one wonders if pursuers chase a phantom.

Claiming to be a prince in itself is not a crime unless more serious charges like fraud are involved. But in a telling detail, of all those people who obtained titles from the prince, none decided to file complaints, which limited the charges Tamenne and the authorities could bring against him.

The carabinieri told me they never thought the charges would be the end of the prince of Montenegro. “If he moves around in the country, in Europe, across the world, we can’t run after him,” Bianchi said. The game of cat and mouse would continue.

Not long after our coffee, a public appearance by the prince turned expectations upside down again. In July 2022, he traveled to Montenegro and had his son baptized by the head of the country’s Orthodox Church. Then he went to Montenegro’s presidential palace to attend the official celebrations for the country’s Statehood Day, a national holiday. There he was, posing for pictures side by side with Montenegro’s official prince, Nikola Petrovic-Njegos, and with the country’s President Milo Djukanovic, both seemingly content with his presence. Jubilant, Stefano’s assistants reached out to me to make sure I had seen the update. All the obsessed skeptics and doubters had been proven wrong.

At the prince’s Facebook page, the smiling photos of Stefano Cernetic with President Djukanovic remained prominently on display at the time of writing. The captions thank Djukanovic “for his kindness and availability during the official diplomatic reception,” then Stefano tags the official Montenegro Prince Nikola as his “cousin.” To Stefano, the images captured “the whole history of Montenegro in a few pictures.”

A few days later, the office of president Djukanovic issued a note to local media.

It stated that Stefano Cernetic had never been on the guestlist for the event and called for an investigation into how he had sneaked in.

ALESSIO PERRONE is a freelance writer and reporter based in Milan, Italy.

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