THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 83 FEBRUA RY 12, 2020
Smyth’s online dating profiles
and met her second daugh-
ter, Chelsea, who visited a few
times during the friendship.
When Smyth later moved to
Pacific Electric Lofts downtown
and then a building called 717
Olympic, near L.A. Live, the
two ended their frequent calls
by saying, “I love you.” They
came to refer to one another as
best friends.
As he continued to discuss
Smyth’s inheritance with her,
Walton worried for his friend.
Her great-uncle’s will contained
a clause exempting any potential
recipient convicted of a felony,
she told him. Walton voiced his
fears that Smyth’s cousins might
frame her to push her out of
the will.
On July 8, 2014, Walton’s specu-
lation seemed to come to horrible
fruition. He received a collect
call from the Century Regional
Detention Facility: Smyth had
been arrested on charges that
she had stolen about $200,000
from PacificIslands.com, she
told Walton over the phone. Her
cousins were setting her up, she
added, adamant that she hadn’t
stolen any money and wasn’t
charged with a felony, so she
could still receive an inheritance
when her named was cleared.
“I told you; I told you. This was
your cousins, right?” Walton
said. Walton paid $4,200 for bail
to secure her release, and one of
Smyth’s boyfriends paid him back
the next day.
For nearly a year, Walton and
Smyth spoke almost daily of her
travel agency case, Walton says.
And in April 2015, Smyth asked
him, tears cascading down her
face, for another loan: The L.A.
district attorney had frozen her
bank accounts, and she needed
$5,800 to pay rent at 717 Olympic.
Walton wrote her a cashier’s
check, and both agreed that when
she regained access to her bank
account or received her inheri-
tance, she would pay him back.
In the meantime, she moved back
into Bunker Hill Towers for rela-
tively cheaper rent. With the case
still ongoing, Smyth asked him
for a $3,800 rent loan the follow-
ing month. Walton wrote another
cashier’s check.
Over a year passed and the
case dragged on, with Waltonreceiving frequent updates. In
September 2016, an end to the
litigation finally seemed near:
Smyth told Walton that if she
paid a plea agreement of $50,000,
the case would be resolved and
her bank accounts would reopen.
She asked for another loan, but
Walton didn’t have that kind of
money in savings, so he charged
two of his credit cards.
It’s not uncommon for victims
to be scammed multiple times
by the same con artist, so vivid
are the stories that experienced
operatives can weave. Smyth’s
requests certainly weren’t over
for Walton after he had forked
over nearly $60,000: The judge
in her travel-agency case had
slapped her with a 30-day jail
sentence to take place in Februar y
2017 for “money laundering”
(which can be a misdemeanor
in California) by
using Walton’s creditcards to pay the plea agreement,
she said: That meant Walton
would have to wait until the end
of the sentence to be paid back.
And, Smyth requested another
$4,000 loan, saying she had to
pay for another witness in her
case to travel to L.A.; Walton
was confused and angry, but
acquiesced. Walton also loaned
his friend $2,000 for a lawyer to
help her avoid eviction at Bunker
Hills Towers.
As he fielded request after
request, Walton continued to
believe that after Smyth served
jail time and her accounts
reopened, she would repay
him. That misapprehension
evaporated one day during her
February 2017 sentence when
Walton logged on to the jail’s
website to schedule a visit. As
he clicked on her profile at the
L.A. County Sheriff’s website,
he noticed something strange:
Contrary to what Smyth had told
him, she’d been charged with
and convicted of a felony. “I got
scared,” Walton says. He took a
day off work and traveled to the
Airport Courthouse near LAX to
draw up records on Smyth’s case.
“When I started going through
the records, I realized everything
she told me was a lie.”
It was true that Smyth had
been charged with grand theft
by embezzlement for alleg-
edly stealing $200,000 from
PacificIslands.com and was jailed
in July 2014; it was also true she
had taken a plea deal and spent
30 days in jail after. “She found a
way to play with the credit card
process, not ours, but the bank’s
... It was some sort of Ponzi
scheme,” PacificIslands.com
managing director Jean-Patrick
Mouflard explains.
“A P o n z i s c h e m e a t
some point always
catches up with you.”
What she hadn’t
mentioned to Walton, who wasn’t
familiar with the criminal justice
system at the time, was that the
plea agreement meant that she
had pleaded guilty, that her bank
accounts had never been frozen,
that her plea agreement was
for $40,000, not $50,000, and
included a 180-day jail sentence
(later reduced to 30 days), that
she had never been accused ofThe downtown L.A.
apartment complex where
Walton first bonded with
Smyth over a pool dispute.