Her elaborate schemes, among them posing as the heiress to an Irish fortune, swindled people out of huge sums and left Marianne Smyth with two felony convictions.
Smyth became known as the “Irish heiress” after one of her former victims, Johnathan Walton, started a podcast in 2021 about his experience. The two became close friends after meeting in 2013, and Walton, a reality television producer, said that Smyth had claimed to be from a prominent Irish family.Netanyahu’s dilemma: Save the hostages or his government
The podcast’s listeners would report sightings of Smyth to Walton, who vowed to track her down and said he had passed on potential leads to Northern Ireland authorities. Others have told him that Smyth has used other false personas, he said, including masquerading as a psychic and a satanic priestess.
Those charges date to between March 2008 and October 2010, when Smyth was living in Northern Ireland and working there as a mortgage adviser, according to a complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Maine. Smyth abused a position in which she was expected to “safeguard” the financial interests of her clients, the complaint says, and instead stole about £135,000 from five people.