A 73-year-old Michigan woman is on the run after allegedly posing as a heiress and scamming nearly $30 million from banks and other financial institutions in a yearslong scheme, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a most wanted bulletin.
Mary Carole McDonnell is wanted for her alleged involvement in a “fraud scheme” in Los Angeles and Orange counties in California, the bulletin states. The FBI said she posed as an heir to the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation family and falsely claimed to have access to an $80 million secret trust. The McDonnell Aircraft Corporation no longer exists.
The James S. McDonnell Foundation did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
The scheme began around July 2017 and continued until May 2018, the FBI said. Around the time of the ruse, McDonnell was the chief executive officer of Bellum Entertainment LLC, a now-defunct Burbank production company behind true crime shows including “I Married a Murderer” and “It Takes a Killer,” a federal indictment states.
The company was having issues paying payroll and meeting its financial obligations, according to the indictment. McDonnell was named in several civil complaints alleging that she owed more than $1 million to creditors nationwide, authorities said.
The FBI alleged that McDonnell knowingly defrauded the Banc of California out of $14.7 million, the bulletin states.
The FBI said she knew she was not entitled to the money and did not repay it. She allegedly defrauded more than $15 million from other financial institutions, according to the agency.
The indictment said she used the money “to pay, among other things, creditors and the payroll of Bellum.”
A federal arrest warrant was issued for McDonnell in December 2018 after she was charged with bank fraud and aggravated identity theft. The FBI believes McDonnell, who has ties to Montgomery, Alabama, is currently in Dubai.
Austin Mullen contributed.
