October 14, 2021 • 33 mins
Johnathan’s blog not only draws out more victims, it also stops one major crime before it happens. Mair comes very close to scamming a Newport Beach engineer into adding her name to the deeds of his two multi-million dollar homes—so that she can own half of them. But when the engineer’s ex-wife, herself a victim of Mair’s evil lies, finds Johnathan’s blog, the truth puts the kibosh on the con queen's plan just in the nick of time.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Certain portions of what you're about to hear have been
dramatized based on real life events, eyewitness accounts, and court records.
I confront the Irish heiress Mayor Smith in a downtown
Los Angeles parking garage for conning me out of seventy
thousand dollars. You've been scamming us out of money this
whole time. You have the police, they aren't doing anything
(00:25):
about it. So I start my own investigation and uncover victim.
Even after victim, yes, two thousand dollars after victim like
a PayPal credit card. I wouldn't never, but looking at
the charges, it was notorious. Near when I cut ties
with Mayor Smith in the parking garage that day. From
(00:46):
here on end, we're not friends. I know she's dating
an engineer in Newport Beach named Bob, and I'm betting
I just know she's scamming him, just like she's scamming me.
I don't have a phone number or even a last
name for Bob, but I know I have to reach
him somehow, so I start a blog. I realized that
(01:07):
the chances of Bob actually finding my blog are slim
to none, until one day my phone rings Hello, it's
Bob calling. Turns out Mary Smith is pulling her biggest
and most spectacular con job yet. I'm Jonathan Walton, and
(01:36):
this is Queen of the Con Episode four, The Engineer.
When you post something online, you never really know how
it will be received. I get into unintentional political arguments
(01:59):
with friends on face Book all the time. And the
crime and the yangs and the drugs. He was on
the cutting edge of civil rights when at Marrow Lago. First,
I buy stuff on Craigslist that turns out to be
total junk. I leave detailed and pointed reviews on Yelp
(02:20):
that are flagged for violating their terms of service. How
is describing a vegan restaurant's bathroom as an abomination against
the rules? But my blog about con artist Mere Smith
feels like the most important thing I'll ever post online
in my entire life, and I desperately hope it will
(02:41):
save a man named Bob, a complete stranger, from certain disaster.
If Bob hadn't found your blog when he did, I
don't know what would have happened. It would have been
just devastating. Sarah Coffin is Bob's nanny taking care of
his two kids from two thousand nine to two sixteen.
(03:02):
She's a thirtysomething former preschool teacher with a passion for
crafting costumes and Renaissance festivals. And she loves kids, especially
Bob's kids, and they love her in a weird way.
You kind of raised his kids with him, Yeah right, Yeah, No,
I was a big part of their didn't they feel
like your kids? I love those freaking kids so much.
(03:25):
They're just It's September of Mayor Smith is deep in
the process of scamming me out of seventy tho dollars
when she starts dating Bob, an engineer in Newport Beach,
an affluent seaside town in Orange County, about an hour's
drive south of Los Angeles. How did you meet, Mayor? Okay,
(03:48):
so Bob asked me to stay late one night when
I was babysitting because he was on a date. So
he brings her back to the house because they had
like four bottles of wine or something, and she was
too drunk to drive home. And I'm not sure how
much of that was an act and how much was
(04:10):
reality with her, because I'm not sure of anything with
her anymore, but I think she ended up spending the
night at his house, not like in the guest room,
not like in his bed or anything, because the kids
were home, and that was like a big fucking deal
because he doesn't want to have women kids. Yeah, so
he was. Let me just say this about Bob. Bob
(04:31):
is one of the nicest human beings I have ever
come in contact with. He is a really good guy.
And when I met her, it was so awkward. I
was like, Okay, I'm gonna go like now that you're back,
and he's like, no, no, no, hang out and meet
my new friend Mayre. So picture it. Bob's kids are
(04:54):
asleep in their rooms and Sarah Bob end up seemingly
inebriated Mayor smith Or in living room, making uncomfortable small talk,
and Mayor's using that breathy Blanche Dubois street car named
desire kind of voice. I've always depended on the kind strange.
I mean, I drink, but it's definitely a different thing
(05:18):
to be sober when somebody has really really drunk around you.
It's like, oh, this is boring. I just wanted to
go home, but we started talking about hockey and she
invited me to a King's game. Wait a minute, you
just met her and she invited you to a Kings game.
She's like, oh, I can totally get into a King's
(05:39):
game anytime. Let's go, you know, we can go tomorrow
or something. It was it was really quick. I was like, what,
I just met you, lady, but I went because my
huge Kings So she targeted you immediately. Oh yeah. It
was like, oh, I can get at her with this,
and and Bob I know that the hockey thing was like, oh,
(06:03):
you know I haven't in here. Yeah. Mayor certainly has
a powerful in here because Bob and his nanny, Sarah,
are rabid hockey fans, and Mayor quickly lets them know
that she actually grew up with hockey legend Garth Snow,
the manager of the New York Islanders. M M. I
didn't know Garth Snow grew up in Ireland, and she's
(06:24):
also best friends with Jack Capuano, the Islanders head coach.
Jack would text her and she'd show you the texts
Jack would text me. It was pretty quick because you know, oh,
I've been led into the inner circle of Mayor's friends
and that kind of makes you feel special. Yeah, well,
I mean hockey celebrities, you know kind of. I was like,
(06:46):
that's pretty cool, you know. And those hockey celebrities are
texting Bob too, developing a fast and deep friendship, all
the while telling him what an amazing woman Mayor is,
and they hope that he's not just after her at
five million euro inheritance. I mean, of course he's not.
Bob's no schlub himself either. Successful engineer, you know, he's
(07:09):
very successful, right, like the stuff that he's developed. Yeah,
he's like a tech I don't want to digress, but engineer.
He's responsible for a lot of like touchscreen phones. That's
Bob's baby, and he's well he owned. He told me that,
and I was like, get out. He's like, no, really, yeah,
I hope develop the technology for that. I was like,
Jesus Christ. So he does well in Newport Beach. He
(07:31):
owns two homes, not one two. Yeah, and before long
Bob and Mayor are in a serious relationship. She's actually
recorded talking about Bob to one of her victims. There
was a scientific study shown. Bob told me this with Apple.
The reason Apple shows that dot dot dot is the
(07:53):
person when you're texting gets a notification pay attention to this,
and it gets your attention. Dot dot dot gets your attention.
So the creators at Apple who do the processors, did
that dot dot dot showing up on the bubble to
make you pay attention to what's coming. Mayor tells Bob
(08:18):
she works as a child custody investigator for l A County. Yeah,
she's an Irish heiress worth millions, but she likes helping
kids and giving back. And Mayor offers to help Bob
because she has inside information that Bob's ex wife, Kelly,
is endangering his children. She made it out like a
(08:42):
bunch of shady ship was going on over at Kelly's.
Shady is an understatement. Mayor made it seem as if
they were abusing the kids, like this pedophile ring kind
of thing. Like right that Bob's ex wife was running
a B D s M club out of her house
while the kids were there. The private investigator that was
working with Mayor on Bob's case would text Bob and
(09:04):
Mayor I found out attached to the phones she's running
a B D s M sex ring out of the
house in front of the kids. This is great, we
can get the kids taken away from her Bob is
really disturbed by these revelations, and he leans on Mayor
for help more than ever. And Bob's nanny, Sarah, she
suddenly pushed out of the picture entirely. So, how did
(09:27):
Mayor get you fired? I was telling Mayor about stuff, Bob,
stuff that's essentially it. And he's like, I can't believe
you told her about me dating so and so. And
I was like, well, I said you went on a
date two years ago or whatever. There were no details there.
And then the guys were harassing him, the guys, you know,
the hockey guys. And he's like, I don't even know
(09:47):
how they know about this stuff. And I'm like, I
did not tell these guys. Oh, so Bob thinks you're
telling Garth and telling Jack all these hockey his private business.
Mayor was only pretending to be Sarah's best friend to
pump her for information about Bob, stuff about his former girlfriends,
his finances, his ex wife. Stuff only Sarah new. And
(10:10):
when the hockey celebrities start texting Bob with knowledge of
that private information, Bob feels betrayed by Sarah and that
Mayor's urging. He fires her and angry that she took me,
and mostly that she ruined this relationship that I had
with this family, like I'd known them for so long
(10:32):
and been close for so long, and for her to
come in so fast and hard and just fuck everything
up incredibly was just amazing to me, Like that she
was that destructive, that fast, and that yes, oh my gosh,
so evil, but that evil has genius underpinnings. What Sarah
(11:04):
and I eventually figure out all the texts from those
hockey celebrities that she and Bob keep receiving, it was
a constant barrage aren't really coming from hockey celebrities at all.
They're coming from Mayor, as are the texts from the
private investigator working with Mayor in her capacity as a
child custody advocate to bust up the b d s
(11:28):
M sex ranked. Bob's ex wife is running out of
her home. Nothing was true. I had no idea she
pretended to be multiple people. And when you say she
pretended to be all these people, what do you mean?
So she'd have them text us And I'm a dumbmass
because I should have figured that out way sooner that
(11:49):
it was all Google numbers. And I had no idea
that was a thing. But she would have like all
of these conversations going at once that I mean, it
was mind boggling that she was able to keep track
of it all, because I sure as hell couldn't. She
had my head spinning. So she would text you and
(12:10):
text Bob pretending to be Garth Snow, the manager of
that hockey team, and then pretending to be Jack Cappy,
a hockey player. And she took me to a King's
game where they were playing the Ducks, I think in
David Nonas was a manager or something at the time,
(12:31):
and he was there and she would keep waving to
him and it almost looked like there was eye contact there.
It was really believable at the time. And then you
thought David was texting you or texting her, Yes, but
it was really her texting herself as David. Yeah, it
(12:52):
was like just mind boggling, But it wasn't mind boggling
to me because about a month for Bob and Sarah
find my blog and call me up, I figure out
all those texts and emails. Mayor would show me. When
I was helping her get her inheritance from her barristers
in Ireland from her hateful cousin Finton, and from her
(13:13):
Los Angeles attorney. All originated from Google accounts. Mayor created
herself to impersonate a cast of compelling characters. She was
very good at the smoke and mirrors. She'd keep you
spinning and you wouldn't know what was coming next to
what was going on. And Bob certainly doesn't know what's
(13:36):
going on because the con Mayor is running on him
is now ripe and ready for harvest. She was trying
to get ahold of his property, both of them. She
was trying to get her name put on both of
the deeds. She was going to buy the house, right,
So the scam was as as Bob told me. The
scam was. Mayor had this twenty five million year inheritance
(13:58):
coming from her Irish family, and she was going to
use a portion of that to buy this twelve million
dollar house in or around Newport Beach. Thing was incorrect.
She's like, oh, yeah, I'm going to buy this house,
but it might be this one or that one. We
she actually drove around with me and she showed me
different houses. Like we just looked at him from the
(14:21):
outside they were yeah. But then she showed me some
you know, like the listings and the pictures online that
they were incredible. She told me the one that they
she really settled on had like a four car garage
and she was going to make half of it a
hockey rink. Okay. I was like, how are you gonna Okay,
(14:43):
I mean I didn't quite get that, but anyway, Yeah,
So she got a realtor and her and Bob in
his land rover would go with the realtor and look
at this twelve million dollar house like many times, and
the plan is, I'm gonna buy this house. Mayor tells
Bob she's going to buy the house. She wants to
(15:04):
put his name on it. At first, Bob says, that's
not right, because if our relationship goes south, I'll own
a half of your home six million old. That's not right.
And Mayor says, well, we can just make it equal.
Add my name to your two homes and will be
equal exactly. So Bob takes his kids to the to
(15:25):
the mansion to pick out their bedrooms, and she puts
in an offer and she's drawn. At this point, she
has drawn up the paperwork for Bob to sign his
homes over. He hasn't signed but fate intervened because Kelly,
his wife, she really is a hero. Kelly got curious,
who is this woman Mayor Smith spending time around my kids?
(15:51):
And then what did Kelly do? She googled Mare and
found your blog. She did, And then I get a
phone call from Bob and I'm mean, this is after
he had fired me. She was like, go ahead and
google her and see if you come up with this.
And I did, and my head just exploded. I was
like that hunt like because I knew instantly that everything
(16:16):
on your blog was absolutely true. There was no hesitation
for me believing that. I was like, oh my god,
this makes all the sense in the world now, Like
a light went on, you know. So Bob rushes home
and confronts Mayor by showing her a print out of
my blog, and Mayor she doesn't say a word. She
(16:38):
just quietly turns around and quickly walks out of his house,
jumps in her car, and drives away fast. Bob never
hears from Mayor Smith ever again, So thank you for
putting your blog out there, because otherwise who knows what
had happened to Bob. Actually, Bob and I have met
(17:00):
at least a dozen times over the past couple of years,
and talked about the insanity of falling from Mayor's elaborate
cons for hours and hours on end. While you don't
hear from him here, you will hear from him later,
So stay tuned. As for his nanny, Sarah, why did
Mayor want you out of the picture? Oh? Clearly so
she could take over the caregiver position the kids, you know,
(17:23):
not babysitting, but like she could be the mom and
she could better influence Bob. So doing you signing over
his homes to her? That makes me want to puke.
And just when I think Sarah has said all that
she can say, she drops this on me. Oh and then, oh,
this is I told you about the life coaching thing.
(17:45):
She was trying to bring me on as a life coach.
Tell me so she's like, oh, yeah, you have the
personality to be a great life coach. I'm going to
teach you how to do this. So she let me
listen to some very very private things that people had
told her, and like she had me doing homework about
how I would help them. And she was paying me
(18:08):
a couple hundred bucks a week, which to me at
even now would be a you know, a significant amount
of money. She hired you as like an assistance. Yeah,
kind of, But I really think that was just to
push the rich lady thing right. I have a lot
of the money. So Mayor tricks Sarah into believing she's
a licensed psychologist. You know, it was a prerequisite for
(18:30):
her child custody investigator gig and Mayor emails Sarah audio
recordings of her life coaching sessions to train Sarah on
how to be a life coach. You heard the sessions, God,
I wish you still had those sessions now, because you
deleted everything in a fit of rage after you found
all this out. I might still have that, Oh my god,
(18:51):
and I have it on my iTunes of all things.
So Sarah rushes home and searches every digital dumpster i e.
Thumb drive, old computer, retired cell phone in her house
and in her car and actually finds one of the
recordings Mayor sent her back in. What you are about
(19:12):
to hear has never been shared publicly before. It's Mayor
in session with one of her quote unquote clients. Do
you think he did that to start a fighter? Really?
Because he was insecure at this point. Mayor is counseling
about a dozen clients in Los Angeles. That's your life
much for this cycle of your life. I just want
(19:33):
to be with somebody. I'm playing this recording over and
over again, literally all day long. Do you see how
that cycle keeps repeating. I just want to be with somebody.
What surprises me the most her approach is a life coach.
Is very unusual. I've never had a life coach, but
(19:55):
from what I know, aren't they supposed to be supportive.
I'm feeling really sick to miss stomach, and it's from
you and not talk about themselves. Oh my god, you're
breaking me, let alone their sex lives. I loved people
where the sex is bad and I still walked away,
and it want to be changed to bad sex. I
(20:16):
have not loved people and had great sex that have
stayed in the relationship for nine years because it was
fucking amazing sex and I got four orgasms in a night.
I wasn't letting that ship go. What you are witnessing
is mayor tricking an emotionally vulnerable young woman for profit.
You were manipulated and you were bullied into being married
(20:39):
to him. It's as if she watches a week's worth
of Dr Phil episodes and is off to the races.
People who say I need space are actually subconsciously instigating
a fight. So just a reminder here, Mayor is not
licensed to practice basket weaving, let alone psychology. And a
(21:00):
part of you took the path of least resistance and
wanting to be in a relationship with somebody and allowing
yourself to settle because he was better than nothing. And
the confidence with which she issues her psychological assessments is
as powerful as it is stunning, and it stands all
(21:22):
the way back to your dad, because you would have
to fight for his attention and his time and his affection,
and what little he gave you had to earn. Right,
aron I also discover her clients are some of her
biggest victims. She scams tens of thousands of dollars from
(21:44):
using the intimate details of their lives she gleans from
sessions as ammunition for her cons According to some clients
I spoke to Mayor impersonates via text and email, the
very people these clients confess they're in love with from Afar,
Mayor than tricks them into believing their love interest. It's
(22:04):
actually taking life coaching from her too, and she offers
to broker a romance for thousands of dollars for other clients.
Mayor convinces them that they were molested as children, even
though they don't remember it, and that's why they have
trouble in relationships. But Mayor offers to fix them if
(22:25):
they just pay her tens of thousands of dollars for
more life coaching sessions. Were you cheating on other guys?
Were you sleeping with multiple guys at one time? Not
that there's anything wrong with that, I'm just trying to
see what this measuring stick is for cheating capability. Listening
to this recording, so your other homework asslignment. I want
(22:48):
to define love. This deception unraveling, define in love. Compare
the two makes me to quote Mayor sick to my stomach.
And then I want you to write what your opinion
of your role in each you love someone? What's your role?
(23:10):
And if you're in love with someone, what's your role.
At this point, it seems that everyone Mayor meets she
scams eventually, Tina the lawyer, Sherry the strip club manager,
(23:31):
Michelle the psychic client, Bob the engineer, Sarah his nanny
and a bunch of life coaching clients. She's giving fake
therapy sessions too, while robbing them blind. But there are
a fortunate few who Mayor targets and lays the elaborate
groundwork to con and then inexplicably changes her mind. So
(23:54):
she was reading me text messages from Jennifer Jennifer Aniston
asking my advice, and I'm like, so, let's figure this out.
What do you want? So I was getting into the
story going, oh my god, this is so wild. Remember
Test catch A Tory, the CEO and founder of Global
Women's Empowerment Network. Mayor spends six months tricking Tests into
(24:15):
believing she's best friends with Jennifer Aniston. Using her tried
and true fake email and texting techniques, Test believes that
the A list celebrity is interested in being the spokesperson
for her nonprofit and wants to meet with Tests in
the near future. The craziest part is his Golden globes
were coming up and she said, I want you to
(24:37):
come with me. Jen says this year she's not going
to go with her entreage. She just wants a few
close friends, and so she invited me. She invited you
to the Golden Globes with Jennifer Aniston. Jennifer Aniston invited her,
and she said, I want to take you as my
plus one because that will be a great place for
you to talk with Jen because Jen this and Jend that.
(25:00):
And I'm like, okay, oh my god. She does you
have a dress? I said, I live in Los Angeles.
We have a closet full accounts that we can throw
on a you know, at a last minute for a
red carpet. I said, I will find something. I will
be there and so, you know, usually the Golden Globes
(25:21):
in time zone starts a little early afternoon. But she
called me late morning and I was starting to prepare
to get ready, and she said, oh, I'm really sorry.
Jen decided that she didn't want to have very many people.
She's in a very private moment right now, and I
don't remember. There might have been something in a personal
life that made sense to me. I'm like, oh, that
(25:42):
makes sense. I don't want to intrude. I'll meet when
the time is right, but thank you so much for
the invitation. As I put my dress back into the closet,
I'm like, oh, well, I'll watch it on TV like
every other year, and then to find out later, you know,
including the fact that she would set up Google accounts
(26:04):
and phone numbers and multiple ways and tag Jennifer Aniston
into it so it would come up on her phone
or email that Jen was calling or Jem was emailing,
or Jem was texting my friend Jen. I'll look at
Jen just sent me a text, Isn't she great? I'm like,
oh my god, that's so nice. But the weird thing
(26:25):
is is to imagine the wizard behind that curtain. Tess
is giving me chills. Mayor really is the wizard behind
the curtain, because it's all magical until you realize nothing
she says is true. Shortly after that, Jennifer Aniston red
carpet Renegg. Mayor never contacts Tess again and never tries
(26:47):
to scam a single dime out of her. Tess and
I are her posts still scratching her heads over that one.
If I ever got to chance to ask her, I
would say, what did you have planned for me? It's
Sunday morning now in June of months after going to
(27:09):
police and then covering other victims and almost victims like tests,
but I'm no closer to getting justice than I am
to getting washboard abs. I'm sitting on my couch sipping coffee.
A story about people forgetting their email passwords plays on
the morning news, and then suddenly a vivid memory floods
my brain. Oh my god, it's this crazy thing. Here's
(27:33):
how I explain it to my buddy Evan, who at
this point thinks I'm so defiable. How did you get
into her email account? And I was scared, that's your default?
That my default? Emotions like, Johnathan, what the hell are
you doing? So Mayor had given me her password a
couple of years earlier because she was stuck in traffic.
(27:53):
And she calls me and says she can't get into
her email account her phone. It's hacked, her her emails hacked.
Oh my god, Jonathan, I'm a hacked. And she's like,
you know, having hysterics on the phone. And I she
asked me, can you log into my email from your
computer and see if you can get in? So she
trusted me, and and I was busy at work, and
(28:14):
I took a moment, sure, and I she gave me
her password. I logged in your email is fine? I think,
just try to restart your phone and you know that
might work. That fixes a lot of things. So she
restarted her phone and it worked. And I forgot about
that whole exchange because it happened in the blip of
a work day. Totally forgot about the whole thing until
one day after I realized I'm conned. A few months later,
I'm watching the news on Sunday, drinking my coffee, and
(28:36):
it just floods into my head. Oh my god, I
know her password. Could that still be her password? No,
you have to assume it would be right. I would
assume she would have changed it, because she especially after
all this. Yeah, I would assume. But no, I went
to her email account. I put in her email and
asked for the password. I put in the password, and
(28:56):
damn I was in. It was her password. And what's
even crazier is I'm not the only one of Mayor's
victims who she gives her email password to mid scam.
She gave you her email password? Why? Yep, Sarah the
nanny got it too because she couldn't figure out how
to use a goddamn firestick. She was setting up an
(29:17):
Amazon firestick. Yeah, she couldn't figure that out. So I'm like, well,
what's your password? You know? And she gave you her
pass and remember what it was? Oh, but I remembered.
Mayor's email account is a treasure trove of documented scams.
It quickly discovered a lot of things. Well, she kept
(29:38):
most of her emails deleted, but she didn't delete her
scent that much. She did delete a lot. She kept
everything deleted, which tells you she knew she was going
to be caught one day. Everything was deleted in the inbox,
but the scent still had a lot. And all of
these characters Finton, Tristan, Dear Mud, Jennifer Aniston, all these
people she impersonated all their emails. She was the same
(30:00):
password for all those accounts. So I logged into every
single account and changed the password. I locked her out
of all twenty three email identities she had as all
these people she used to scam people. That's gotta be
crazy to just like open up someone's email and then
you see literally a list of personas that she's acting as,
(30:21):
not only the personas in the email exchanges. Now you
might think what I'm doing is illegal, but it's actually not.
For two reasons. Number One, Mayor gave me her password
and from a legal standpoint that gives me and anyone else.
She gives her password to permission to log into her account,
and number two I logged into her email account with
(30:44):
the sole intention of uncovering evidence of a crime and
stopping crimes already in progress. I also reported all her
fraudulent email accounts to the authorities. However, there was one
discovery I made in Mayor's crime riddled accounts that I
(31:04):
just never saw coming. So what's sugar Daddy for me
dot com? So I didn't know this until I found
this out. In the world, there are sugar daddies, and
there are sugar babies, and sugar daddies pay sugar babies
for sex. She had multiple men paying her a monthly
fee for sex. Next time, on Queen of the con
(31:33):
Mayor practiced witchcraft, and you witnessed that. And Mayor Smith
casts a really profitable spell on a politician, and she
told me that she was taking his money there, you know,
so that he didn't have to confront her. She told
me that too, he'd better be careful because when Mayor's
cash flowest in jeopardy, all hell breaks loose. I want
(31:57):
you to call the authorities. I what you promised me.
You need to do right by me, not treat me
like I'm an extortionist or crazy. For exclusive photos and
other bonus material, follow at Queen of the Con on
Instagram and if you're enjoying Queen of the Con, tell
(32:17):
your friends about it and leave us a review on
Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Queen of
the Con. The Irish Heiress is a production of a
y R Media and I Heart Radio, hosted by Me
Jonathan Walton. Executive producers Jonathan Walton for Jonathan Walton Productions
(32:41):
and Eliza Rosen for a y R Media. Written by
Jonathan Walton, Consulting producer Evan Goldstein, Senior Associate producer Eric Newman.
Sound designed by Baked ZD Media, mixed and mastered by
Elliott Herman, audio engineering by Elliott Herm and studio engineering
(33:01):
by Chris McMasters. Legal counsel for A y R Media,
Gianni Douglas, Executive producer for I Heart Radio Chandler Maize
Certain portions of what you're about to hear have been
dramatized based on real life events, eyewitness accounts, and court records.
I confront the Irish heiress Mayor Smith in a downtown
Los Angeles parking garage for conning me out of seventy
thousand dollars. You've been scamming us out of money this
whole time. You have the police, they aren't doing anything
(00:25):
about it. So I start my own investigation and uncover victim.
Even after victim, yes, two thousand dollars after victim like
a PayPal credit card. I wouldn't never, but looking at
the charges, it was notorious. Near when I cut ties
with Mayor Smith in the parking garage that day. From
(00:46):
here on end, we're not friends. I know she's dating
an engineer in Newport Beach named Bob, and I'm betting
I just know she's scamming him, just like she's scamming me.
I don't have a phone number or even a last
name for Bob, but I know I have to reach
him somehow, so I start a blog. I realized that
(01:07):
the chances of Bob actually finding my blog are slim
to none, until one day my phone rings Hello, it's
Bob calling. Turns out Mary Smith is pulling her biggest
and most spectacular con job yet. I'm Jonathan Walton, and
(01:36):
this is Queen of the Con Episode four, The Engineer.
When you post something online, you never really know how
it will be received. I get into unintentional political arguments
(01:59):
with friends on face Book all the time. And the
crime and the yangs and the drugs. He was on
the cutting edge of civil rights when at Marrow Lago. First,
I buy stuff on Craigslist that turns out to be
total junk. I leave detailed and pointed reviews on Yelp
(02:20):
that are flagged for violating their terms of service. How
is describing a vegan restaurant's bathroom as an abomination against
the rules? But my blog about con artist Mere Smith
feels like the most important thing I'll ever post online
in my entire life, and I desperately hope it will
(02:41):
save a man named Bob, a complete stranger, from certain disaster.
If Bob hadn't found your blog when he did, I
don't know what would have happened. It would have been
just devastating. Sarah Coffin is Bob's nanny taking care of
his two kids from two thousand nine to two sixteen.
(03:02):
She's a thirtysomething former preschool teacher with a passion for
crafting costumes and Renaissance festivals. And she loves kids, especially
Bob's kids, and they love her in a weird way.
You kind of raised his kids with him, Yeah right, Yeah, No,
I was a big part of their didn't they feel
like your kids? I love those freaking kids so much.
(03:25):
They're just It's September of Mayor Smith is deep in
the process of scamming me out of seventy tho dollars
when she starts dating Bob, an engineer in Newport Beach,
an affluent seaside town in Orange County, about an hour's
drive south of Los Angeles. How did you meet, Mayor? Okay,
(03:48):
so Bob asked me to stay late one night when
I was babysitting because he was on a date. So
he brings her back to the house because they had
like four bottles of wine or something, and she was
too drunk to drive home. And I'm not sure how
much of that was an act and how much was
(04:10):
reality with her, because I'm not sure of anything with
her anymore, but I think she ended up spending the
night at his house, not like in the guest room,
not like in his bed or anything, because the kids
were home, and that was like a big fucking deal
because he doesn't want to have women kids. Yeah, so
he was. Let me just say this about Bob. Bob
(04:31):
is one of the nicest human beings I have ever
come in contact with. He is a really good guy.
And when I met her, it was so awkward. I
was like, Okay, I'm gonna go like now that you're back,
and he's like, no, no, no, hang out and meet
my new friend Mayre. So picture it. Bob's kids are
(04:54):
asleep in their rooms and Sarah Bob end up seemingly
inebriated Mayor smith Or in living room, making uncomfortable small talk,
and Mayor's using that breathy Blanche Dubois street car named
desire kind of voice. I've always depended on the kind strange.
I mean, I drink, but it's definitely a different thing
(05:18):
to be sober when somebody has really really drunk around you.
It's like, oh, this is boring. I just wanted to
go home, but we started talking about hockey and she
invited me to a King's game. Wait a minute, you
just met her and she invited you to a Kings game.
She's like, oh, I can totally get into a King's
(05:39):
game anytime. Let's go, you know, we can go tomorrow
or something. It was it was really quick. I was like, what,
I just met you, lady, but I went because my
huge Kings So she targeted you immediately. Oh yeah. It
was like, oh, I can get at her with this,
and and Bob I know that the hockey thing was like, oh,
(06:03):
you know I haven't in here. Yeah. Mayor certainly has
a powerful in here because Bob and his nanny, Sarah,
are rabid hockey fans, and Mayor quickly lets them know
that she actually grew up with hockey legend Garth Snow,
the manager of the New York Islanders. M M. I
didn't know Garth Snow grew up in Ireland, and she's
(06:24):
also best friends with Jack Capuano, the Islanders head coach.
Jack would text her and she'd show you the texts
Jack would text me. It was pretty quick because you know, oh,
I've been led into the inner circle of Mayor's friends
and that kind of makes you feel special. Yeah, well,
I mean hockey celebrities, you know kind of. I was like,
(06:46):
that's pretty cool, you know. And those hockey celebrities are
texting Bob too, developing a fast and deep friendship, all
the while telling him what an amazing woman Mayor is,
and they hope that he's not just after her at
five million euro inheritance. I mean, of course he's not.
Bob's no schlub himself either. Successful engineer, you know, he's
(07:09):
very successful, right, like the stuff that he's developed. Yeah,
he's like a tech I don't want to digress, but engineer.
He's responsible for a lot of like touchscreen phones. That's
Bob's baby, and he's well he owned. He told me that,
and I was like, get out. He's like, no, really, yeah,
I hope develop the technology for that. I was like,
Jesus Christ. So he does well in Newport Beach. He
(07:31):
owns two homes, not one two. Yeah, and before long
Bob and Mayor are in a serious relationship. She's actually
recorded talking about Bob to one of her victims. There
was a scientific study shown. Bob told me this with Apple.
The reason Apple shows that dot dot dot is the
(07:53):
person when you're texting gets a notification pay attention to this,
and it gets your attention. Dot dot dot gets your attention.
So the creators at Apple who do the processors, did
that dot dot dot showing up on the bubble to
make you pay attention to what's coming. Mayor tells Bob
(08:18):
she works as a child custody investigator for l A County. Yeah,
she's an Irish heiress worth millions, but she likes helping
kids and giving back. And Mayor offers to help Bob
because she has inside information that Bob's ex wife, Kelly,
is endangering his children. She made it out like a
(08:42):
bunch of shady ship was going on over at Kelly's.
Shady is an understatement. Mayor made it seem as if
they were abusing the kids, like this pedophile ring kind
of thing. Like right that Bob's ex wife was running
a B D s M club out of her house
while the kids were there. The private investigator that was
working with Mayor on Bob's case would text Bob and
(09:04):
Mayor I found out attached to the phones she's running
a B D s M sex ring out of the
house in front of the kids. This is great, we
can get the kids taken away from her Bob is
really disturbed by these revelations, and he leans on Mayor
for help more than ever. And Bob's nanny, Sarah, she
suddenly pushed out of the picture entirely. So, how did
(09:27):
Mayor get you fired? I was telling Mayor about stuff, Bob,
stuff that's essentially it. And he's like, I can't believe
you told her about me dating so and so. And
I was like, well, I said you went on a
date two years ago or whatever. There were no details there.
And then the guys were harassing him, the guys, you know,
the hockey guys. And he's like, I don't even know
(09:47):
how they know about this stuff. And I'm like, I
did not tell these guys. Oh, so Bob thinks you're
telling Garth and telling Jack all these hockey his private business.
Mayor was only pretending to be Sarah's best friend to
pump her for information about Bob, stuff about his former girlfriends,
his finances, his ex wife. Stuff only Sarah new. And
(10:10):
when the hockey celebrities start texting Bob with knowledge of
that private information, Bob feels betrayed by Sarah and that
Mayor's urging. He fires her and angry that she took me,
and mostly that she ruined this relationship that I had
with this family, like I'd known them for so long
(10:32):
and been close for so long, and for her to
come in so fast and hard and just fuck everything
up incredibly was just amazing to me, Like that she
was that destructive, that fast, and that yes, oh my gosh,
so evil, but that evil has genius underpinnings. What Sarah
(11:04):
and I eventually figure out all the texts from those
hockey celebrities that she and Bob keep receiving, it was
a constant barrage aren't really coming from hockey celebrities at all.
They're coming from Mayor, as are the texts from the
private investigator working with Mayor in her capacity as a
child custody advocate to bust up the b d s
(11:28):
M sex ranked. Bob's ex wife is running out of
her home. Nothing was true. I had no idea she
pretended to be multiple people. And when you say she
pretended to be all these people, what do you mean?
So she'd have them text us And I'm a dumbmass
because I should have figured that out way sooner that
(11:49):
it was all Google numbers. And I had no idea
that was a thing. But she would have like all
of these conversations going at once that I mean, it
was mind boggling that she was able to keep track
of it all, because I sure as hell couldn't. She
had my head spinning. So she would text you and
(12:10):
text Bob pretending to be Garth Snow, the manager of
that hockey team, and then pretending to be Jack Cappy,
a hockey player. And she took me to a King's
game where they were playing the Ducks, I think in
David Nonas was a manager or something at the time,
(12:31):
and he was there and she would keep waving to
him and it almost looked like there was eye contact there.
It was really believable at the time. And then you
thought David was texting you or texting her, Yes, but
it was really her texting herself as David. Yeah, it
(12:52):
was like just mind boggling, But it wasn't mind boggling
to me because about a month for Bob and Sarah
find my blog and call me up, I figure out
all those texts and emails. Mayor would show me. When
I was helping her get her inheritance from her barristers
in Ireland from her hateful cousin Finton, and from her
(13:13):
Los Angeles attorney. All originated from Google accounts. Mayor created
herself to impersonate a cast of compelling characters. She was
very good at the smoke and mirrors. She'd keep you
spinning and you wouldn't know what was coming next to
what was going on. And Bob certainly doesn't know what's
(13:36):
going on because the con Mayor is running on him
is now ripe and ready for harvest. She was trying
to get ahold of his property, both of them. She
was trying to get her name put on both of
the deeds. She was going to buy the house, right,
So the scam was as as Bob told me. The
scam was. Mayor had this twenty five million year inheritance
(13:58):
coming from her Irish family, and she was going to
use a portion of that to buy this twelve million
dollar house in or around Newport Beach. Thing was incorrect.
She's like, oh, yeah, I'm going to buy this house,
but it might be this one or that one. We
she actually drove around with me and she showed me
different houses. Like we just looked at him from the
(14:21):
outside they were yeah. But then she showed me some
you know, like the listings and the pictures online that
they were incredible. She told me the one that they
she really settled on had like a four car garage
and she was going to make half of it a
hockey rink. Okay. I was like, how are you gonna Okay,
(14:43):
I mean I didn't quite get that, but anyway, Yeah,
So she got a realtor and her and Bob in
his land rover would go with the realtor and look
at this twelve million dollar house like many times, and
the plan is, I'm gonna buy this house. Mayor tells
Bob she's going to buy the house. She wants to
(15:04):
put his name on it. At first, Bob says, that's
not right, because if our relationship goes south, I'll own
a half of your home six million old. That's not right.
And Mayor says, well, we can just make it equal.
Add my name to your two homes and will be
equal exactly. So Bob takes his kids to the to
(15:25):
the mansion to pick out their bedrooms, and she puts
in an offer and she's drawn. At this point, she
has drawn up the paperwork for Bob to sign his
homes over. He hasn't signed but fate intervened because Kelly,
his wife, she really is a hero. Kelly got curious,
who is this woman Mayor Smith spending time around my kids?
(15:51):
And then what did Kelly do? She googled Mare and
found your blog. She did, And then I get a
phone call from Bob and I'm mean, this is after
he had fired me. She was like, go ahead and
google her and see if you come up with this.
And I did, and my head just exploded. I was
like that hunt like because I knew instantly that everything
(16:16):
on your blog was absolutely true. There was no hesitation
for me believing that. I was like, oh my god,
this makes all the sense in the world now, Like
a light went on, you know. So Bob rushes home
and confronts Mayor by showing her a print out of
my blog, and Mayor she doesn't say a word. She
(16:38):
just quietly turns around and quickly walks out of his house,
jumps in her car, and drives away fast. Bob never
hears from Mayor Smith ever again, So thank you for
putting your blog out there, because otherwise who knows what
had happened to Bob. Actually, Bob and I have met
(17:00):
at least a dozen times over the past couple of years,
and talked about the insanity of falling from Mayor's elaborate
cons for hours and hours on end. While you don't
hear from him here, you will hear from him later,
So stay tuned. As for his nanny, Sarah, why did
Mayor want you out of the picture? Oh? Clearly so
she could take over the caregiver position the kids, you know,
(17:23):
not babysitting, but like she could be the mom and
she could better influence Bob. So doing you signing over
his homes to her? That makes me want to puke.
And just when I think Sarah has said all that
she can say, she drops this on me. Oh and then, oh,
this is I told you about the life coaching thing.
(17:45):
She was trying to bring me on as a life coach.
Tell me so she's like, oh, yeah, you have the
personality to be a great life coach. I'm going to
teach you how to do this. So she let me
listen to some very very private things that people had
told her, and like she had me doing homework about
how I would help them. And she was paying me
(18:08):
a couple hundred bucks a week, which to me at
even now would be a you know, a significant amount
of money. She hired you as like an assistance. Yeah,
kind of, But I really think that was just to
push the rich lady thing right. I have a lot
of the money. So Mayor tricks Sarah into believing she's
a licensed psychologist. You know, it was a prerequisite for
(18:30):
her child custody investigator gig and Mayor emails Sarah audio
recordings of her life coaching sessions to train Sarah on
how to be a life coach. You heard the sessions, God,
I wish you still had those sessions now, because you
deleted everything in a fit of rage after you found
all this out. I might still have that, Oh my god,
(18:51):
and I have it on my iTunes of all things.
So Sarah rushes home and searches every digital dumpster i e.
Thumb drive, old computer, retired cell phone in her house
and in her car and actually finds one of the
recordings Mayor sent her back in. What you are about
(19:12):
to hear has never been shared publicly before. It's Mayor
in session with one of her quote unquote clients. Do
you think he did that to start a fighter? Really?
Because he was insecure at this point. Mayor is counseling
about a dozen clients in Los Angeles. That's your life
much for this cycle of your life. I just want
(19:33):
to be with somebody. I'm playing this recording over and
over again, literally all day long. Do you see how
that cycle keeps repeating. I just want to be with somebody.
What surprises me the most her approach is a life coach.
Is very unusual. I've never had a life coach, but
(19:55):
from what I know, aren't they supposed to be supportive.
I'm feeling really sick to miss stomach, and it's from
you and not talk about themselves. Oh my god, you're
breaking me, let alone their sex lives. I loved people
where the sex is bad and I still walked away,
and it want to be changed to bad sex. I
(20:16):
have not loved people and had great sex that have
stayed in the relationship for nine years because it was
fucking amazing sex and I got four orgasms in a night.
I wasn't letting that ship go. What you are witnessing
is mayor tricking an emotionally vulnerable young woman for profit.
You were manipulated and you were bullied into being married
(20:39):
to him. It's as if she watches a week's worth
of Dr Phil episodes and is off to the races.
People who say I need space are actually subconsciously instigating
a fight. So just a reminder here, Mayor is not
licensed to practice basket weaving, let alone psychology. And a
(21:00):
part of you took the path of least resistance and
wanting to be in a relationship with somebody and allowing
yourself to settle because he was better than nothing. And
the confidence with which she issues her psychological assessments is
as powerful as it is stunning, and it stands all
(21:22):
the way back to your dad, because you would have
to fight for his attention and his time and his affection,
and what little he gave you had to earn. Right,
aron I also discover her clients are some of her
biggest victims. She scams tens of thousands of dollars from
(21:44):
using the intimate details of their lives she gleans from
sessions as ammunition for her cons According to some clients
I spoke to Mayor impersonates via text and email, the
very people these clients confess they're in love with from Afar,
Mayor than tricks them into believing their love interest. It's
(22:04):
actually taking life coaching from her too, and she offers
to broker a romance for thousands of dollars for other clients.
Mayor convinces them that they were molested as children, even
though they don't remember it, and that's why they have
trouble in relationships. But Mayor offers to fix them if
(22:25):
they just pay her tens of thousands of dollars for
more life coaching sessions. Were you cheating on other guys?
Were you sleeping with multiple guys at one time? Not
that there's anything wrong with that, I'm just trying to
see what this measuring stick is for cheating capability. Listening
to this recording, so your other homework asslignment. I want
(22:48):
to define love. This deception unraveling, define in love. Compare
the two makes me to quote Mayor sick to my stomach.
And then I want you to write what your opinion
of your role in each you love someone? What's your role?
(23:10):
And if you're in love with someone, what's your role.
At this point, it seems that everyone Mayor meets she
scams eventually, Tina the lawyer, Sherry the strip club manager,
(23:31):
Michelle the psychic client, Bob the engineer, Sarah his nanny
and a bunch of life coaching clients. She's giving fake
therapy sessions too, while robbing them blind. But there are
a fortunate few who Mayor targets and lays the elaborate
groundwork to con and then inexplicably changes her mind. So
(23:54):
she was reading me text messages from Jennifer Jennifer Aniston
asking my advice, and I'm like, so, let's figure this out.
What do you want? So I was getting into the
story going, oh my god, this is so wild. Remember
Test catch A Tory, the CEO and founder of Global
Women's Empowerment Network. Mayor spends six months tricking Tests into
(24:15):
believing she's best friends with Jennifer Aniston. Using her tried
and true fake email and texting techniques, Test believes that
the A list celebrity is interested in being the spokesperson
for her nonprofit and wants to meet with Tests in
the near future. The craziest part is his Golden globes
were coming up and she said, I want you to
(24:37):
come with me. Jen says this year she's not going
to go with her entreage. She just wants a few
close friends, and so she invited me. She invited you
to the Golden Globes with Jennifer Aniston. Jennifer Aniston invited her,
and she said, I want to take you as my
plus one because that will be a great place for
you to talk with Jen because Jen this and Jend that.
(25:00):
And I'm like, okay, oh my god. She does you
have a dress? I said, I live in Los Angeles.
We have a closet full accounts that we can throw
on a you know, at a last minute for a
red carpet. I said, I will find something. I will
be there and so, you know, usually the Golden Globes
(25:21):
in time zone starts a little early afternoon. But she
called me late morning and I was starting to prepare
to get ready, and she said, oh, I'm really sorry.
Jen decided that she didn't want to have very many people.
She's in a very private moment right now, and I
don't remember. There might have been something in a personal
life that made sense to me. I'm like, oh, that
(25:42):
makes sense. I don't want to intrude. I'll meet when
the time is right, but thank you so much for
the invitation. As I put my dress back into the closet,
I'm like, oh, well, I'll watch it on TV like
every other year, and then to find out later, you know,
including the fact that she would set up Google accounts
(26:04):
and phone numbers and multiple ways and tag Jennifer Aniston
into it so it would come up on her phone
or email that Jen was calling or Jem was emailing,
or Jem was texting my friend Jen. I'll look at
Jen just sent me a text, Isn't she great? I'm like,
oh my god, that's so nice. But the weird thing
(26:25):
is is to imagine the wizard behind that curtain. Tess
is giving me chills. Mayor really is the wizard behind
the curtain, because it's all magical until you realize nothing
she says is true. Shortly after that, Jennifer Aniston red
carpet Renegg. Mayor never contacts Tess again and never tries
(26:47):
to scam a single dime out of her. Tess and
I are her posts still scratching her heads over that one.
If I ever got to chance to ask her, I
would say, what did you have planned for me? It's
Sunday morning now in June of months after going to
(27:09):
police and then covering other victims and almost victims like tests,
but I'm no closer to getting justice than I am
to getting washboard abs. I'm sitting on my couch sipping coffee.
A story about people forgetting their email passwords plays on
the morning news, and then suddenly a vivid memory floods
my brain. Oh my god, it's this crazy thing. Here's
(27:33):
how I explain it to my buddy Evan, who at
this point thinks I'm so defiable. How did you get
into her email account? And I was scared, that's your default?
That my default? Emotions like, Johnathan, what the hell are
you doing? So Mayor had given me her password a
couple of years earlier because she was stuck in traffic.
(27:53):
And she calls me and says she can't get into
her email account her phone. It's hacked, her her emails hacked.
Oh my god, Jonathan, I'm a hacked. And she's like,
you know, having hysterics on the phone. And I she
asked me, can you log into my email from your
computer and see if you can get in? So she
trusted me, and and I was busy at work, and
(28:14):
I took a moment, sure, and I she gave me
her password. I logged in your email is fine? I think,
just try to restart your phone and you know that
might work. That fixes a lot of things. So she
restarted her phone and it worked. And I forgot about
that whole exchange because it happened in the blip of
a work day. Totally forgot about the whole thing until
one day after I realized I'm conned. A few months later,
I'm watching the news on Sunday, drinking my coffee, and
(28:36):
it just floods into my head. Oh my god, I
know her password. Could that still be her password? No,
you have to assume it would be right. I would
assume she would have changed it, because she especially after
all this. Yeah, I would assume. But no, I went
to her email account. I put in her email and
asked for the password. I put in the password, and
(28:56):
damn I was in. It was her password. And what's
even crazier is I'm not the only one of Mayor's
victims who she gives her email password to mid scam.
She gave you her email password? Why? Yep, Sarah the
nanny got it too because she couldn't figure out how
to use a goddamn firestick. She was setting up an
(29:17):
Amazon firestick. Yeah, she couldn't figure that out. So I'm like, well,
what's your password? You know? And she gave you her
pass and remember what it was? Oh, but I remembered.
Mayor's email account is a treasure trove of documented scams.
It quickly discovered a lot of things. Well, she kept
(29:38):
most of her emails deleted, but she didn't delete her
scent that much. She did delete a lot. She kept
everything deleted, which tells you she knew she was going
to be caught one day. Everything was deleted in the inbox,
but the scent still had a lot. And all of
these characters Finton, Tristan, Dear Mud, Jennifer Aniston, all these
people she impersonated all their emails. She was the same
(30:00):
password for all those accounts. So I logged into every
single account and changed the password. I locked her out
of all twenty three email identities she had as all
these people she used to scam people. That's gotta be
crazy to just like open up someone's email and then
you see literally a list of personas that she's acting as,
(30:21):
not only the personas in the email exchanges. Now you
might think what I'm doing is illegal, but it's actually not.
For two reasons. Number One, Mayor gave me her password
and from a legal standpoint that gives me and anyone else.
She gives her password to permission to log into her account,
and number two I logged into her email account with
(30:44):
the sole intention of uncovering evidence of a crime and
stopping crimes already in progress. I also reported all her
fraudulent email accounts to the authorities. However, there was one
discovery I made in Mayor's crime riddled accounts that I
(31:04):
just never saw coming. So what's sugar Daddy for me
dot com? So I didn't know this until I found
this out. In the world, there are sugar daddies, and
there are sugar babies, and sugar daddies pay sugar babies
for sex. She had multiple men paying her a monthly
fee for sex. Next time, on Queen of the con
(31:33):
Mayor practiced witchcraft, and you witnessed that. And Mayor Smith
casts a really profitable spell on a politician, and she
told me that she was taking his money there, you know,
so that he didn't have to confront her. She told
me that too, he'd better be careful because when Mayor's
cash flowest in jeopardy, all hell breaks loose. I want
(31:57):
you to call the authorities. I what you promised me.
You need to do right by me, not treat me
like I'm an extortionist or crazy. For exclusive photos and
other bonus material, follow at Queen of the Con on
Instagram and if you're enjoying Queen of the Con, tell
(32:17):
your friends about it and leave us a review on
Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Queen of
the Con. The Irish Heiress is a production of a
y R Media and I Heart Radio, hosted by Me
Jonathan Walton. Executive producers Jonathan Walton for Jonathan Walton Productions
(32:41):
and Eliza Rosen for a y R Media. Written by
Jonathan Walton, Consulting producer Evan Goldstein, Senior Associate producer Eric Newman.
Sound designed by Baked ZD Media, mixed and mastered by
Elliott Herman, audio engineering by Elliott Herm and studio engineering
(33:01):
by Chris McMasters. Legal counsel for A y R Media,
Gianni Douglas, Executive producer for I Heart Radio Chandler Maize
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If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.