The Irish Heiress: Ep. 5, The Politician
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Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, the host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio. I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil. They're just some weird guy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America.

Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, and welcome to Haunting, Purgatory's premiere podcast. I'm your host, Teresa. We'll be bringing you different ghost stories each week, straight from the person who experienced it firsthand. Some will be unsettling, some unnerving, some even downright terrifying. But all of them will be totally true.

Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, y'all.

Dr. Joy here. I invite you to join me every Wednesday on the Therapy for Black Girls podcast, a weekly chat about mental health and personal development, where my expert guests and I discuss the unique challenges and triumphs faced by Black women through the lens of self-care, pop culture, and building the best version of you. So if you're looking for more ways to incorporate wellness into your life, listen to the Therapy for Black Girls podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Certain portions of what you're about to hear have been dramatized based on real-life events, eyewitness accounts, and court records. When I find out my best friend is scamming me, I decide to start a blog. I know there must be others out there, others I should warn, but I didn't know I'd be rescuing an unsuspecting Newport Beach engineer from losing millions of dollars.

Oh, she was trying to get a hold of his property. Both of them. I don't just stop with the blog. I bust her scamming techniques for impersonating celebrities wide open. She would set up Google accounts and phone numbers and tag Jennifer Aniston into it so it would come up on her phone or email that Jen was calling or Jen was emailing or Jen was texting.

I also exploit the fact that Mayor Smith carelessly shares really private information with victims she's scamming. She gave you her email password. Right. Why? Because she couldn't figure out how to use a goddamn fire stick. For someone so smart and conniving, a pretty dumb move, right? I use that intel to get into her email account and uncover evidence of dozens of different scams she's pulling.

I also uncover something else. So what's sugardaddyforme.com? Sugar daddies pay sugar babies, and she had multiple men paying her a monthly fee for sex. I'm Jonathan Walton, and this is Queen of the Con, Episode 5, The Politician.

Gotta admit, I had no idea a dating site like sugardaddyforme.com existed. But after uncovering dozens of email exchanges from a bunch of different men from that site in Mayer's email account, I am shocked. And I share this latest development with my buddy Evan. Yeah, it's like Escort. Yeah, I mean...

They say they're not prostitutes. And listen, nothing's wrong with being a prostitute. If I was a better looking man, I would be a prostitute. You know, you got to work what you got. Right. And nothing against prostitutes, but it is what it is. Sex for money is prostitution. It's sex for money, yeah. Right. So sugar daddy for me is a thinly veiled way for women to find men who will pay them for sex. Right. Which isn't too far off from J-Date.

I should point out here that sugardaddyforme.com says they're not about prostitution. They're a website for women who agree that, quote, it's just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor man. But Mayor's scammy twist at being a sugar baby is obviously not a part of their terms of service. She uses the email handle YourGallwayGirl to create a profile back in 2011, which

Galway's actually a well-known city in Ireland, and this proves that as far back as 10 years ago, Mare was pretending to be Irish. And a lot of men in Southern California ate it up, like boiled bacon and cabbage. That's a famous dish in Ireland, according to Google. She had multiple men paying her a monthly fee for sex. And the one thing all these men had in common, other than they're paying for sex, is they were all married.

There were married men who didn't, I guess, want... Because if you're a married man and you want to have an affair, you run the risk of the woman falling in love or telling your wife or whatever. This was a way to ensure that you're getting kind of a professional sex partner who's just doing it for money. She's not going to go to your wife. You're safe. Right, yeah.

I start poring over all the email exchanges between Mare, a.k.a. your Galway girl, and these various married men paying her $1,000 a month, sometimes more, for sex. And the one thing they all have in common is whenever the men try to end their sugar daddy arrangement, Mare pulls one of the oldest ploys out of her bottomless bag of tricks, extortion. ♪

Oh, jeez.

Here's one exchange between your Galway girl, aka Mayor Smith, and a married man in Los Angeles who's trying to end his sugar daddy arrangement with her. Mayor flies off the handle and gets very upset that he's dumping her, and he's trying to calm her down while dismissing her anger as a misunderstanding. But it's not a misunderstanding at all.

He doesn't want to pay her for sex anymore, and that makes her furious. I'm so sorry. One thing about email or instant messaging is the interpretation of what is said. I don't want to make you angry and make you feel hurt. We're again at a crossroads and I feel bad, but with everything going on in my life, I can't handle anything else stressful. I need to go.

I did not misread the chats. I will mail them to you and you can read them when they arrive. I printed them out after getting your last email. You have made me very angry. If you are not going to honor your promise, I do not know what else to say to you but that I am sorry and I gave you the opportunity to do the right thing. What do you mean, mail them to me?

Mail them to you. Postal service. You don't have my address. Email it to me. I do have your address. I will send it in the morning. Wow. I cannot believe you're going to do that. Now it sounds like extortion. So I guess I need to contact the legal authorities. You know you promised to pay me twice a month. That is a fact. I didn't make it up or misinterpret anything. Please don't send me a copy. I don't need to see it.

When you say you were sending it to me, when you could have easily emailed it to me, why would I not think the worst? Especially when you say you have my address and I don't know how you got it. There are many women out there who try to extort money from guys and I never ever thought that was you. I still don't think it's you, but the emails got me to think maybe I was wrong.

I really do want to see you, but I have no time now or in the very near future. As for me giving you a thousand dollars, it was my understanding that it was based on seeing each other.

I want you to call the authorities. I want what you promised me. You need to do right by me, not treat me like I'm an extortionist or crazy. You can admit it and take care of me like you promised me because you are a good person, or we can continue to fight. I want you to send the money. End of argument.

You don't have to be a psychic like Mare to see how this ends. All these shakedowns come to a head in pretty much the same way. And all of them paid her to go away. Yeah. And they're not going to go to police. Yeah, they're not going to go to police. But yeah, it all started on the magical website, sugardaddyforme.com. She was a sugar baby, an SB. Yeah, I think she aged out a sugar baby, though. She's more of like a sugar mommy now.

And with age comes wisdom and bigger shakedowns, much bigger. Shortly after her last sugar daddy dalliance in May of 2011, Mayer steps up to the majors and begins dating the politician. He's rich, he's famous, in Los Angeles political circles at least, and he's looking for a little fun on the side. By the way, a lot of Mayer's victims have questioned whether the politician really exists at all.

And I assured them, as I'll assure you, he does. Did you ever meet that guy? I did meet the politician. I met the politician three times. The first time I met him was at her tree trimming party. He was there with all of the other employees from Pacific Islands. Seemed like a nice guy. He was real.

The second time, we double dated. And then the third time I met him was when he gave me cash after I bailed her out of jail. He paid me back. And you've been very secretive about this politician. You've never even told me his name. No. Well, he doesn't want to be known. He specifically asked me. He's given me information and I'm grateful. But he doesn't want to be involved. I can see that. He's married with kids. He doesn't want any part. Because she was like a mistress, right? She was his mistress, yeah.

Sifting through the wreckage of all of Mare's scams to find the black box and analyze all her prolific and elaborate confidence tricks, it's a fascinating study in abject hubris. I mean, she's got a big fish like the politician on the hook, right? And instead of being furtive and keeping her high dollar mark to herself, she does the opposite.

she introduces him to a bunch of other victims she's scamming. At the same time, she's scamming him. Now, he had a relationship with her, didn't he? Oh, absolutely. Before Mare scammed strip club manager Sherry Cooper, she forged a deep friendship with her and inserted the politician into Sherry's daily life. Because I was in the car when she was talking to him and she was like, shh, don't say anything. She did that to a lot of people. Right. She'd have them in the car as witnesses and call him. And he had no idea.

He's thinking he's having this illicit affair, but in reality, she's using him and his, quote, power to scam people, you know, because she's dating a politician. And it wasn't long before Sherry actually met and hung out with Mayer and the politician together. I used to tease her about him all the time. I said, I used to say, if you're going to have an affair, why are you having an affair with an old man? He's decrepit.

I said, he wears his pants up under his chest. I said, he's nasty, Mar. I said, look at his face. He's nasty. He's a wrinkled up old man. Why are you having an affair?

You're a good-looking woman. You're a smart-looking woman. You have an affair with a nice young man. Oh, she had these sexual exploit stories. I know. She said he was hung like a donkey. Oh, my God. And all these sex toys and all this stuff. Kinky sex aside, the scams Mayor polls on the politician are many and extremely elaborate. I heard about the one where she took the money to... Virginia. Yeah. Yeah.

Mayer's email account is an intricate roadmap for this doozy of a con, so pay attention. When they start dating in 2011, the politician makes the mistake of telling Mayer about a crazy mistress he had years before, who is now living in Virginia. Months later, right before an election, Mayer impersonates this mistress via text and email and threatens to go public with evidence of the politician's past affair with her.

So the politician, scared and starting to panic, leans on his current mistress, Mare, for help and advice. And in no time, Mare is texting and emailing with the ex-mistress, who she's also pretending to be, and working out a $50,000 hush money payment. So the politician puts $50,000 in cash in a suitcase and gives it to Mare,

And Mayer promises she'll deliver it to the ex-mistress in Virginia herself and get a non-disclosure agreement signed. When in reality, she just went home with her bag of cash and laid low for a few days to trick the politician into thinking she flew to Virginia.

And she told me that she was taking his money there to, you know, so that he didn't have to confront her. To pay off a mistress. Yeah. So, yeah. She told me that too. So at the time we were best friends and I believed that she was helping the politician pay off a mistress before an election so she doesn't go public. I believe it too. So he gave her a suitcase full of cash. I believed it.

Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Stories about regaining a sense of safety, a handle on reality after your entire world is flipped upside down.

From unbelievable romantic betrayals... The love that was so real for me was always just a game for him. To betrayals in your own family... When I think about my dad, oh, well, he is a sociopath. Financial betrayal...

This is not even the part where he steals millions of dollars. And life or death deceptions. She's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after they kill me. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio.

I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. I've collected the stories of hundreds of aspiring little Hitlers of the suburbs, from the Nazi cop who tried to join ISIS, to the National Guardsman plotting to assassinate the Supreme Court, to the Satanist soldier who tried to get his own unit blown up in Turkey. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil,

They're just some weird guy. And you can laugh. Honestly, I think you have to. Seeing these guys for what they are doesn't mean they're not a threat. It's a survival strategy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America. Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks ghouls and girls and welcome to Haunting, Purgatory's premiere podcast for all things afterlife.

I'm your host, Teresa. We'll be bringing you different ghost stories each week, straight from the person who experienced it firsthand. Some will be unsettling. When she was with her imaginary friend, she would turn and look at you, and you felt like something else was looking at you too. Some unnerving. The more I looked at it, I realized that the thumb looked more like a claw, like a demon.

Some even downright terrifying. The things that I saw, heard, felt in that house were purely demonic. But all of them will be totally true. Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you live and get your podcasts.

Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words.

That I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session, 24 hours. BPM 110.

120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm.

Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Around the same time in 2012 that Mayer is supposedly flying to Virginia to pay off the politician's ex-mistress with $50,000 cash in hand, Mayer's co-worker at Pacific Islands, Michelle Roque, is helping Mayer deposit large amounts of cash at various ATM machines in Los Angeles on several occasions. There was one time...

on the way to work early in the morning, she told me, "Oh, let's stop at the bank because the politician gave me some money so I can deposit it." And I tell you, this is a lot of cash. And I was holding the cash in my hand, helping her deposit it in the machine. And how much money did she say the politician gave her? How much money did you think you were looking at? At least $8,000 for that one morning alone.

and she's depositing it in the ATM machine and you're holding the bag? I'm holding the money while she puts them in. Because the bank was still closed. It was like 7:30 or whatever time before work. Right. It was like, "Oh, we'll just go to Chase and we'll just deposit it in the machine." So I was hanging onto the money while she feeds it. Any concerns Michelle has about all this cash, Mayer quickly and convincingly explains away.

The politician is supposedly helping Mare get her inheritance from her family, and he's giving her some of it in cash, yada yada yada. But there's one glaring inconsistency in Mare's story about the politician that makes no sense at all to Michelle.

I actually met him. You did meet him? Yes, I did. We went to McCormick, had a happy hour, the three of us. So he was pretty nice. Did you know he was married? No, I didn't until later on when he was doing a speech on TV. Let's go watch him, right? He's going to be on TV because he's campaigning. Right. So when he said something about, I want to thank my wife, I was like, whoa, wait a minute. Hold on.

And then she insists, he goes, "No, he didn't say wife. He said girlfriend." I said, "I was watching it, Mare." And he said, "Wife." - Wow. That's so weird. So Mare tried to hide the fact that he had a wife from you, but she told me that from the very beginning, that, you know, she's the mistress and he has a wife and it's a loveless marriage and it's an arrangement they have. And it's funny though, the little tweaks of the story that you got versus the story that I got.

Mayer must have had a reason to want Michelle to believe that the politician was not married. It might have had something to do with the fact that Mayer portrayed herself to Michelle as a devout Catholic, as a conservative Republican, as a real church-going stickler for the Ten Commandments and the Bible. Whatever plan Mayer had to con Michelle must have hinged on Michelle believing all that stuff.

But Sherry Cooper got a different version of Mare altogether. Around Sherry, Mare portrayed herself as promiscuous and bragged about her many sexual conquests. "Oh my God, and all these sex toys and all this stuff, and she wanted me to go into the sex toy industry with her, and I was like, 'Eh, no.'" Mare must have thought Sherry, being a strip club manager, would relate more to that character as opposed to the devout Catholic woman character.

Mare talks about her ability to morph into different people for the various men she dates in that newly discovered audio recording we heard in the last episode. I was different with Robert than I am with Bob. I was different with Philip than I am with Robert. Because women, men adapt to the person they're with. They don't have to change totally.

How Mare keeps all the many variations of her one personality straight, from victim to victim and con to con, is something that still inspires a begrudging awe in me, even if there were chinks in the armor. She was a brilliant woman. She was in some respects, but in others, not so much. Like, she gave me her email password.

Yeah, that was a mess, wasn't it? And I wasn't the only one. She gave the nanny, Bob's nanny, I don't think you ever met her. No. Sarah. Sarah was helping her set up her Amazon Fire Stick, and she gave Sarah her password over the phone. So it's like, on one hand, she's running all these cons, she knows she's scamming all these people, and yet she's giving her victims ammunition against her one day. Jesus.

Mare eventually tries to trick Sherry into helping her scam the politician. But first, she has to figure out a clever way to get Sherry inside his office. It's human nature, really. When people are in a bind, the power of suggestion is very, very persuasive.

She took me to him for a meeting, for a consultation, because the clubs I was working for weren't paying me correctly at one of the clubs. And I was pissed off about it. And I wanted to know what my rights were. And she took me. She took me there. And I met with him, sat in on an appointment. She didn't go, but she lined it up. And I had a consultation with him.

Shortly after that consultation in 2014, the politician dumps Mayer. So she tries to convince Sherry to convince her husband, Andre, to be her felony reconnaissance team. I can't believe she wanted him to go in and bug his office. Talking about your husband, Andre. She wanted you guys to bug his office. She wanted me to get him to go to his office and put a bug in his office. And she was going to buy the bug. And she wanted him to go in and do it.

And he was like, "Fuck that. That's not gonna happen."

I'm guessing, since the politician had deep pockets, and since Mare wasn't going to be in his life anymore because he broke up with her, she needed an alternative way to continue gathering intel on him, so she can continue coming up with new and clever ways to scam him, or blackmail him, or worse, ruin his career and destroy his marriage. And Mare didn't just involve Sherry in her quest for knowledge about the politician either.

Even before the politician dumped her, Mayer was always spying on him. And her Pacific Islands coworker Michelle got taken along on these surveillance expeditions more than once.

We were parked in front of, well not in front, like across from his house, watching his house. So I said, "Why don't we just come in?" Because she said she has a key to the house. That's what she said, right? Right. And I had no reason not to believe her. I've met him and, you know, I know that they're going out. And she said, "No, I can't do that because supposedly the son was home." So we camped out outside. I don't know what we're waiting for though. You never saw him? I never saw him come out of the house, no.

I went with her twice, just camping outside of the house, and I don't understand why. Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind.

Stories about regaining a sense of safety, a handle on reality after your entire world is flipped upside down from unbelievable romantic betrayals. The love that was so real for me was always just a game for him. To betrayals in your own family. When I think about my dad, oh, well, he is a sociopath. Financial betrayal.

This is not even the part where he steals millions of dollars. And life or death deceptions. She's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after they kill me. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio.

I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. I've collected the stories of hundreds of aspiring little Hitlers of the suburbs, from the Nazi cop who tried to join ISIS, to the National Guardsman plotting to assassinate the Supreme Court, to the Satanist soldier who tried to get his own unit blown up in Turkey. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil,

They're just some weird guy. And you can laugh. Honestly, I think you have to. Seeing these guys for what they are doesn't mean they're not a threat. It's a survival strategy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America. Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. ...schools and girls, and welcome to Haunting, Purgatory's premiere podcast for all things afterlife.

I'm your host, Teresa. We'll be bringing you different ghost stories each week, straight from the person who experienced it firsthand. Some will be unsettling. When she was with her imaginary friend, she would turn and look at you, and you felt like something else was looking at you too. Some unnerving. The more I looked at it, I realized that the thumb looked more like a claw, like a demon.

Some even downright terrifying. The things that I saw, heard, felt in that house were purely demonic. But all of them will be totally true. Listen to Haunting on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you live and get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you.

Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session, 24 hours. BPM 110, 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people.

There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling, as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa, I said the words.

That I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Miss Spelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In Mare's apparent desperation to get the politician back into her life after he dumps her, she turns to an unusual place for help. Mare practiced witchcraft. Yes. And you witnessed that. Yes.

Mayer's psychic client and one-time friend, Michelle Thompson DaCosta, the one whose name Mayer allegedly used along with her social security number to apply for a credit card and charge up $2,500, saw a side of Mayer that very few people did during their brief and tumultuous friendship. What did you see? What did you witness? Okay, so yeah, Mayer loved to do witchcraft with me.

I hated to kind of be a part of her witchcraft because she's so negative. And you know, I mean, if you believe any sort of spiritual world or any of that, you know what you put out, you get back, right? And so honestly, I would just sit there. But when she would try to work on things that were positive, I would...

definitely be a part of that. But she would do love spells. She would do binding spells. She would do binding spells on the politician. So like a lot of times after her day's worth of work, when she would do things for clients, that's when she would do her work. So yeah,

before we would have our wine for the night or whatever, she would do her witchcraft for her clients. 'Cause you could pay for that if you wanted. - So clients paid her to cast spells. - They did. - And you witnessed her casting the spells. - Yes. - And what did that look like? - So she used a lot of chicken wings. Did you hear about that? The chicken wings? She used a lot of chicken wings. She would tie the chicken wings. She would use a lot of dragon's blood. And then she would do, I don't remember, but you're still in the same complex, right?

If you go out to that tree in the middle, you will find a shit ton of chicken wings. She would throw chicken wings there? No, she would dig up and she would bury the chicken wings and they would be tied.

and use dragon blood on them. What's dragon blood? So dragon blood is like an oil. So it's not actually dragon's blood, clearly, but it's an oil. And so she would use it and she would come up with her own stuff, I believe. I've never seen this stuff anywhere else, but that's where she would bury them. If you go out to that tree, the bones might still be there. I'm going to go dig it. And she would do it a lot. So she would go to Food for Less and buy like a big pack of chicken.

We would go to like Botanicus and go buy like the red candles, penis shaped candles. And you can do a spell and carve a man's name for a woman into that. And she would do that stuff for some of her clients. So I saw her do definitely a lot of that. Her binding spells, I don't know if those work in terms of binding a man to a woman or whatever. But chicken wings were like her number one. Penis candles were like number two.

But all the chicken wings and all the penis candles that Mare used to cast binding spells for her and the politician to get back together didn't work. In the end, the politician didn't leave Mare because she scammed him. He didn't even know she scammed him until I told him. The politician left Mare for the same reason a lot of men jettison relationships. He just wasn't attracted to her anymore.

His last email to her, I'm sure, must have cut like a knife and wounded her deeply. I cringed when I first read it. He basically says, the last time we fucked, I had to use Viagra. Like, I'm not attracted to you anymore. But that's because she kept getting crazy. Yeah. Yeah. She was a turnoff. And that's how, honestly, that's what it was like for our friendship. Because at the end, I was like, I'm so tired of you being a psycho bitch. It's exhausting.

Hearing Michelle talk about Mare being a psycho bitch is kind of weird because I never saw that side of her. To me, Mare was always so kind and friendly and giving. And that's why I liked her. That's why I loved her. I know now that Mare had a completely different personality for every victim she scammed. This is the thing. We all rationalize things in our head, whether they're right or wrong. We all have our own thought process.

At this point, I'm almost a year into my investigation. Police haven't filed any charges, but my blog is still active, and every time I find a new victim, I post a new update and more victims get in touch with me. One day, I get a call from one of Mayor's childhood friends who knew her as Marianne Elizabeth Andel in Bangor, Maine, back in the late 1970s.

It's so bizarre. I knew her in a junior high is when I met her. How old were you at that point? 11 or 12. Jen Westwood spends a handful of years living close by a pre-adolescent Mayor Smith. We stopped hanging out when we got to high school because I moved to the other side of town, not that it really matters, but I wasn't able to walk to her house anymore or whatever. Something interesting you mentioned in your email to me was that

You read about all her con artistry, and you said you're not surprised based on the stuff you guys used to talk about or she used to talk about. Well, the odd thing was is that I went to her house. I played in the neighborhood with her, and then I went to her house. She told me which one was her house, but then there was one house that went to it, and we went in.

And I thought this was odd. She had me go, she showed me her sister's room and it was a great big bedroom. And I was like, wow, this is, you know, great big room, you know. And her sister's name was Jenny, she said. And it was, she had this crack on the wall that said J-E-N-N-I on it. And she wanted me to put on, she said, here, put my sister's clothes on and pose underneath the sign and we'll pretend it's your room. What?

And how old were you at this point? Do you remember roughly? We were like 12 years old. And I was like, I thought that was kind of odd. Yeah. I actually have the picture somewhere. Oh, my God. I hope you can find it. And I remember thinking at the time, you know, I was really uncomfortable and I thought it was weird. Like, why would she want me to pose in her sister's room and call it my room? How certain are you that was in fact her home?

Well, you know, now I'm starting to think that maybe it wasn't. Because I remember we went in and nobody was home. There were some kids in the house, but I didn't know who they were. So I just thought they were friends of her brother and sister. It's so weird. Yeah, I think that was one of her earliest scams.

Yeah, I don't think it was. Maybe she was, you know, honing her craft from way back then. And at first I just thought, maybe she's evil. But now talking to you, it sounds like...

Is it some kind of mental psychosis or something? Because for a 12 year old to be engaging in this kind of stuff is crazy.

What was the purpose of leading you to believe that was her house? Did she want something from you? Did she give you anything or ask you for anything ever? No, no. I think, well, it sounds like, of course, I haven't been in touch with her or anything. It sounds like she obviously had some sort of issues with, you know, like maybe not, like she wants to be wealthy. She wants people to think she's wealthy. So maybe she wanted me to think she was.

It appears that even at 12 years old, Mare is practicing her manipulation skills. We'll talk again soon. If anything else comes to you, just email me or text me or call me. Let me know. Okay, sounds good. Thank you so much. Have a great night. You too. Bye. In the days and weeks after talking to Mare's childhood friend, Jen, my blog continues to unearth more and more of Mare's victims from all over the country.

A couple of New York real estate investors contact me saying Mayer scammed them out of $60,000 by tricking them into believing her daughter needed emergency surgery. We thought she'd die without it, and we wired the cash immediately. A woman in Tennessee contacts me saying Mayer tricked her boss out of thousands using a fraudulent business she started there called Celtic Catering.

She disappeared right after she got the money. I have no idea where she was hiding until I found your blog. I learn Mare also tricked a West Palm Beach housewife out of $150,000 using a psychic scam. My husband wanted to divorce me over it. Even my own landlord informs me that Mare tricked them out of paying rent for five months by saying she had cancer and was in the hospital getting chemo. Who lies about having cancer?

Mayor, of course. And it was hardly the first time. She was battling cancer and her cancer had come back and that she thought it was in remission. She was in the hospital. That's why I couldn't reach her for a couple of days. Tess Cacciatore, the founder and CEO of Global Women's Empowerment Network, was concerned for her ailing friend, Mayor, and wanted to help in any way she could. And I

And I said, oh my gosh, what hospital are you at? She said, in Pasadena. She didn't name the hospital. She just said in Pasadena. And I said, well, I have the afternoon off. Can I bring you some magazines, some ice cream, some food that you might want to have? Because the food's horrible there. No, no, no, no, no. She yelled at me. She started to bite at me. No, no, I'm going to be released today. And I said, okay. So...

I just kind of left it alone and then I called a couple days later to check in or the next day to check in. She said, "Why do you keep calling me?" I'm like, "Oh, okay." So she tells you she has cancer, she's in the hospital, and then she's shouting at you, "Why do you keep calling me?" Yeah. Looking back, Mare was probably upset with Tess because if Tess had gone to the hospital, the jig would have been up. She didn't have cancer. Yeah, but she did have a cancer story.

And it was one of a hundred stories Mayer convincingly told to scam people in Los Angeles, in other cities, in other states, and even in other countries. Hello, I'm trying to reach Mr. Jonathan Walton.

I got a call from a detective in Northern Ireland, found my blog. He'd been looking for Mary Ann Smith for 10 years. She lived in Northern Ireland. I had no idea. I thought the whole Irish thing was a lie. 10 years, that's a long time to be looking for someone. So she must have really like did some damage. Oh, she did. She's left a trail of devastation in her wake and ruined many lives. Could Mayor Smith be Irish after all? Next time on Queen of the Con. There was a Christmas when my kids were young.

Mayor Smith uses her own daughter in multiple scams. And pisses off the wrong kind of people.

For exclusive photos and other bonus material, follow at Queen of the Con on Instagram. And if you're enjoying Queen of the Con, tell your friends about it and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Queen of the Con, The Irish Heiress, is a production of AYR Media and iHeart Radio, hosted by me, Jonathan Walton. Executive Producers: Jonathan Walton for Jonathan Walton Productions and Aliza Rosen for AYR Media. Written by Jonathan Walton. Consulting Producer: Evan Goldstein. Senior Associate Producer: Eric Newman. Sound Design by Baked ZD Media. Mixed and mastered by Elliot Herman.

Audio engineering by Elliot Herman. Studio engineering by Chris McMasters. Voice acting performed by Brian Clobus, Tim Cunningham, Eileen Faxus, Fran Lozano, Amy Phillips, and David Teitelbaum. Legal counsel for AYR Media, Gianni Douglas. Executive producer for iHeartRadio, Chandler Mays.

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