GUEST BLOGGER
Hallie Ayres
Contributing Writer

Showtime’s recent four-part documentary series “Love Fraud” covers a familiar premise: a conman meets a slew of women on dating apps, woos them, convinces them to marry him and then wipes them of their savings and disappears. But directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady have given this particular narrative a twist — instead of focusing on the conman himself, their documentary follows in real time as the victimized women band together to seek revenge.

The series opens by introducing the viewer to some of the women as they recount the deception methods used by Richard Scott Smith, a conman based in and around Kansas City, Missouri. The women detail the lies Smith told them to impress them — that he was about to win a lucrative lawsuit, that he was a pilot, that he was a successful entrepreneur. Then they detailed how he would swindle them out of money for cars and houses before running off with the rest of their savings. At one point in the series, a private investigator reads off the results of a background check into Smith. He had 10 different social security numbers, 43 different phone numbers and 58 different addresses.

The women also explain how they met through a blog started by one of Smith’s victims who hoped to spread awareness about his romance scams. The blog, which still exists, grew into a forum for the women to track Smith’s moves after he had scammed them in the hopes that they would eventually be able to bring him to justice.

With the help of a bounty hunter named Carla, who takes on the case pro bono because she genuinely wants to help find Smith, the women move forward with their plan to put Smith behind bars. Sabrina, a victim who estimates Smith swindled her out of nearly $100,000, says, “The best way to get over a guy is revenge.”

As the show progresses, Ewing and Grady shine light on the state of romance scams today. In one elucidating scene, Carla explains Smith’s strategy. “He did not run off with millions of dollars at all … He makes enough money to support his habits, like new trucks and new Harleys. He’s a good conman, but he’s not a big-dollar conman. He’s a nickel-and-dime conman. He goes after middle-income women that have just enough money to make him look good. Meanwhile, he drains them of everything they’ve worked their whole life for, and it’s not that much.”

Carla notes that Smith isn’t intent on going after one big scam to get rich. Rather, his track record suggests a certain addictive proclivity to the art of the scam and a desire to achieve his goals through legal means, i.e. marriage. Once Smith is able to convince a woman to marry him, their finances are shared, and the high-dollar purchases he made are left to the women to pay back, as is legal and customary with debts and shared accounts. As Grady mentions in an interview with Vox, “[Smith] wasn’t some sort of genius, but he was good at reading people in terms of who was vulnerable, what their vulnerabilities were. I think that he was able to really get away with a lot doing that.”

Ewing and Grady also make it clear the ways in which the legal system fails the women who come forward seeking justice. There was a warrant out for Smith’s arrest since 2017, and reports of his domestic abuse and multiple marriages had been circulating in news outlets since then. Yet the women featured in the documentary series express the troubles they had seeking help from law enforcement.

In one scene, one of Smith’s exes details an interaction with her local sheriff in which he said he wouldn’t devote any time or resources to her case because Smith had disappeared out of his jurisdiction. In response to this, Carla reminds the victims, “Nobody is going to be active on the streets looking for him, except us.” Throughout the production, the directors even had to hire private investigators to track down Smith since law enforcement had not shown any interest in the case.

Speaking to Vanity Fair, Ewing underscored Carla’s usefulness in their search for Smith. “She was somebody who understood the law, could help track him and knew how he could be brought to justice legally.” Ewing not only highlights Carla’s expertise, but she also reiterates the importance of working with someone who is well-versed in rules and regulations when it comes to fraud and cons. The fact that the women did not find this when approaching law enforcement officials, and instead had to turn to a bounty hunter and private investigators, shows how prescient it is to fight fraud in a way that is expansive and empathetic.

The directors of “Love Fraud” see fraud fighting as an extremely crucial field, and they hope that the show encourages victims to come forward with their own stories of being targeted by romance scammers — and that victims receive fair treatment that does not reduce their experiences to a source of shame. Ewing also hopes that the series inspires a sense of caution in women who are dating, especially over the internet. “There are a lot of Richard Scott Smiths out there. Hopefully mothers will watch this with their daughters and say: Watch out for red flags. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”

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