A US-born woman who disguised herself as an heiress to a $30m fortune while scamming nearly $100,000 from a television producer – who later sent her to prison and documented her misdeeds on a hit podcast – has been ordered extradited to Northern Ireland on a separate set of fraud charges.
Marianne “Mair” Smyth’s extradition to the UK was authorized by John Nivision, a US federal magistrate judge, on Thursday, more than two months after she was arrested at a short-term rental home in Bingham, Maine, court records show.
Smyth was staying there after an early release from a prison sentence for defrauding podcaster Johnathan Walton, whose Queen of the Con: The Irish Heiress chronicled his experience with her; how she allegedly ripped off others, including in Belfast, Northern Ireland; and prompted the decisive tip about her whereabouts in Bingham before her 23 February recapture there.
Alluding to how Queen of the Con helped authorities in the UK build a case against Smyth, Walton added: “My only desire now is for justice at long last for the victims in Northern Ireland.”
There, she befriended Walton – who earned his living as a reality TV producer – and convinced him that she was a wealthy Irish heiress locked in a legal battle with her family over $30m that she was supposed to inherit.
Past ruses to take money from unsuspecting people included impersonating the actor Jennifer Aniston, a psychologist, a court-appointed child custody investigator, a psychic, a cancer patient and even a National Hockey League coach.
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