This four-part documentary series follows the search for Richard Scott Smith, who let down unprepared in search of love.
Love Fraud follows the story of serial con artist Richard Scott Smith. Picture: Stan Source: Supplied
It started, like those things, with a spark. Single, divorced, looking, hopeful, alone women knew the online dating profile of a boy calling himself Richard Scott Smith (or Scott, or Mickey, more on this later) and it was as if they had stumbled upon buried treasure. Training
Here’s a guy in a suit who pretended to be the whole package. He was handsome, salaried (Smith knew himself before potential partners such as a wine gourmet and a professional water skier), devoted and tall.
“Meeting at 40 sucks,” says Tracy, a 47-year-old single mother from Kansas in the first episode of Love Fraud, a captivating new documentary series about genuine crimes that is now broadcast by Stan. “You get there and they don’t have teeth, and you think, what the hell is going on?”
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Love Fraud hears from those who have fallen under the spell of a serial con man. Picture: Stan Source: Supplied
Richard Scott Smith to be the complete package. Picture: Stan Source: Supplied
After its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival before this year, the four-episode series will now be available on the Australian streaming platform and has already been rated as the most productive and craziest than Tiger King.
A SOCIOPATHIC CONMAN
The subject is familiar, especially for those who have listened to or seen Catfish or Dirty John: a sociopathic thief with competitive charm lets a woman down for her money, feelings and dignity.
Love Fraud serves as a terrifying reminder that being let down through an intimate spouse can be for anyone.
Smith had not only let Tracy down, or Ellen, or Jean, or Sabrina, whose call he had written on his back after a few quotes, or one of dozens of other women he was talking about in a low voice. Smith, a serial criminal, a guy who got married so badly that he had a hard time keeping track of calls from all his former associates.
But in Love Fraud, a twist.
When his many victims solidified after creating a blog to warn other potential victims of his scam, Love Fraud deviated from the script. These women, scattered throughout Kansas City, Wichita and beyond, made the decision to exact revenge.
CONNEXES: Absolutely a month for transmission
Smith’s victims, many of whom are his ex-wives, supported him. Picture: Stan Source: Supplied
In the series, the women rent to a debartic bounty hunter named Carla to locate him and bring him to justice. There are so many twists and turns in the four-episode documentary that pause the screen and back down in disbelief. You think I couldn’t do that. There’s no way this really happened. But it’s all true.
LET’S ONLY GET JUSTICE
Many of the photographs on Love Fraud first met in the original blog, created through one of Smith’s victims, Lisa.
“Did this guy attack you? Request the website.” Please DO NOT worry even professionally with this guy, ” says a message on the site.
Many went out and even married Smith without any concept of his past. Picture: Stan Source: Supplied
In the first episode of the series, this blog is what connects Smith’s various victims. Many of them soon notice that they live close to others in Kansas City. They are informed that their own appointments with Smith had similar characteristics.
THE LOVE SCAM
The court was brief and quickly intensified. The satisfied couple spoke for hours on the first date and Smith without delay left messages and texts pointing out his love. Women would be filled with gifts.
And then the proposal. Let’s get a car. Let’s buy a house. Let’s start a business. Smith allegedly told women that he was about to make cash, thanks to a malpractice lawsuit, but would want cash until then.
Some of them were invited to deliver thousands of dollars. One woman let down $700,000 ($952,000 A), according to the documentary. Then I said, let’s get married. Let’s move on to Belize. Did you know that Belize doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the United States? (“It’s strange,” recalls Ellen, one of Smith’s victims, thinking about when Smith first presented the idea.)
Richard Scott Smith has targeted newly divorced or separated for love. Picture: Stan Source: Supplied
In fact, Smith had controlled this circular several times with several women. For some he was romantic and kind, the best gentleman. For others, it can supposedly be violent. Above all, he was surprised when he began juggling too many women at once, leaving his homework and acting strangely under the effort of all those fabrications, before leaving his partners and moving on to the next conquest.
For Tracy, one of the victims who appeared in the first episode, the lies only collapsed when her young daughter was delivered to her car and discovered that they were getting rid of jars of pills with labels and papers with various other names.
At first, he thought that Smith was a drug addict. But the truth is that his addiction to something very different.
SMITH IS A LOT OF WOMEN
He was married to at least five women. He used 10 names, 10 social security numbers, called the sick from 43 other phone numbers. As his ex-wife Jean said in a 2017 Kansas City Star article, “Every word that comes out of his mouth is a lie.”
For women profiled in Love Fraud, the legal formula was not truce. When Smith, despite everything, left the city, some of his victims tried to take his case to the police. But because it may not be discovered or outside the jurisdiction of the county, the law was sometimes unable to help.
In addition, there was a detail of dishonor and humiliation. How seriously other people took the story, the victims wondered, since we were dating this guy and we opened up with him. That’s how Carla, a Bounty hunter from Kansas City, discovered herself in the case. Carla, a former victim of abuse and an advocate for women, was so moved by the plight of these women that she submitted paintings for free.
Smith’s victims were occasionally embarrassed after being defrauded. Picture: Stan Source: Supplied
COUNTER-ARTIST HUNTING
The rest of the documentary focuses on Carla’s tireless efforts to locate Smith. At first, he saw it on the Facebook page of a Wichita karaoke bar. Then he’s at a crab restaurant. In a clean apartment complex. In a bar with another woman. (Always, other women).
Trapped by classic police officers, smith sufferers seek their own revenge and conduct their own investigation, leading Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, the documentary’s Oscar-nominated administrators, for the trip.
The shooting took place in 2018, when Smith’s arrest warrants circulated, but had never been executed. In doing so, they delved into Smith’s life, talking to everyone from his fellow training years to his separate sister, whom they discovered hiding from him in Texas.
“I don’t need to be found,” he tells the documentary makers. “I don’t need to live with a monster in my life.”
When Ewing and Grady began publishing the documentary, Smith was terrorizing giant women. During production, the bombs fell to the left, right and center, and each new progression in the case led the victims’ network over to the rabbit hole.
Documentary filmmakers had no idea what would happen to the filming of the series. Would you catch Smith? Will it happen to any other victims? Are you sorry? Will it slide between your fingers? Even in the final moments of the last episode, Smith’s habit manages to surprise you and cool him to the bone.
Richard Scott Smith is scary to see in Love Fraud. Picture: Stan Source: Supplied
What Ewing and Grady were looking to do with their task of making sure their documentary aired the truth of being a victim of a sociopathic con artist. They tried to treat these women with the respect they had been denied until now. They sought the series to honestly describe how simple it is for women to fall prey to men in the dating group when the ribbon is so low that it is in hell.
“It’s not fair, ” said Ewing to the Salt Lake Tribune. “Here’s this guy … He takes his dignity. Humiliate people. It goes with maybe thousands of dollars at a time, but also with people’s assets and their smart credit. And no one’s looking for him. And they felt like no one cared.” about its history … And we thought, “Well, maybe we can all go by and locate him.”
Or, as Sabrina, one of Smith’s victims, who ends up wasting her livelihood and is forced to live with her parents again after leaving her dry: “The most productive way to triumph over a man is revenge. I’m sorry, it is. I’m tired of those clumsy ones. Rick, you liar, you me. I’m fucked, Rick.
Love Fraud airs on Stan from August 30, with new episodes each week.