Summary

TLDRIn a dramatic bar altercation, a woman, celebrating her birthday eve, is accused of assaulting a married man with whom she’s been having an affair, unbeknownst to his wife. Despite his reluctance to press charges, police intervene, citing Florida’s domestic violence laws, leading to her arrest. The incident unfolds with the woman’s distress and confusion about the legal process, culminating in her spending her birthday in custody on a battery charge.

Takeaways

• 👮‍♂️ A police response was initiated due to a disturbance at a bar where a female was physically assaulting a male.
• 🤔 The male victim seemed to be in a complicated relationship with the female, who was unaware of his marital status.
• 🍻 The incident occurred on the eve of the female’s birthday, and she was under the influence of alcohol, which may have contributed to the altercation.
• 🔄 There was a back-and-forth physical altercation between the two, with the male trying to walk away and the female being the aggressor.
• 💔 The female discovered that the male was married and was involved with multiple other people, which led to feelings of betrayal and anger.
• 🚨 Witnesses reported seeing the female hitting and biting the male, and the situation escalated to the point where law enforcement became involved.
• 🚔 The police separated the parties and began an investigation, trying to piece together the events from the perspectives of the individuals involved.
• 🤕 The male had visible injuries, including a wound on his head, which was a point of concern for the officers.
• 📜 Despite the male’s reluctance to press charges, the police were required by Florida State Statute to make an arrest due to the allegations of domestic violence and visible injuries.
• 📛 The female was arrested and faced a battery charge, spending her birthday in county custody, even though the male victim did not wish to pursue charges.

Q & A

• What was the initial disturbance that the officers responded to?–The officers responded to a bar disturbance where they observed a female physically assaulting a male.
• What was the relationship between the man and woman involved in the altercation?–The man and woman were in a relationship for about a year and a half, but the man is married to someone else, which the woman was unaware of until later.
• Why was the woman upset and acting aggressively?–The woman was upset because she discovered that the man she was dating was married and possibly cheating on his wife with multiple people, including her.
• What was the woman’s immediate request after the altercation?–The woman requested to leave the scene and return to her hotel, indicating she no longer wanted to be there.
• What was the man’s response when asked about his marital status?–The man admitted to being married, which was a revelation to the woman he was dating.
• What was the woman’s birthday situation mentioned in the script?–The woman’s birthday was the following day, and the group was at the bar to celebrate, but the celebration turned into a disturbance.
• Why was the man bleeding during the incident?–The woman bit the man, causing him to bleed, and there was also mention of him being hit on the head.
• What was the woman’s reaction when the officers suggested she might need medical attention?–The woman declined medical attention, stating she did not need it and just wanted to leave the scene.
• What was the legal outcome for the woman involved in the incident?–Despite the man not wanting to press charges, the woman was arrested due to the allegation of domestic violence and visible injuries, as per Florida State Statute.
• What was the woman’s emotional state after being informed of her arrest?–The woman was distressed and upset, expressing fear and confusion about the situation, especially since her birthday was the next day.
• What was the role of the friend named Joe in the script?–Joe was the man’s best friend and was present during the incident. The woman mentioned wanting to find Joe because he had her hotel room key.

The FBI didn’t think I was smart enough to commit a $40 million crime — but I did it: book

It began with an obsession to meet Michael Jackson. It ended with fleecing US banks for $40 million and being branded a “one woman crime wave.”

Her spree was unintentionally egged on by an FBI agent who, in 1981, couldn’t believe she’d be capable of pulling off the complex heists.

She told The Post, “An agent trying to find the brains behind the operation laughed at me and said, ‘Negros rob and murder but they are not smart enough to do sophisticated crimes like these.’ That hurt me. So I shut them down.”

Before becoming a multi-millionaire criminal, Smith, author of the recently released memoir “Never Saw Me Coming: How I Outsmarted the FBI and the Entire Banking System — and Pocketed $40 million” (Little Brown), was merely a pest.

So deep was her Jackson obsession that, in 1974, she made it her mission to speak with him on the phone.

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Alongside research trips to the library in her hometown of Minneapolis – where pre-famous Prince was just another kid in the neighborhood – Smith started calling extensions at the phone company and being transferred around.

“I would get to a department called ‘facilities,’” she told The Post. “I already knew that Michael’s parents were Joseph and Catherine. Then I got the number corresponding to their Encino, California, address. Bingo!”

But she only got as far as her idol’s father, Joe, before being blown off and hit with a threat often repeated in ensuing years: “I’m going to put you in jail.”

But that was okay. Smith, who confided to her twin sister Taryn (a pseudonym in the book), was encouraged by how far her experiment in trial and error had gotten her. The next stop was the local Farmers and Mechanics Savings Bank.

In 1977, Smith applied the techniques honed against the phone company to getting one over on bank personnel. She telephonically wandered from one banker’s extension to the next, employing social engineering before the term existed and picking up crumbs of information.

She scammed the names of supervisors and code-words of the day — pre-computer, secret words which confirmed a person on the other end of the line was indeed a bank employee.

Connecting with the wire department, armed with the password and account number, she asked for $5,000 to be shipped to her Grandma Grace, at the time weary from working as a maid in Texas.

Then, it was common practice for the bank to lay out money from a reserve fund in order to immediately cover transfer requests.

“That was my first bank transfer and they never questioned me,” said Smith, “This is just how my brain works. I can figure out almost anything.”

FBI agent John Markey, who at one time investigated Smith, admitted in 1988, “She’s very good at what she does and she gets better all the time.”

Although she eventually went to prison over six-figures in transfers, Smith claims in her book that’s all they could prove of her much-larger total haul.

Is it exaggerated? “Could she do this to sell her book? Yeah,” her former attorney Barry Voss, now a writer, told The Post. “But did she make a lot of money? Yeah. Millions…”

Smith told The Post she kept records of what she stole and sometimes got paid in gold bars. “It is at least $40 million,” she asserts

From the late 1970s through much of the ’80s, she rampaged through savings and loans across the country. “I felt invincible,” said Smith. “I learned that money is power.”

By 1982, at age 22, “I would sometimes bring in $250,000 a day. I could do half-a-million in a week.”

Attracted to a string of ne’er do well boyfriends, she plied them with gifts and cash — including Patek Philippe wristwatches, custom suits and sports cars.

Smith moved to Los Angeles in 1981 after her actions in Minnesota attracted federal attention and she was subjected to a grilling from the FBI.

Once there, she smartly aligned with a woman who organized people to go to banks and Western Union offices with bogus IDs and fabricated backstories.

However, as Tanya prospered, her twin sister Taryn descended into a life of drug dependency: “She started with pot and I don’t know all the things she was doing. I just say she was on drugs.”

Meanwhile, Tanya’s life resembled a Hollywood movie. “I lived in nice homes in gated communities like Diamond Bar, east of Los Angeles, where there was an equestrian center,” she said of her Tinseltown life.

“I drove Rolls Royces, Aston Martins, Ferraris. I loved going to Mr. Chow for dinner. I’d ask them to bring me the best wine they had. I would sometimes tip the valet $500 for parking my car. I’d shop at the Chanel store and buy jewelry on Rodeo Drive.”

But diamonds were not forever. In 1985, the law caught up with Smith after an accomplice got arrested and rolled over. She went down in Minneapolis, charged with bank fraud and theft in the relatively paltry amount of $25,000.

Amazingly, over the course of an eight-day trial, Smith sewed seeds of reasonable doubt with jurors, saying it was her twin sister who committed the frauds — and that no one could tell them apart.

“My whole scheme was to confuse the judge and jurors,” Tanya said. “I told my sister what I was doing and told her she had to leave town.”

As a juror related to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, “There was not positive proof that it was Tanya … It could very well have been the other twin.”

Then in 1986 a runner screwed things up by asking for all cash instead of $140,000 in cash and $10,000 in chips at a Las Vegas casino, where she illicitly transferred funds, leading to questions about his intentions.

The guy folded under interrogation. Law enforcement stepped in. Smith was arrested at Orange County Airport while attempting to collect the money.

Smith was sentenced to 24-and-a-half years behind bars for a series of bank fraud and wire fraud charges. She was remanded to Federal Reformatory for Women, Alderson, in West Virginia.

However, that did not set her on the straight and narrow. She engineered an ingenious escape in early 1988. Ever the social engineer, Smith compromised a guard who brought her dressy civilian clothes and left the garments in a bathroom stall. Smith got changed and exited without a complication, only to encounter a crueler world than the one she had left behind.

Money entrusted with friends had been squandered and spent. Buried cash disintegrated. A violent ex-boyfriend beat her until she did her banking scams for him. He threatened to kill her, leaving Smith tied up in a kitchen with gas hissing out of the stove. She contemplated escaping and turning herself in.

But Federal Marshalls beat her to the punch.

After eight months on the lam, Smith was arrested and securely incarcerated. Pregnant at the time, she gave birth to a daughter, called Denise in the book, while imprisoned. Her parents began raising the girl.

In 1999 Smith got out of jail, 39 years old. Did she think about going back to bank scams – even with all the layers of security and technology added since the 80s?

“I wouldn’t have even tried. I was ready for a new life and to raise my daughter. I managed to get hired doing customer service in the office of a trucking company, owned by people who didn’t do background checks,” she said.

“One of my dad’s friends gave me money to buy a house in Minneapolis, and it is beautiful. Both of my parents died while I was in jail. My sister is living in Minneapolis right now.”

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Looking back at it all – with the stolen money gone, though her book has been optioned by Hollywood, a movie might be in the offing and a final windfall from all of this may come her way – Smith, who moved to California’s San Fernando Valley in 2020, does not see her legacy tied into how much money she stole or the lifestyle she lived.

Instead, she said, “It’s that I was smart enough to do it.”