Police called in as Dunhill scion Piers is ‘targeted in blackmail plot’
PIERS DUNHILL appears to have it all. The greatgreat grandson of tobacco magnate Sir Alfred Dunhill is handsome and seemingly not short of cash.
Indeed, he’s quite a man about town, and once enjoyed an entanglement with Made In Chelsea star Tabitha Willett, 30, whom he whisked off to Mykonos last summer just a month after they began dating.
However, the almost perfect façade disguises a troubling behind-thescenes battle that has forced his family to involve the police. Piers is said to have been subjected to a series of online and verbal allegations – and has even faced attempted blackmail.
In a disquieting development last week, a website surfaced under the domain name ‘piersdunhillconman. com’ containing emphatic and damaging claims about Piers and his business, Dunhill Bismarck Group, which lists Princess Alessandra von Bismarck as co-founder.
The website has now been taken down.
Dunhill, 28 this month, says he’s known the person behind the website ‘for years’. A source tells me that Piers and other members of the family are nearly at their wits’ end.
‘An individual has been posting on YouTube under a fake account he set up in Piers’ name,’ I’m told.
‘He originally posted in his own name and then changed to a fake account. He has been blackmailing Piers and upsetting the entire family with thousands of WhatsApp messages. Piers’s family has spoken to the police about it.’
I understand that Dunhill’s antagonist is known to the family, who have approached his relatives to persuade him to end his campaign.
‘It’s extremely serious and simply has to stop,’ the source says.
In 2020, Dunhill and his sister, Natasha, 29, became directors of their mother Alexandra’s cannabidiol health firm, Alexandra Dunhill Limited, but resigned a year later.
He now concentrates on Dunhill Bismarck Group – an ‘advisory boutique’ that works ‘in a distinct way’ to help growth companies raise funds from ‘our contacts from all over the world’s regions’.