Insight explores con artists and romance scams in 'Conned'. Watch the full episode on
“I can help,” Marianne 'Mair' Smyth said, with a charismatic sparkle in her eye. I was hooked.
I had no idea this woman, who would become my best friend for four years, was actually an international con artist on the run from authorities. And that I was really one of her many marks.
I would go on to produce a 10-episode podcast about my harrowing ordeal titled “” chronicling my four years of falling for each and every one of her spectacularly detailed scams. And later, uncovering dozens of other victims all over the world who did too.
I’m a happily married gay man, so she couldn’t use sex to ensnare me. Her techniques were far more cunning.
Mair invited my husband and me out for dinner shortly after we first met, and it quickly became a routine. Over the course of four years, she wined and dined us at fancy restaurants and always insisted on paying.
“I love you guys,” she’d say. “I have a lot of money, let me pay!”
Mair said she was originally from Ireland and pointed to a framed document hanging in her living room. “This is the Irish Constitution. See that signature at the bottom? That’s my great uncle,” she said.
Since my knowledge of Ireland was scant, I believed her. I had no idea it was fake.
We’d hang out almost every evening in our BBQ area, exchanging intimacies under the cool Los Angeles sky. She’d bring me Irish tea and pastries and regale me with stories of how when she was a young girl, her Irish grandmother, who was in the IRA, would teach Mair to hide on top of a bridge and hurl Molotov cocktails down on British soldiers. I was riveted, but those were all lies too. She wasn’t Irish. She was born in the United States.
Mair Smyth, and two of her disguises she used to con her victims.
Part of my family disowned me for being gay. Mair said her family in Ireland disowned her too. She told me they were trying to get her disinherited from a large portion of her $30 million Irish estate.
She’d frequently show me emails and text messages from her barristers in Ireland. From her lawyers in Los Angeles. From her hateful cousins Fintan and Dairmuid. I had no idea those emails and texts were all fake. Originating from a series of Google accounts Mair created to email and text herself as all these characters to help sell her fantastic stories.
While she was scamming me, she was scamming dozens of others around the world by impersonating psychics, mortgage brokers, psychologists, lawyers, travel agents and even cancer victims.
Mair was also a master of disguise, changing her look from crime to crime like an actress going from film to film.
Two of Mair Smyth’s disguises.
I eventually caught her in one lie, and lies are like rats. When you see one - it means there are a thousand others hiding. And boy were there ever!
I very quickly wised up and confronted her for scamming me. I recorded it on my iPhone. We play that entire confrontation in the podcast Queen of the Con: The Irish Heiress.
I then went to police. And they turned me away. “You gave her the money,” they said. “It’s not a crime.” I was livid. And my anger drove me to launch my own investigation where I uncovered 45 other victims of 'The Irish Heiress' con artist all over the world.
I eventually got police to take my case seriously. They soon arrested her, and she was convicted by a jury in Los Angeles of Grand Theft by Inducement for scamming me and sentenced to five years in jail.
Since I've told my story and interviewed other victims, I’ve gotten a profound sense of closure and a healing that I hope every victim can feel at some point. If you’ve been the victim of a con artist, the last thing in the world that con artist wants you to do is tell people about it.
But publicity is kryptonite to con artists. It stops them in their tracks. And saves countless others from falling for their cons.
