A con woman who once swindled a reality TV producer was arrested in Maine last month, as authorities in Northern Ireland seek to charge her for allegedly running a mortgage scam over a decade ago.
Marianne Smyth is accused of scamming tenants out of around $173,000 from 2008 to 2010. Authorities in the U.K. are looking to charge her with four counts of theft, and four counts of fraud by abuse.
Smyth, an American, was previously convicted in 2019 for grand theft after she stole nearly $70,000 from Johnathan Walton, a reality TV producer, while she masqueraded as an Irish heiress waiting to collect her millions. While in Los Angeles, she told people she was a psychic, and allegedly impersonated actress Jennifer Aniston, Los Angeles District Attorney Heba Matta, and others. She had previously been charged with stealing $200,000 from her employer in L.A., writing bad checks in Tennessee, and grand theft in Florida.
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Deeply betrayed by the woman he considered his close friend, Walton became obsessed with unraveling all of Smyth’s lies, and allegedly uncovered several more people she’d victimized, according to an exposé in The Hollywood Reporter. Walton, who is now seeking a private investigator’s license, said he’d been feeding information about her to the authorities for years, and applauded her most recent arrest.
“This is something I’ve been working hard on for the past seven years and even as that sentence escapes my mouth, seven years, I was beginning to believe it would never happen,” he said. “So I’m thrilled.”
After being released from prison early, Smyth had relocated to Maine where she had been running a life coaching service under the alias Lucia Belia, deeming herself an “Emissary of Satan, a practitioner of Black Magic, a psychic with Clairsentient, Claircognitive, Clairtangient, Clairvoyant, and channeling gifts.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, a complaint was filed by federal prosecutors for her extradition, and Smyth was arrested in Bingham, Maine, on Feb. 23.
On March 7, a U.S. magistrate judge ordered that Smyth would be held without bail until her extradition hearing.
