A husband said he felt ‘sick to his stomach’ after his wife used a photo of their dead daughter to raise money.
In an interview with ABC’s The Con, Jeff Welch shared how Mair Smyth used a photo of their dead daughter Courtney on a GoFundMe page.
Smyth, who pretended to be a fake Irish heiress and managed to convince TV producer Johnathan Walton into giving her money, is now serving a 5-year prison sentence for grand larceny.
“Seeing this GoFundMe page – there was a picture of my daughter,” Welch expressed. “(Smyth) had raised over $16,000 telling people she had a sick child. That made me sick to my stomach. I can’t believe that somebody would do something like that.”
Walton, a producer for the reality TV show American Ninja Warrior, also shared how Smyth conned him into giving her $70,000. She pretended to be a fake Irish heiress fighting for a 5million euro inheritance and said that her friends included Ashley Judd and Jennifer Aniston.
Walton told The Hollywood Reporter at that time: “Back then, I was a different person and I took everything at face value. That’s how they get in your life, they try to help you.”
The TV producer and his husband became friends with the scammer in 2013. “She seemed wealthy, she seemed educated, she fit the part that she was playing to a T,” he added.
Smyth’s former husband Jeff Welch has also shared stories about her scams.
“It was very, very apparent that she had no interest in being a mother, or a wife. After I became aware of all these stories of people being scammed it was a big shock to learn I was married to somebody that has done this much damage to so many people,” he said.
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