Courts and Crime
Bellum Entertainment owner Mary Carole McDonnell has been on the run since 2018 after she was accused of defrauding banks of more than $15 million
The FBI added an elderly woman who ran a production company that made true-crime shows to its Most Wanted Fraudsters list this week, with officials offering a $150,000 reward for information that leads to her arrest and conviction.
Mary Carole McDonnell is accused of defrauding banks of more than $15 million, allegedly falsifying bank records and claiming to be an heir to the McDonnell family, which merged its airplane-manufacturing business with Boeing for $14 billion in 1997. The 74-year-old is wanted on charges of bank fraud and aggravated identity theft. She fled California in 2018 and is believed to be living in Dubai.
“It’s just a matter of time before McDonnell is caught as we work with our international partners to locate her,” Patrick Grandy, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, said in a press release on Wednesday. “A generous reward is being offered in exchange for information leading to her apprehension and conviction, and a tip from the public might break the case.”
In July, Rolling Stone published a deep-dive report on McDonnell, speaking with those who knew the well-manicured TV executive-turned-producer through many phases of her life. “I’ve known her for 15 years — she scammed so many people that I know and care about in the entertainment business,” one TV producer said. “She was the most devious, sinister operator I have ever encountered. She is an absolute sociopath.”
Beyond the banks, McDonnell’s alleged financial casualties include her adult sons, who said their mother forged their signatures on quick-payday loans that left them on the hook for nearly $3 million; family friends whom McDonnell allegedly milked for hundreds of thousands of dollars; and dozens of employees and freelance workers who claim she stiffed them on paychecks.
For decades, McDonnell had told her social circle and work colleagues that she was an heir to the McDonnell family fortune and had an $80 million trust account. Her second ex-husband also recalled being fed the lie, only learning the truth when he directly asked McDonnell’s father about the purported relation to the billionaire dynasty. “He laughed and said, ‘No … I wish there were, but there’s no connection,’” Thomas Carroll said. “Well, talk about bursting my bubble.”
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Though she was no heiress, McDonnell lived a high-flying lifestyle and owned Bellum Entertainment, a once-successful production company that made shows with titles like Bizarre Murders and I Married a Murderer. But things began to crumble in 2016, when workers filed wage complaints against Bellum, claiming McDonnell stiffed them out of thousands of dollars. A source estimated that McDonnell owed Bellum employees around $4 million total.
With her business on rocky ground, McDonnell approached Banc of California in late 2017 for a $15 million loan to keep her afloat until she received her massive inheritance. Within weeks of the loan being fulfilled in early 2018, McDonnell drained the account, and the bank claimed it had been duped and alerted the authorities.
Podcaster Jami Rice, who worked at the bank when McDonnell swept into the offices with “homemade” pies as a thank-you for the sales team, described McDonnell as calculated. “She brought us those pies for some nefarious reason,” Rice said. “That was part of her grift, I am thoroughly convinced, because she knew the whole time that she was about to defraud us.”
McDonnell fled the country and resurfaced in Dubai. Rolling Stone spoke to Thili Brady, a businesswoman who befriended McDonnell and her third husband, Jeffrey Nilles, as they tried to get a new business off the ground in the UAE. The expat couple still lived a life of relative comfort, staying in a five-star hotel apartment at a Radisson in the city.
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Brady said McDonnell seemed lonely. “She used to cry a lot, saying that her sons don’t speak to her and that they don’t even call her on her birthday,” Brady said. “When it comes to Christmas, she gets very soppy. She would lock herself in the room and didn’t want to go out.” But the women’s friendship soured when Brady claimed McDonnell and Nilles tried to swindle her out of funds.
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Those who claimed they were duped by McDonnell hope she will one day be held accountable. For Rice, who turned her investigation into McDonnell’s murky background into the podcast Dirty Money Moves, she has teamed up with two Bellum show producers to try and turn the crazy tale into a documentary.
“Her selfishness was on a scale that I rarely, thank God, ever see from one person,” said one of McDonnell’s former employees. “She had the control to make this go either way, and she didn’t care. She could have stopped it sooner.”