American woman Marianne Smyth was found guilty on six charges of theft and fraud in a Northern Ireland court on Thursday, September 4.
Smyth, who was extradited from the US to Northern Ireland in July 2024, was convicted of three counts of theft and three counts of fraud by abuse of position at Downpatrick Crown Court on Thursday, September 4.
Following the four-day trial, the 11-person jury took just 20 minutes to reach its unanimous guilty verdicts on Thursday.
56-year-old Smyth, who has an address in Co Down, was remanded back into custody and is due to be sentenced on October 16.
According to journalist Paul Higgins, the jury heard during the trial that in total, Smyth swindled more than £100,000 from the complainants.
Among the complaints was former Derry GAA legend Dermot McNicholl and his wife.
However, the jury did not hear that Smyth had faced two further charges of fraud and stealing £20,000 from another victim who had since died.
Smyth did not give evidence in the trial.
According to The UK Times, Smyth’s barrister said she has been in custody for 18 months since being arrested in the US on an extradition warrant, the equivalent of a three-year jail sentence, which is likely to be the maximum she will receive.
The UK Home Office has already applied for her to be immediately deported when she is released.
Marianne Smyth's extradition
Smyth, who was previously convicted of two felonies after defrauding victims of over $60,000, was accused of four counts of fraud by abuse of position and four counts of theft, according to extradition paperwork that was filed in the US District Court District of Maine (Bangor) in February 2024.
According to the extradition complaint, the crimes took place in Northern Ireland between March 2008 and October 2010 when Smyth was an independent mortgage adviser for An Independent Mortgage Solution Ltd (AIMS).
The complaint alleged that Smyth "failed to invest and stole from" two people in the amount of approximately $25,500, another person in the amount of approximately $25,500, another person in the amount of approximately $29,000, and another person in the amount of approximately $92,000.
Court records show that PSNI Detective Constable Mark Anderson wrote in February 2021 that the allegations against Smyth were first reported to the PSNI in July 2009. By that time, Smyth had left Northern Ireland and returned to the US. She was alerted as wanted for arrest should she ever return to the UK.
The PSNI conducted a review of the case in 2017, and a file was submitted to the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) in January 2019. A decision to prosecute Smyth on indictment was taken in October 2019.
In February 2021, the Magistrate's Court in Northern Ireland issued eight warrants for Smyth's arrest; in September 2023, three of those warrants were withdrawn due to typographical errors but were reissued that same day.
The US Marshals Service believed Smyth, who last entered the US in 2013, was in Bingham, Maine, and she was observed there on January 22, 2024.
Smyth was arrested on February 23, 2024, and appeared in court that same day. She requested an extradition hearing and was detained without bail pending the hearing on the request for detention.
After a federal court ruled that there was "sufficient evidence to sustain the charges," Smyth was extradited from the US to Northern Ireland that July.
Marianne Smyth's bogus "Irish" claims
Smyth previously targeted television producer Jonathan Walton, who, upon discovering Smyth’s misdeeds, launched a campaign to out her.
In an August 2019 piece for HuffPost, Walton recalled how, after meeting Smtyh in Los Angeles in 2013, the fraudster would constantly treat him and his husband to fancy dinners, often telling the couple that she had plenty of money, money which she brought with her when she left Ireland, and that she enjoyed treating her friends.
Bizarrely, Smyth had a strange fascination with wanting to be Irish - so much so that she crafted a persona that was based upon having been raised in Ireland.
Indeed, Smyth’s still-public X account features plenty of engagement with posts about Irish sports, Irish language, and even a retweet of an IrishCentral post.
Walton wrote in the HuffPost piece: “Mair told us she was originally from Ireland and one night she pointed to a framed document hanging in her living room. ‘This is the Irish Constitution,’ she said. ‘See that signature at the bottom? That’s my great uncle’s.’”
“Since my knowledge of Ireland was scant, I believed her," Walton wrote, "I had no idea that like her shoes, that tale was also fake.”
He describes how intricately Smyth fabricated her lie: “Mair brought me Irish tea and pastries and regaled me with stories of how when she was a young girl, her grandmother, who was supposedly in the Irish Republican Army, would bring her to the top of a bridge and teach Mair how to hurl Molotov cocktails down on British soldiers.
"I was captivated and horrified. But her stories about her family were all lies too.”
Walton further claimed that Smyth had shown him angry text messages and emails from her "Irish cousins" threatening that she wouldn’t get a dime of her Irish uncle's €25 million estate. The messages, however, were fake, he later learned.
"Many other victims out there"
After watching the verdict on Thursday, Walton told The UK Times: “[Smyth] has betrayed everyone she has met, her own family, her own daughter, anyone who has loved her. She is incapable of showing love.
“The victims have been waiting 16 years for justice. It was a very emotional day for them. There are many other victims out there but most are not as brave as these people in Northern Ireland and are still too ashamed and embarrassed to come forward. It is a Herculean effort to come to court to give evidence in court.
“I hope the judge in this case will be aware of the victims not just in Northern Ireland but all over the world. The minute [Smyth] is released she will begin hurting people again.”
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