THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 85 FEBRUA RY 12, 2020
investigator hadn’t helped: He
had filed for personal bankruptcy
after having loaned Smyth nearly
$70,000 and spent nearly $3,000
of his own money on private
detectives. After he informed his
credit card companies that he had
been scammed, his interest rates
shot up; he hired one attorney to
file for bankruptcy and another to
defend himself against a tem-
porary restraining order Smyth
filed against him. He estimates
he ultimately lost nearly $92,000
to Smyth.)
When the trial began on Jan. 3,
2019, Walton was terrified: “It
was the culmination of two
years, six private investigators,
over $20,000 of my own money
spent on bringing this woman
to justice. Everything was riding
on it.” Smyth, represented by a
public defender, was silent during
the entire trial, pale-faced, with
minimal to no makeup and at
one point carrying crutches, to
Wa lton’s disbelief.
To prove a pattern of lies,
the prosecution included three
witnesses: Smyth’s onetime
boyfriend Turner, the Hollywood
costume designer and Chelsea
Welch, Smy t h’s second daug h-
ter, who flew in from Knoxville,
Tennessee. Welch revealed that
when she first met Walton years
earlier, she believed that her
mother had reformed and was
earning her living honestly; that
illusion dissipated when Welch
started talking to Walton while
her mother was in jail for the
PacificIslands.com case.
On the stand, Welch said that
her mother was born in Bangor,
Maine, and had no Irish inheri-
tance or connection to royalty.
She had, however, lived with
Welch and Welch’s Irish stepfa-
ther in Belfast, Northern Ireland,
from 2002 to 2009. (Welch and
other members of Smyth’s family
declined to speak for this story.)
Welch called her relationship
with her mother “sporadic and
tumultuous.” Ultimately, she said
later in court, “I think that she’s
a very troubled person who has
used her intelligence malevo-
lently and the things that she has
been accused of I’m absolutely
d i sg u sted by.”
On Jan. 9, 2019, the jury found
Smyth guilty of grand theft, and
in sentencing the judge gave her
five years in jail. She’s currently
in Century Regional Detention
Center serving her time.Despite his victory in court last
year, Walton isn’t done with
Smyth. He’s still waiting to
hear about the Northern Ireland
mortgage scam case, hoping for
extradition. Forty-five of Smyth’s
alleged victims have come for-
ward to him so far, he says. He
also has heard from many who
were allegedly victimized by sep-
arate con artists and is advisingthem. “I’ve got to tag my email
with ‘This is not legal advice, this
is just my opinion,’ ” he says.
Given the amount of informa-
tion he has unearthed, Walton’s
documentary on Smyth has
turned into a five-part series;
he and production partner MAK
Pictures are currently shop-
ping it. Unsurprisingly, Walton
isn’t the only of Smyth’s former
acquaintances interested in
mining their experience for
the screen: Cacciatore wants
to intersperse some facts from
Smyth’s case into an original
scripted series; Mark is thinking
about a Lifetime pitch; Smyth,too, has writing ambitions, per
Walton: “She told me she wants to
write a screenplay about women’s
empowerment,” he says grimly.
Smyth, however, was never in
Hollywood to sell a script — like
many who move to L.A., she was
running away from one persona
and chasing another, fine-tuning
her art in a city full of such
aspirants. Even though many of
her L.A. marks were storytellers,
she never seemed to guess one of
them might catch her in a fiction.
“I think she moved here for the
same reason we all moved here: to
ply her craft,” Walton says. “Her
craft was to scam people.”George Smart and
Layne Britton
Smart, an MGM sound
recorder, and Britton,
a makeup artist for the
studio, allegedly stole
around $50,000 from four
victims in the late 1930s
by posing as deal brokers
for MGM head Louis B.
Mayer. The pair penned
false promissory notes
with Mayer’s signature in
exchange for investments
and impersonated Mayer
on the phone.The National Talent
Pictures Corporation
At the height of Shirley
Temple’s career in August
1938, the National Talent
Pictures Corporation stole
nearly $200,000 from
dance schools and show
parents by promising
young dancers oppor-
tunity in Hollywood.
Parents were charged
for costumes, personal-
ized teaching and other
fees, while the company
promised to potentially
cast their children in an
upcoming movie.Roland Jon Emr
Roland Jon Emr had only
one television credit whenhe passed himself off as a
producer in the 1980s and
stole millions from inves-
tors. His con career came
to a violent conclusion in
the summer of 1991, when
Emr and his son were shot
and killed at a stoplight
in Culver City by a former
bodyguard whom he had
promised to make an
associate producer on a
biopic about James Dean.Aaron Tonken
Aaron Tonken, a high
school dropout from
Detroit who went from
living in an L.A. home-
less shelter to organizing
charity galas attended
by Jennifer Aniston,
Brad Pitt, Bill Clinton and
Whoopi Goldberg, stole
millions from well-heeled
investors who believed
they were donating
to charity. After he wassentenced to more than
five years in prison on
charges of mail fraud
and wire fraud in 2004,
Tonken published a book
that alleged that during
his time as a charity orga-
nizer, stars demanded
and accepted money to
appear at his benefits
(he later lost a $400,000
defamation case brought
by David Schwimmer).The Hollywood
‘Con Queen’
The FBI has opened
investigations into a
scammer who gained
renown (and a THR cover
story) for impersonat-
ing powerful industry
executives including
Kathleen Kennedy and
Amy Pascal to industry
workers over the phone.
Promised employment,
victims travel to Indonesia
and are asked to fork over
thousands in reimburs-
able expenses that are
never repaid. Initially
assumed to be a woman
due to the impersonations
of female executives,
the “con queen” — who
has bilked hundreds of
victims — is now sus-
pected to be a man. — K.K.A HISTORY OF HOLLYWOOD HUSTLES
Starry-eyed victims with big dreams have long made
the town a fertile ground for financial swindlers