JPA/Hibernate proxy not fetching real object data, sets all properties to null

Question

I'm using Hibernate with JPA and have a relationship that looks like this:

public class PencilImpl implements Pencil {

    @ManyToOne(targetEntity = PersonImpl.class, fetch = FetchType.LAZY)
    @JoinColumn(name = "owner", nullable = false)
    private Person owner;

    ...

    @Override
    public final Person getOwner() {
        return owner;
    }
}

Since I started using the LAZY fetch type, everytime I try to get a pencil's owner (pencil.getOwner) I get a non-null object that has all of it's inner properties set to null.

I looks like the proxy created by Hibernate is not fetching the real object from the database when it should.

Any ideas? Thanks :)