NEWS “without comment”
CELEB SCAMMER:
Hollywood con artist who pretended to be Jennifer Aniston to scam cash to be EXTRADITED to UK after ‘swindling 26 Brits’
21 Oct 2020 – Emma Parry
A HOLLYWOOD con artist who swindled victims through elaborate scams – including posing as Jennifer Aniston – is being extradited to the UK after allegedly ripping off 26 Brits, The Sun can reveal.
Marianne Smyth, 51, is currently in jail in Los Angeles after conning $70,000 from TV producer Johnathan Walton, 45, over two years by pretending to be an Irish royal and heir to a fortune.
After realizing she’d scammed him, Johnathan spent years investigating Smyth’s background and her dozens of other cons.
He found she had once posed as Friends star Aniston, and also went by multiple names and regularly changed her appearance.
Johnathan worked with authorities until she was eventually jailed for five years on grand larceny charges.
Now Smyth, who is due to be released in February, faces extradition to stand trial in Northern Ireland, according to documents seen by The Sun.
It is claimed she scammed more than two dozen victims out of around £380,000 when she lived there before moving to LA.
In an exclusive interview, Johnathan said: “After I realised I was conned, I went to police who kind of laughed at me at first and turned me away and said, ‘This is not a crime’. “So I started my own investigation and I hired private detectives all over the country.
Johnathan discovered Smyth had 23 different aliases and would use a variety of different scams – even sometimes pretending to be Jennifer Aniston and other celebrities to try and scam production companies to send her money.
Other scams Smyth has been accused of include pretending she or her daughter – who has disowned her mother – had cancer to raise money – and other alleged property and mortgage scams.
Every time Johnathan found a new victim he would report it to police and eventually Smyth was arrested and a jury in LA found her guilty of grand theft by inducement in January 2019.
Johnathan, two of her victims and Smyth’s own daughter testified against her in court.
Smyth did not testify and refused to comment when approached by reporters outside the courthouse.
She was sentenced to five years but her sentence has been reduced due to overcrowding – and she is due to be released in February.
Johnathan is now on a mission to help victims of other con-artists
A spokesperson for the Police Service Northern Ireland (PSNI) said: “Police are revisiting reports of alleged fraud that occurred in 2009.
Read the full article at: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/12981355/hollywood-con-artist-jennifer-aniston-extradited-uk/