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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.
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.
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. Certain portions of what you're about to hear have been dramatized based on real-life events, eyewitness accounts, and court records. She put me in a prison without bars, and I feel she should be stopped so as not to do this to anyone else. ♪
Long before I meet Mayor Smith in my downtown Los Angeles apartment building, she lives in Northern Ireland for almost 10 years and scams half a million dollars from 26 victims there.
Local police plan to extradite her now that they know where she is. She's left a trail of devastation in her wake. And Mare's own daughter not only witnesses her scam people in Northern Ireland. I mean, she was always a pathological liar. But Mare actually tricks her into helping when she's just a child. Oh, she used me for all sorts of things. I used to forge signatures for...
In 2009, when police start investigating, Mare flees Northern Ireland for Tennessee and buys her way back into her other daughter's life.
Marianne started sending money to Courtney's account. But then the money stops. Mare suddenly disappears, and a group of angry men with guns drawn show up looking for her. And what did they tell you exactly? Well, they threatened that if we didn't tell them where Marianne was, they were going to kill Chelsea, they were going to kill Stephen, they were going to kill myself, they were going to kill Courtney and her newborn daughter Avery. ♪
I'm Jonathan Walton, and this is Queen of the Con, Episode 7, The Hunt. I can only imagine what was going through the mind of Mayor's son-in-law, Joshua Askavish, that night, when a group of belligerent men show up on his doorstep, desperately searching for mayor. Josh is a military vet who served in Iraq. He's seen his share of life-threatening situations, but this is markedly different.
It was literally Irish gangsters, mobsters looking for blood. What made you think they were Irish gangsters? Did they identify themselves as like, we're the Irish mob? Or what made you think that? When they spoke. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie The Devil's Own with Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt. The way he speaks on there, that's exactly how it was. You're a stupid man, Mr. Burke. You're only seeing me standing between you and the money.
It chills me to the bone even to think about it. I mean, it scared the living hell out of me. What did these men look like? They were wearing dark clothes, trash coats, automatic rifles. A couple of them had black leather gloves on. One guy had long hair and three of them, they just kind of stood back. It was the one with long hair that spoke asking where Mary Ann was.
All of them had automatic guns? Yes, and I would safely assume they were AK-47s. And why did you think they were looking for her? Well, obviously when they show up with automatic rifles and, you know, speaking Irish, okay, I knew someone has royally screwed up somewhere along the lines. And obviously they're not friendly, they're looking for blood or money. And what were you feeling at that moment?
I was in shock, you know, instant dry mouth, just looking at him going, "Okay, what the fuck did I do?" And then they told you what? They asked where Mary Ann was, if she was staying there. And what did you tell them at that point? Well, at that point, I didn't even know where she was exactly other than last I knew, she was somewhere in Tennessee. And were they happy with that? They left after that? They believed you? They were quite leery at first.
And then Courtney also came to the door and told them, "Look, last we knew, she was in Tennessee." And they asked how long ago that was, and that was within a month. And then they left? Yes. What did you and Courtney say to each other as they walked away and you guys didn't get shot? We were just in awe. We really didn't even say anything. Just kind of stared like, "Did that really just happen?"
The real tragedy here, though, is just three years after those men with guns come knocking, Mare's estranged daughter, Courtney, dies at the age of 23 of cystic fibrosis, a respiratory illness she was born with and suffered from her entire life. I knew that my sister, like, she wasn't expected to die.
be alive for a long time. Chelsea only gets to know Courtney for a handful of years, near the end of her life. Growing up, though, Courtney's not around. Remember, the courts found Mare to be an unfit mother and awarded sole custody of Courtney to Mare's ex-husband in Michigan. Nonetheless, Mare invokes Courtney's name frequently around Chelsea, and not in a good way.
She would regularly tell me that she'd wished that I was sick and not my sister. Wow. That is such a damaging thing to tell a little girl. Jesus. And how did you deal with it? Did it hurt you then or did it roll off your back? It did not roll off my back. I mean, I was severely depressed as a teenager. I had several suicide attempts.
I mean, it was bad. Gosh, I'm so sorry. I can't even fathom how you got to where you got to now. More disturbing than what Mayer tells her daughter Chelsea while living in Northern Ireland is what she gets her to do.
Mare uses Chelsea and her young cousin as shills. My mom was like raising money for cystic fibrosis like in general and was making us take buckets around places. I didn't ever know if she was scamming people, but when she did things like that, I was like, you're not, you're not donating money to cystic fibrosis. You and your cousin were friends.
Going door to door with buckets, collecting money? Yeah. Wow. Using kids, you know, using young girls, like who would not give? Right. You're coming around with a bucket like, oh, look at this adorable girl. Here you go. It's a great racket. As deplorable as it is, she knows what works. Right.
And Mare is equally adept at refreshing her cons to keep up with the times. Because five years later, after her daughter Courtney dies of cystic fibrosis, Mare creates a GoFundMe page in Los Angeles to raise money in the name of her dead daughter. She had a child that had passed away from this disease. It was Mother's Day and she had decided to start a campaign to get money and donate it to the research of this disease.
Los Angeles filmmaker Fran Lozano happily donates. I mean, who wouldn't? It's a good cause, you know. So, yeah, I donated $50 and I shared it on my Facebook page and say, hey, this is somebody I know. If you have it in your heart and you have some extra money, this is a good cause. Of course, it isn't a good cause, but it is a good con. Mayor Smith raises $16,460 through her GoFundMe scam.
And when I check with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, they tell me they never see a dime. Who does that? She used a picture of her dead daughter. I mean, that's another level. That is another level. Just when I think she can't get any worse than a dog murderer, she uses her estranged daughter's tragic death to prey on people's charity. She really is the fucking devil.
I encourage Fran to report Mare to police, which she does, as do a bunch of other victims of that GoFundMe scam. Mare's ex-son-in-law, Joshua Askavish, is aghast. What really got to me the most, it was a picture of Courtney and my daughter Avery. And that's what really just made my blood boil. The fact that she's even got the gall to even post a picture that includes my daughter. Mare's got the gall, all right.
There's a special place in hell for a con artist who uses the illness and death of her own daughter to scam people. 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.
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. 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. As the months pass, every time I find a new victim and a new scam, I update the LAPD. This has nothing to do with your case, they tell me. So I just try harder to dig up more evidence and find more victims. It becomes an obsession and it starts taking a toll on my life.
You are such an extremist that I was worried that you were harming your marriage. I was worried you were harming your own mental well-being, you know? Because even a good cause taken too far can do you in.
My former TV reporter friend, Eileen Faxes, has known me for 20 years, and I really look up to her. Today she runs a bilingual YouTube channel called KidTime Storytime, reading books to kids using puppets, songs, and a thousand voices. Like a ray of sunshine! Como un reluciente rayo de sol! Wait a minute! Oh, Green Bear, we're in the middle of the story! Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know, quick question.
I've always come to Eileen for advice. She's a real force for good in my life, and I usually listen to what she has to say. This time, though, I don't want to hear it.
I just felt like you needed a break. Even if you didn't think you needed a break, you were going down this rabbit hole and I couldn't help but be worried. You were already so obsessed about it and obsession about anything is bad, right? Even though it's coming from a good place. But then at the same time, I see it's doing a number on you emotionally. You're stressed out. You're not sleeping. You leave work constantly to do this. I could see your husband was not happy. He was stressed out about it.
My buddy Evan is worried about me too.
I think worried about you is an understatement. Yeah. We'd talk and you weren't Jonathan anymore. Wow. For years, you were this just kind of jovial, funny, easygoing guy, quick to help people, you know, just everything was light. Life is good, Evan. You know, like you were always so positive and that's not the person I was talking to. And it wasn't just me that saw this. You were beyond obsessed, man. I'd talk,
to Pablo about you behind your back. And we were just like, what the fuck are we going to do about Jonathan? Like Jonathan is gone. He's not only obsessed, he is talking different. He is angry. He is unhappy. Anyone who knows you before this, it's a 180. It's not you, man. You know? And really the thing that I was, I was to the point where I was like, I don't know if we can be friends.
Listen, I know my obsession with bringing Mary Ann Smith to justice is hurting me. And at a certain point, I let it go. I try. I try to let it go. I really do, but I just can't. It gnaws at me. It haunts my dreams. I would rather die than let that woman get away with what she did to me and what she did to all those other people, what she did to Chelsea.
So I double down and work even harder and obsess even more. And thankfully, I'm not alone. I don't know. I looked at it. We're all in this together at this point, you know, and I do want to see justice served and protected.
I don't want her to be... It was mostly about keeping her from doing this to anyone else again, you know? Remember Bob's nanny, Sarah Coffin, who Mayor tricks Bob into firing while trying to scam him into adding her name to the titles of his two multi-million dollar Newport Beach properties?
Sarah is as passionate and committed to taking down Mare as I am. And she didn't even get me financially. You know, it wasn't about money with me. She really fucked my head over. She really fucked me up. She ruined this relationship that I had with this family. Like I'd known them for so long and been close for so long. And for her to come in so fast and hard and just fuck everything up incredibly was just...
Amazing to me. Like, that she was that destructive. Funny thing about the justice system. It's slow. Painfully slow. Remember that Pacific Islands case from 2017 where Mare pleads guilty to stealing $200,000 and pays $40,000 in restitution by scamming me so she can avoid a five-year jail sentence?
Even though Mayer has already pled guilty and served her measly 30 days behind bars months ago, the case is still going on. Mayer's attorney is now disputing how much money she actually stole from Pacific Islands. And there are monthly court appearances happening that Mayer has to attend to hash everything out.
As soon as I get wind of this, I act. Mayor Smith has been so deep inside my head for the past several months, it's high time I get deep inside of hers.
So I organized you, everyone who would come, I'm like, let's go in a crowd and stare that bitch down and let her know you're not getting away. - That was really cool. - I was so grateful to you because at that point it was hard getting an adherence. It was hard getting victims to come forward. But you jumped on. Remember you came to all those court appearances for the Pacific Islands case where we could fucking stare daggers at her? - Oh God, that was the best. - That was the best.
Remember? Yes, I do. And one time it's like me, you, Heather, Bob, Fran sitting in court. When Mare sees us all sitting in court, a smattering of the disparate victim she conned, all together now, staring her down, she turns white. She's saying something to the bailiff and pointing at us. Oh, yeah. Like, God knows what she told the bailiff. Maybe we're like criminal. Stalking her or something. Yeah, or something. And then my favorite memory that I play over and over. Which, yeah, what kind of were you?
We were, but she's a criminal. And also, we had every legal right to be there. Exactly. It's a public forum. And then remember when... So that day is over. Everyone's walking out. And we're walking behind Mare and her attorney. And then Mare is like... You can tell Mare is troubled that we're all there. Oh, yeah. And she's not even looking at us. And then...
She gets on the elevator with her attorney and we don't get on the elevator and you kind of like wave at her. I finger gunned at her. I was like. Yeah, that's what it was. It was a finger gun, like a. Yeah. And then her attorney's like, I'm going to tell the judge you did that. And you're like, what? That I waved? That was great. That was great. I never felt less threatened in my life. That was hilarious. I'm like, oh, okay. You tell the judge and see what happens. Right.
absolutely nothing happens. Apparently, pointing at someone and making a sound is perfectly legal in these United States, though it does intimidate the hell out of Mary Ann Elizabeth Smith because she doesn't want to face us ever again. So the next month she's due in court for another Pacific Islands restitution hearing. We're all there. Finger guns.
holstered and ready. But Mare is a no-show. Word from the DA is Mare gets out of going to this court appearance by taking an Uber to a mental hospital and convincing them she's going to kill herself. Of course, they believe her and admit her for treatment. She gets out of going to court for a couple months using this suicide scam.
But the hospital eventually releases her into the custody of a boarding house for the mentally ill. Yeah, no one she can scam there, right?
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. ...ghoules 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 some 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. I still haven't recovered from her to tell the truth.
I never met a woman that did that to me. To protect his identity, we'll call him Ned. He's a 79-year-old military vet who's been living at this group home for the mentally ill about an hour south of Los Angeles since 1989. He finds my blog about Mayor Smith being a con artist and calls me up and tells me his story.
Wow.
I should mention here that I don't know what Ned's exact mental illness is, but I don't think Mare wants to marry him so she can own half of his TV show ideas. Because Ned is receiving thousands of dollars in Social Security and Veterans benefits every month, and Mare is probably in a hurry to marry Ned so she can start receiving both when he dies. And forgive me for being morbid here, but that might not be too far away.
So she's hiding out in Ned's group home for the mentally ill from me and all the other Los Angeles victims. Meanwhile, she's targeting Ned, carefully constructing a house of cards he can relate to.
She told me she was a graduate student with a master's in business degree from Northwestern University. And we used to talk about, I was from Ohio State, so we used to talk about Ohio State and Northwestern and the rivalry in the Big Ten and whatnot and stuff like that. And it was really amazing when it was like, probably none of that's true, you know? No, none of that's true. No, she never went to college. And it's amazing. She totally fooled me.
Mayer then tries over and over again to pressure Ned into marriage using sex or rather withholding sex. We had a kind of a cross-eye fantasy kind of sexual relationship a little bit. So she must have thought that I would, yeah, some leverage. But we never had any real sex or anything until she started with this stuff about signing stuff over and stuff like that.
Ever cunning, Mare never tells Ned her last name. Probably because she doesn't want him Googling her and finding my blog. Ned just knows her as Marianne.
But when she starts pushing Ned really hard to marry her, he gets curious. When Mare isn't looking, he grabs her prescription bottle and discovers her last name is Smith. She didn't tell me. I got it off her medication thing. And so she didn't tell me her last name. It came to me, the idea to Google her name and your stuff came up. I just saw that and I just wanted to thank you for some reason.
I have a master's degree and two years beyond a master's degree in psychology. You know, I graduated from Ohio State and University of Missouri and so on and so forth. I just got so frustrated with the whole thing and I couldn't handle it all by myself. So I called the FBI. I just flat out called them and said, Google this girl, you know, she's here, whatever. I don't understand what's going on.
Do you know what she was telling other people? No, no, I don't. No, I do not. But I know I think she tried to come on to most of the people there and find out their story and stuff because, like, she used her attractiveness and was friendly with the guys and she had them all eating out of the palm of her hand. Oh, really? Yeah. Do you know if she was sleeping with any of them? I don't think so. I don't think so. And her and I never slept together either, but I think just the promise of sex was what...
I was doing it for those guys. I never knew I could think less of Mayor Smith than I already do, but I was wrong. He's some kind of predator, you know? Yeah, I know. There is a light at the end of this dark and depressing tunnel, though. To quote the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., "...the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."
One year after filing my police report, Mary Ann Elizabeth Smith is charged with grand theft by false pretense for scamming me. I'm producing a show, Shifting Gears, for the Discovery Channel in April of 2018, when I missed the call that police actually arrest Mayer at that boarding house for the mentally ill where she's hiding out.
My fugitives unit ended up getting Ms. Mary Ann Smythe in custody today. The way it works, a court date should be scheduled and more than likely you will be receiving a subpoena, but I will keep it for you once I get further details regarding the case. All right, talk to you soon.
I am thrilled. Though Miriam Lee spends a few days in jail after that arrest, because she's released into the custody of that boarding house for the mentally ill again to await a preliminary hearing, I'm still ecstatic, because my case is finally moving forward in the justice system, and shit's happening.
Hi, Mr. Walton. My name is Jessica Plasek. I'm a deputy district attorney, an attorney who will actually be handling the preliminary hearing on the matter of People v. Mary Ann Elizabeth Smith. The People v. Mary Ann Elizabeth Smith. I just love the sound of that. I now have the freaking People on my side. Not to mention a diligent and hardworking attorney in the Los Angeles DA's office, Jessica Plasek.
A lot of people would look at it first and think this person was so naive to get the money to somebody. But when you look deeper into it and you see the statements that were made and the level of criminal sophistication, I think it was easy for me to take kind to your case because I felt that you were a bleeding heart that kind of got taken advantage of and I could really relate to that. So I think immediately when the case was assigned to me, I was like, I mean justice on this one, you know? Aww. Thank you.
One of the things I learn about the justice system is a phrase called "no prior bad acts," which basically means a person charged with a crime has to be prosecuted for that crime only.
you're not allowed to bring up all their former crimes or prior bad acts, which really sucks because Mare's been charged with felonies for fraud, grand theft, and for passing bad checks in the past. And police in Northern Ireland are also trying to extradite her for scamming 500,000 from 26 victims there.
And none of that is admissible in court. Yeah, generally you can't really use propensity evidence to say that, oh, this person did it before. They probably did it this time. There are certain cases, maybe like domestic violence or child sexual abuse, where you can make the argument that it should be able to come in under the evidence code. But in a case like that, like a theft case, even though she had a prior bad act,
the judge wouldn't necessarily, or the jury, I should say, wouldn't necessarily know about that prior act. It could be like bifurcated, you know, when you deal with the prior allegations outside the jury or in a separate trial or hearing. Propensity? It's like propensity evidence. Yeah, generally propensity evidence. So you couldn't use somebody's prior theft against them to say they stole this time. They probably stole this time. But don't you think you should be able to? Yes and no.
I would say, you know, once an abuser, always abuser. Once a cheater, always a cheater. You know, there's, there's some things to that, right? I think a lot, but, but I feel like a lot of comes into domestic violence, right? You, you're going to say, Oh, I didn't hit her this time, but no, you have a propensity. You know, that cycle of violence is something like that. But if I,
go and steal gum from the store and I'm misidentified as stealing gum a second time, should somebody be able to be like, I know it was you because you did it before. You know, so it does. Yeah. I mean, there are scenarios. Yeah, I see what you're saying. But in her case, she had felony charges for fraud, grand theft, passing bad checks, all
but no convictions on those in other states. And the only reason she had no convictions is if it's your first felony in another state, the judge is very lenient and a lawyer can talk out and get you community service or whatever and you're not convicted. There's a lot of things that could happen. There could be a delay to an arraignment. It could be dismissed for that. It could be
put over for further investigation. Maybe they didn't feel that they could prove it beyond a reasonable doubt based on the evidence that they had. That's the other thing. Doesn't mean that the person didn't do it though or they wouldn't have been good for it if the evidence was there. Exactly.
But Mayer also scams $200,000 from that Pacific Islands travel agency in Los Angeles. And bringing that case up may not be allowed either, which could hurt my case because the way she tricked all that money out of Pacific Islands demonstrates a level of criminal sophistication that proves she's a con artist. And I don't know how much you know about luxury travel, but I now know more than most. So the only reason she got caught is because she was on vacation.
That's the only reason they caught her. So she had this PayPal account that she named Pacific Islands, and she was taking customers' payments because she took advantage of a loophole that exists in luxury travel that when you pay for your vacation, they're not paying for your plane and hotel until the day before you go. So all that money gets into a big pot. No one's really keeping track.
So she was able to get in there and get out 200 grand over two years by taking payments in her PayPal. No one was the wiser. They knew they were missing money. They didn't know from where. Because she would fill out all the paperwork correctly and make it look like the money went into the pot when it didn't. It went into her PayPal. But they didn't know. The only reason she got found out, she's on vacation. A customer calls to book another vacation and says, well, Mayor's out. Talk to this lady. Well, can I pay with PayPal like last time? And they're like, we don't take PayPal.
So that triggered an investigation and they caught her red-handed. That is kind of clever to figure out the lay of the land pretty quickly at that place and know how you can exploit it. It was about to the tune of about $200,000 to go. And had she not taken vacation, like how much longer would it have been? $500,000? It would have been a million.
They didn't know. They knew they were missing money. They didn't know from where. And she was so good at covering up the paperwork and the tracks. She was their best saleswoman. They never suspected her. They loved her. JP loved her because whenever JP was short on sales, he'd say, Mayor, we need sales. And she'd bring in $100,000 out of nowhere. But I'm sure now a lot of that was fake. Right. Let me pull that out of my own account. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Deputy D.A. Plasek gets the preliminary hearing set for May 25th, 2018. On that day, a judge is going to look at all the evidence and look at Mayor Smith and decide if there's enough here to go to trial or, God forbid, decide to dismiss the case entirely.
So much is riding on this day, and Mayer still has a few unbelievable tricks up her sleeve, as local ABC News reporter Rob Hayes witnesses firsthand. When Marion Smith showed up at LA's criminal courthouse today, she was sporting a pair of crutches. What happened to your foot? But Jonathan Walton says, save your sympathy. We knew she was going to pull something today, but to show up in crutches?
I'll never forget when she did show up on crutches, but... I was gonna get to that. She'd been coming to court just fine for the arraignment and for all the other hearings, but on the day of the preliminary hearing, when a judge is going to be deciding if there's enough for a trial, she comes in, she's on crutches, and she looks like a homeless bag lady.
And it was more shocking for me than for you because I knew her as an Irish heiress. You know, makeup, hair, clothes, Jimmy Choo's. Like, that's the Mayor Smith that I knew. So to see her on crutches that day with this big giant like beach bag, like a homeless lady, I knew it was a con. But then I started wondering, is it obvious it's a con? Like, did you believe it for a second that she legitimately needed crutches?
I have to reserve my comment on that one. And so does Mayer. She won't talk about her new crutches or anything else for that matter. A lot of people are accusing you of scamming them out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Do you have any comment on that? Smith refused to answer any of our questions, but she'll be facing more questions in the courtroom. Will she, though? Mayer's attorney skillfully manages to keep kicking this case down the calendar.
A jury trial is eventually set for November of 2018. And one month before her trial is scheduled to start, Mayor Smith pulls the most brilliant con of her career. A con that's sure to rally the jury to her side. A con that's so insane, it just might work.
One month before trial, Mare files a restraining order against me, claiming I'm threatening her with violence. She encloses a picture with the filing she says is me stalking her at her church. I'm forced to spend $1,500 on an attorney who shockingly explains to me, "If a judge grants this restraining order, you won't be allowed in a courtroom to testify against her during the criminal trial."
Could this be Mayor Smith's checkmate move? Next time on Queen of the Con, Mayor Smith goes to any length to stop me from taking the stand. Somebody would really have to prove that that civil restraining order was false, which is a whole separate ballgame a month before trial. And her attorney tries to convince the court that I'm the perpetrator. Mr. Walton created law, and he began to...
But will a jury believe me or con artist Marianne Smith? 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 Tim Cunningham, Neil Goldstein, and Carmel O'Reilly. Legal counsel for AYR Media, Gianni Douglas. Executive producer for iHeartRadio, Chandler Mays.
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