A convicted scammer from Maine who claimed to be an Irish heiress is one step closer to being extradited to the U.K..
Marianne Smyth, 54, who also posed as a psychic, satanist, and cancer patient, is suspected of swindling $170,000 from victims in Northern Ireland from 2008 to 2010, according to the Associated Press.
Smyth was arrested in Bangor, Maine, earlier this year, in connection with eight charges of theft and fraud orchestrated through her years-long elaborate schemes overseas, during which she allegedly stole money from victims she had promised to invest.
On Thursday, U.S. Magistrate Judge John Nivison ruled there was sufficient evidence to send Smyth back to the U.K. to face the allegations, The New York Times reported.
"The evidence presented regarding Ms. Smyth's interactions with and transactions involving the individuals... is sufficient to sustain the four fraud charges and the four theft charges that are the subject of the extradition request," Nivison wrote in his ruling, according to the AP.
The final decision on Smyth's extradition hangs on U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.
Smyth – who also operated under the aliases Marianne Clark, Mair Ellis, and Lucia Bella, among others – previously spent two years in jail for stealing tens of thousands of dollars from her American producer friend, Johnathan Walton, the outlet reported.
If convicted on the charges in the U.K., Smyth faces up to 80 years in prison.
