THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 84 FEBRUA RY 12, 2020
SMYTH: COURTESY OF JOHNATHAN WALTON (2). TONKEN: AP PHOTO/REED SAXON.to law enforcement, per the
U.S. Attorney’s Office. Even
so, several alleged victims —
including the costume designer,
electrical engineer Turner, his
babysitter Sarah Coffin and
more — were willing to team up
with Walton to compare notes
and attend restitution proceed-
ings in which PacificIslands.com
was pressing for compensation
from Smyth.
Wa lton believes Smy th was
frightened by the idea that her
victims would team up. During
the travel agency hearings they
attended, “She sees us, she
freaks out,” he says. That spring,
Smyth checked into Kedren
Community Health Center
(Walton says she told hospital
personnel she was a danger to
herself). Smyth was admitted
and later stayed at the psychi-
atric ward of the Harbor-UCLA
Medical Center. She was released
to the assisted living facility
Wilmington Gardens, where she
remained until she was arrested
on Walton’s grand theft charges
on April 5, 2018.By the time of his court case in
early 2019, Walton had identi-
fied patterns in Smyth’s alleged
scams: She had several ongoing
formulas, including the heiress
and cancer ruses, blackmailing
married men she met on dat-
ing sites and promising to help
marks make major life changes.
She also often impersonated real
people, including alleged past
victims, via email or text. Walton
was planning a documentary on
his experience with Smyth and
started a GoFundMe campaign
to finance it. (He was in a tough
financial situation, which his
transformation into a vigilante“money laundering” and never
had to pay for a witness to travel
to L.A.
“I was devastated and I felt
guilty, sad and angry and I didn’t
understand why it was happen-
ing,” Walton says.
Still, he believed there was hope
that Smyth would pay him back
if he threatened legal action. On
March 14, the day of her release,
Walton picked her up in his
car from the Century Regional
Detention Center and surrepti-
tiously activated his iPhone’s
Voice Memos app to record their
conversation. “You’ve been lying
to us the whole time about every-
thing,” he said. “What do you
mean?” she asked in a small voice.
He told her he had seen her court
documents and knew she had
been convicted of a felony: “You’re
busted. So from here on in, we’re
not friends.” She protested as
her eyes welled up before the two
parted. The next day, Walton filed
a police report alleging a total
theft of $75,000 by trickery —
that she tricked him into giving
her money to get out of jail and
pay a plea agreement.
It wasn’t long before the real-
ity producer learned he was
just one of many Angelenos to
whom Smyth owed money. After
confronting his former friend,
Walton combed through Smyth’s
social media and her Orchid
Psychics Yelp account to warn
people around her. He started a
blog to tell his story and provide
contact information. Walton’s
landlord shared that Smyth was
more than $12,000 behind in
apartment payments and had
delayed them further by claiming
that she had cancer and that her
disability insurance wasn’t arriv-
ing on time.
Walton’s case took months
to get assigned to a detective at
the LAPD. In the meantime, the
former reporter embarked on his
own investigative work: He hired
six private detectives to look into
Smyth’s history. Background
checks revealed she had also been
charged with writing bad checks
and fraud, among other counts,
in Tennessee and grand theft,
among other counts, in Florida.
Old images of Smyth revealed
that she once had blond hair and
red hair, short and long in length;
Walton began to think her plastic
surgeries were also attempts at
disguise. In the spring of 2017, a
detective for the Newry, Mourne
and Down District Council in
Northern Ireland got in touch
with Walton about a mortgage
scam Smyth had allegedly run
in Northern Ireland, prior to
moving to L.A. (When reached
by THR, Det. Mark Anderson said
he couldn’t provide details on an
open investigation and added,
“give [Walton] my thanks for all
he has done.”)
A breakthrough in Walton’s
investigation occurred one
morning over coffee, when he
remembered that he still had
Smyth’s AOL account password.
(One day Smyth, driving, fearedshe had been hacked and asked
him to log in for her.) Walton
quickly re-accessed the account,
found email addresses for Smyth’s
Irish “cousins” Fintan, Tristan
and Dairmuid and tried gain-
ing access to the cousins’ email
accounts on separate platforms
like Gmail and Outlook using the
same password — which worked.
Walton opened the accounts
of “Jennifer Aniston,” “Ashley
Judd” and other digital aliases,
overall uncovering 23 separate
email personas, including one for
Walton himself. He would learn
Smyth had impersonated hockey
icons Jack Capuano, Garth Snow,
an alleged victim’s ex-wife, an
Irish mobster named “Finnegan”
and L.A. Deputy District Attorney
Heba Matta to former boyfriend
Bob Turner.
Walton found and spoke with
dozens of alleged victims, urging
them to file police reports. Many
didn’t want to, out of shame or
simply indifference. Only an
estimated 15 percent of U.S. fraud
victims report their experiencesWalton with Smyth at a
tree trimming party (left) in
December 2013 and with Walton’s
husband, Pablo Maseda, on
New Year’s Eve 2014. Walton
befriended Smyth quickly in part
because “in L.A., people never
tell you what they’re thinking, but
she always seemed to speak the
truth no matter what.”WALTON OPENED THE ACCOUNTS OF
“JENNIFER ANISTON,” “ASHLEY JUDD” AND OTHER
DIGITAL ALIASES, UNCOVERING 23 SEPARATE EMAIL
PERSONAS, INCLUDING ONE FOR WALTON HIMSELF.