A 49-year-old German woman who had been posing as the empress of a non-existent kingdom and rubbing shoulders with Italy’s elite had been accidentally unmasked as a fraud.

Sandra Nicole Martinez, who had adorned herself with titles like ‘Her Royal Highness’ or ‘Her Imperial Highness”, had become a regular at exclusive parties and social events in Italy’s capital city after being introduced to them by legendary Italian socialite Guya Sospisio a few years ago. Apparently, no one questioned her claims of being the Empress of the Imperial House of Glodeni, a royal house with headquarters in Beirut, Lebanon, even though a simple Google search would have revealed that Glodeni is actually a town in the tiny Eastern European country of Moldova. Martinez was eventually unmasked as a fraudster completely by accident.

Photo: Instagram/imperialhouseofglodeni

The fall of the fake empress of Glodeni began in March of 2024 when a wall in the Trastevere district of Rome suddenly collapsed, damaging several vehicles. Among those cars was a Ferrari driven by Sandra Nicole Martinez, which investigators discovered had expired license plates, no registration, and no insurance. This obviously raised some questions, and further investigations revealed more inconsistencies regarding Martinez’s vehicles. For example, the license plate of her Bentley belonged to a truck in Germany and had hundreds of outstanding fines totaling around 2,600 euros ($3,000).

Police found that the Empress of Goldeni had been driving and parking her luxury cars through Rome’s historical center, ignoring license plate cameras because she knew the automatically-generated fines were not being issued in her name. Unfortunately, Italian authorities claim that she now faces penalties of up to 100,000 euros, for driving unlicensed vehicles with fake license plates.

As for her royal title, the Imperial House of Glodeni appears to have been registered in Beirut in February of this year, but there is nothing royal about it. However, Sandra Nicole Martinez did her best to prove the opposite, mingling with actual blue blood at exclusive parties and events and posting glamorous photos and clips on her Instagram account, @imperialhouseofglodeni. She posed with actual royalty, politicians, businessmen, and Catholic clerics, none of whom suspected anything.

Sandra’s story of identity fraud reminds us of the Italian conman who called himself “His Imperial and Royal Highness Stefan Cernetic, Hereditary Prince of Montenegro, Serbia and Albania” and managed to befriend members of some of the world’s most famous royal families. His story is even more fascinating than that of the Empress of Glodeni.