THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 82 FEBRUA RY 12, 2020
SMYTH: COURTESY OF JOHNATHAN WALTON (5).share that she had a psychic gift. It
was years before Walton and oth-
ers began to suspect that all these
boasts were lies, part of an elabo-
rate scheme that ensnared several
individuals in the entertainment
industry, and left Walton filing for
personal bankruptcy. “Back then,
I was a different person and I took
everything at face value,” he says
now. “That’s how they get in your
life, they try to help you.”
Smyth, indeed, was a practiced
operative. But her success in con-
ning Walton and other individuals
in and around Hollywood from at
least 2013 to 2017 speaks not just
to her skill, but to a shrewd choice
of setting. Like many creators
and wannabes in entertainment,
“Mair” was boastful and prone
to exaggeration, while her marks
were too accustomed to white lies
to suspect hers might be insidious.
Smyth’s run in L.A. demonstrates
the strange parallels between con
artist and Hollywood creator, per-
former and professional liar. Her
underestimation of the storytellers
who became her marks, however,
also proved to be her downfall.Smyth unwound her story for
Walton slowly, over many meet-
ings. During her first dinner with
Walton and his husband, Pablo
Maseda, at a fondue restaurant,
she mentioned she was from
Ireland. Later, on a visit to her
apartment, Walton glimpsedinherit part of his 25 million-
euro (about $27.5 million) estate.
In keeping with her image as a
wealthy, worldly heiress, Smyth
occasionally showed Walton texts
and emails from her friend, actor
Ashley Judd, whom she said she
had met in college, where they
pledged the same sorority. Walton
didn’t question these assertions:
“She seemed wealthy, she seemed
educated, she fit the part that
she was playing to a T.” (Smyth,
through the L.A. County Sheriff’s
Department, declined to speak for
this story.)
Smyth began to
regularly invite
Walton and Maseda to
dinner at upscale L.A.
restaurants — like Drago Centro
and The BonaVista Lounge —
always paying for her new friends.
Later, she treated the couple to a
weekend vacation in Palm Springs
at a home she said was a wealthy
client’s, where she again paid for
their meals. Due to her family’s
money, Smyth said she didn’t
need a job but preferred to keep
busy, working first for luxury tour
operator PacificIslands.com and,
later, as a psychic running Orchid
Psychics. In the time Walton
knew her, she also had several
plastic surgeries, including what
he recalls as a nose job, a breast
enhancement and some liposuc-
tion. “At the time I just thought,
‘Oh, this is what wealthy women
do. They have a Beverly Hills plas-
tic surgeon,’ ” Walton says.his family members who didn’t
accept his sexuality. She under-
stood how painful alienation
from family members could
be, she said, revealing that her
cousins dividing her great-uncle’s
estate with her were trying to get
her disinherited. In the weeks
following, she showed him nasty
texts and emails from those cous-
ins, especially one named Fintan,
who occasionally wrote in Gaelic.
“I was enthralled,” Walton says of
Smyth’s family drama. “It was like
a soap opera plot, but it was hap-
pening in real life.”
Unbeknownst to Walton, Smyth
was enthralling other people in
and outside of his circle with iter-
ations of this same story. To Tess
Cacciatore, the founder of GWEN
Global, which produces interna-
tional films and TV series, Smyth
was a philanthropic Irish heiress
set to inherit around $50 million.
To a Hollywood costume designer
who asked to remain anonymous
and says she spent $10,000 on
life coaching services, Smyth was
a life coach inheriting $25 mil-
lion from her Cork-based uncle
who came from Irish royalty.
(The Republic of Ireland doesn’t
have a royal family.) To electri-
cal engineer Bob Turner, whom
Smyth dated in 2015 and early
2016, Smyth was an Irish heiress
and a former Olympic-level figure
skater as well as a child custody
expert (Smyth would later attemptto persuade Turner to put her on
the title of his two homes).
Ashley Judd wasn’t the only
famous name Smyth dropped to
her acquaintances, either. Film
producer Mark, who asked that
THR not use his real name, met
Smyth through an online dat-
ing site in 2014 and learned she
was a psychic originally from
Ireland who was “best friends”
with Jennifer Aniston. On two
separate meetings, she arranged
to introduce the two — “Aniston”
didn’t show, texting and calling
Smyth with excuses. Later, Smyth
gave Mark “Aniston’s” email
address and number, ensnaring
him in a text and email chain (the
latter shown to THR) where the
ostensible star lambasted him for
not caring enough about Smyth.
By the start of 2015, Mark asked
a friend who was good with com-
puters to research both Smyth
and “Aniston’s” number and
email. Though the friend couldn’t
find much on Smyth, she warned
Mark to stop communicating
with “Aniston.” “Everyone has
history and this ‘Jen’ cellphone
and email, neither of them have
any history whatsoever,” Mark
recalls his friend saying.In the year after Walton met
Smyth, they grew increas-
ingly close. He shot pictures for“ AT THE TIME I JUST THOUGHT, ‘OH, THIS IS
WHAT WEALTHY WOMEN DO. THEY HAVE A
BEVERLY HILLS PLASTIC SURGEON.’ ” Walton
a small, framed print of what
Smyth said was the Constitution
of Ireland, hanging in her living
room. Her great-uncle had signed
it, she explained, pointing out his
signature. (There were no signa-
tories to the 1937 Constitution of
Ireland.) At a later point, Smyth
added that the same great-uncle
had just died and she stood toAs she got to know him bet-
ter, Smyth singled Walton out
for friendship and frequently
asked him to hang out at the
Bunker Hill Towers’ barbecue
patio. Walton grew to love Smyth
for what he believed to be her
candor and no-bullshit attitude.
He opened up to her about how
he was estranged from some ofFrom left: Per Walton, Smyth in 2016; in the early 2010s, when she
first moved to California; in the late aughts, around the time she left
Northern Ireland for a brief stint in Tennessee; when Walton first met
her, in 2013; and during her time in Northern Ireland in the aughts.