The Knife: Off Record 136

Summary

The Knife: Off Record 136 – The Many Lives of Dana Lawrence (A.K.A. Jenna Kaplan): A Female Con Artist Hiding in Plain Sight

Date: December 11, 2025
Hosts: Hannah Smith, Patia Eaton
Episode Theme:
This gripping episode of "The Knife: Off Record" investigates the true story of Dana Lawrence, a notorious and ongoing female con artist who operated under a slew of aliases (Jenna Kaplan, Genevieve Morgan, among others), leaving a trail of identity theft, fraud, and devastated families across the eastern United States. Through an in-depth interview with retired FBI agent Mark Kasbaka, the hosts unravel how Lawrence manipulated communities, scammed romantic partners, and disrupted countless lives—while managing to remain largely undetected and continuously on the move. The episode highlights the ripple effects of her crimes, especially on her children and those who tried to help her.

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Episode Structure

• Introduction to the case and setting in Nashua, New Hampshire
• Investigation unfolds: Mark Kasbaka’s involvement
• Deconstruction of Lawrence's fraud tactics and aliases
• The search for the truth about Lawrence's daughter and parental custody battle
• Unveiling Lawrence’s criminal past and compounding impact on her children
• Reflections on why serial scammers evade real justice
• Notable quotes and memorable segments

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Unfolding Mystery in Small-Town New Hampshire

• Patia introduces the episode’s focus: a female con artist currently still at large, revealed through Mark Kasbaka’s investigative work. The story begins in Nashua, a quintessential New England town (03:29).
• "Unless you run into someone named Jenna Kaplan. So, actually, that’s not her name, but we’ll get there." - Patia Eaton [04:47]

2. How the Investigation Began

• Mark, an off-duty FBI agent, is contacted by a friend in the mayor’s office about “Jenna Kaplan,” a “Harvard-educated attorney” who is suspiciously pushing for access to the city’s grant account numbers—well outside protocol (05:41–06:13).
• “Nobody really knew where she came from... She claimed to be a Harvard educated attorney. But what caused concerns...she was really pressuring her to get the account numbers from the Citibank accounts...” – Mark Kasbaka [05:41]

3. The Early Red Flags

• Mark’s background check on “Jenna Kaplan” raises immediate suspicions: the only Jenna Kaplan is an elderly person in New York, the address history is inconsistent, she uses a burner phone, and her rental application contains a stolen Social Security number (07:37–09:28).
  • “I checked it on my systems and I found it belonged to some woman in her late 50s in Western Massachusetts...” – Mark Kasbaka [09:28]

4. The Layers of Deception Emerge

• Upon visiting Jenna’s (Dana’s) residence, Mark interrogates her boyfriend, a criminal defense attorney, who reveals that Jenna and her child are supposedly in NYC. The situation escalates when Mark persuades the attorney to let him inside, revealing a chaotic scene—Legos scattered, piles of paperwork and burner phones—evidence inconsistent with her story (13:51–16:34).
• The attorney eventually confesses that Dana was hiding in the basement with the child as police arrived (17:01).

5. The Custody Twist and Identity Reveal

• Mark’s interview with the woman (“Jenna”) at the police station exposes her real name: Dana Lawrence. She claims to be fleeing abuse, but evidence of identity theft and fraudulent IDs is overwhelming (20:04).
• The child’s paternity is ambiguous; the boyfriend vacillates on whether he is the father, later admitting he is not, nor the legal adoptive parent (21:38).

6. Tracking Down the Child’s Father

• Mark’s clue from a Colorado nurse leads him to the biological father, Matt, who had been searching for his missing daughter for years. DNA confirms paternity, and after a tense custody hearing, the child is reunited with her rightful father (31:18–33:31).
• "Dana kept insisting she didn't know who the father was until all of a sudden, the doors swing open and here comes the dad. And then she's like, oh yeah, now I remember. He is the father." – Mark Kasbaka [33:14]

7. The Scope of Lawrence’s Crimes and Impact

• As Mark and the hosts reconstruct Lawrence’s criminal history, a complex pattern emerges: six children with six different men, repeated use of fake pregnancies to manipulate others for financial support, and perpetual use of aliases (35:42–37:22).
• “She destroyed my life, my siblings lives, and every person she touched.” – Mark Kasbaka, quoting Kennedy, Dana’s daughter who testified against her [35:14]

8. Victims Left Behind: Her Children

• Dana’s abandonment and manipulation deeply traumatized her children. Multiple siblings were separated, some placed for adoption or into foster care, siblings forced to lie about their identities, and one daughter left alone as a teenager with $20 in Miami (47:51–48:25).
  • “Her mother and Jonathan, my boyfriend, gave her $20 and left her in an apartment by herself in Miami.” – Mark Kasbaka [48:00]

9. Lawrence’s Ongoing Deceptions and Systemic Shortcomings

• Despite an 18-month federal prison sentence, Lawrence was soon out and immediately running new scams—posing as a reality TV producer and recruiting unsuspecting strangers (50:22).
• Mark describes a conversation with her first daughter, adopted as a baby, who reached out after a 23&Me match: even reunited, Dana tried to rope her into the same web of lies (51:06–53:55).
  • “...Being connected to the Royal Family or to Jack Nicholson, and she was, you know, sucking Britney in. Now Britney is not Britney anymore.” – Mark Kasbaka [52:39]
• The episode ends with frustration at the inability of the legal system to meaningfully halt serial non-violent scammers and a reflection on female con artists’ often invisible harm.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “You don’t picture someone in the mayor’s office using a burner phone.” – Hannah Smith [08:26]
• “I think I can speculate a reason why she does this, but we’ll get into that later... everything about her is like she’s a chameleon.” – Patia Eaton [34:21; 59:21]
• “Female con artists, I think, is less talked about in how violating it is. But if you’re in a relationship with someone and they've completely lied to you about everything...have you consented really to anything? No.” – Patia Eaton [58:24]

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Timestamps for Core Segments

• [03:15] Introduction & set up of the mystery in Nashua, NH
• [05:41] FBI agent Mark starts the investigation: the first clues
• [07:37] Alias discovery, identity theft, burner phones, and red flags
• [13:51] Visit to residence: attorney boyfriend, deceptive living arrangements
• [17:01] The moment Dana is revealed to have been hiding, confrontation at police station
• [20:04] Dana confesses real identity, paternity/custody in question
• [31:18] Father discovered, DNA match, emotional reunion and custody
• [35:14] Testimony by daughter Kennedy, impact on children, sentencing
• [37:22] Reconstruction of Lawrence’s past cons, children, movements
• [48:25] Stories from children: abandonment, living on the run
• [51:06] First daughter’s discovery, failed reunion, continuing deception
• [58:24] Broader impacts, reflections on con artists and criminal justice system

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Final Reflections and Analysis

• The hosts and Mark express deep empathy for the victims, especially Lawrence’s children, and frustration at how serial fraudsters like her often evade serious consequences due to the non-violent nature and fragmented prosecution of their crimes.
• The episode closes with Patia reflecting on how Lawrence’s deliberate confusion is key to her strategy, marking her as “a chameleon.”
• Hannah points out the essential challenge: “It’s so difficult to actually stop people like this because they just continue to move and do the same thing over and over again.” [56:41]

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For Further Listening / Viewing

• TV Recommendation: The Gilded Age (HBO) noted by Hannah as an entertaining portrayal of old vs. new money and, coincidentally, featuring a scam storyline.

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Takeaway:
This episode is a rollercoaster of true crime storytelling that exposes not just a string of victimizations and frauds, but the deep ripple effects left behind by a skilled, manipulative con artist still (possibly) out there today. Through the lens of those who tried to help—law enforcement, romantic partners, and children—the story underscores the havoc such criminals wreak, and the challenges of bringing them to true justice.

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For story submissions, reach out to the hosts at theknifexactlyrightmedia.com or on social @theknifepodcast.

Transcript

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[Hannah Smith]

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[Mark Kasbaka]

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[Patia Eaton]

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[Hannah Smith]

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[Patia Eaton]

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[Mark Kasbaka]

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[Patia Eaton]

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[Hannah Smith]

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[Patia Eaton]

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[Hannah Smith]

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[Patia Eaton]

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[Hannah Smith]

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[Patia Eaton]

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[Hannah Smith]

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[Patia Eaton]

So go ahead and order [e-mail] search the knife and orders need to be placed by December 14th in order to receive them by the 25th.

[Hannah Smith]

This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.

[Patia Eaton]

The claims and opinions in this podcast are those of the speaker and do not necessarily represent the knife or exactly right media.

[Hannah Smith]

Welcome to the Knife Off Record. I'm Hannah Smith.

[Patia Eaton]

I'm Patia Eaton.

[Hannah Smith]

And I have no idea what we're.

[Patia Eaton]

Talking about today, but don't worry, because I'm gonna tell you.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah, I just get to sit back and listen to a story that you've been researching. It's such a pleasure.

[Patia Eaton]

Well, this one was a pretty wild ride, and there's so much more to this story. It was one of those things where, like, I came across a headline, kind of filed it away, didn't find the right voices, and then got a call and was like, oh, okay, we should do this.

[Hannah Smith]

Okay. Can you tell me, like, the category of crime that we're talking about today?

[Patia Eaton]

Female con artist.

[Hannah Smith]

Oh, my favorite. Yeah.

[Patia Eaton]

So, I mean, she has caused a lot of destruction that we'll get into, but part of my motivation for talking about this story is that she's still out there.

[Hannah Smith]

Really? So this is ongoing?

[Patia Eaton]

This is ongoing, and I'll get into that more at the end. But, you know, it's like, as I'll talk about, there's the quirky aspects of a con, and then there's, like, the real darkness.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah.

[Patia Eaton]

And I'm gonna play clips from an interview I did with someone who worked closely on one of her cases, and. Yeah, let's get into it.

[Hannah Smith]

Cool.

[Patia Eaton]

So today's story begins in Nashua, New Hampshire. It's the quintessential New England city. There's a population of about 100,000 people, but it feels much smaller in a good way. A really charming downtown area, great schools, lots of parks, really safe place.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah.

[Patia Eaton]

Unless you run into someone named Jenna Kaplan. So, actually, that's not her name, but we'll get there. So in 2017, Mark Kasbaka was working as an FBI agent, and he had a long career in the FBI. This was sort of known to people in his social circle, too, of course. And someone that his wife actually went to high school with ends up calling him on a Sunday. Or maybe she called his wife and sort of left a message. I'm not really sure. But, you know, Mark wasn't working. It was a Sunday. But this woman calls, and she wants to know if Mark can look into Someone for her, someone that she works with at the mayor's office that she's become pretty suspicious of. This woman that she's suspicious of her job was writing grants for the mayor's office. So grants are, you know, most people probably noted this, but it's a non repayable financial aid awarded by a government body, in this case the mayor's office.

[Mark Kasbaka]

Nobody really knew where she came from. And, you know, she claimed to be a Harvard educated attorney. But what caused concerns for this woman was she was really pressuring her to get the account numbers from the Citibank accounts for the grants. She said she needed it to put on the paperwork the routing numbers and account numbers and so forth. And, you know, that wasn't normal protocol. You write the grant, then you pass it on to the next person who will fill in those numbers. But she was very insistent that she get the numbers.

[Hannah Smith]

So the person who calls our FBI agent, what's his name again?

[Patia Eaton]

Mark.

[Hannah Smith]

Mark. She also works in the mayor's office.

[Patia Eaton]

She also works in the mayor's office.

[Hannah Smith]

And she'd encountered this person and Jenna was asking her for the routing numbers. And she was like, that seems weird.

[Patia Eaton]

Kind of. So Jenna Kaplan is how she knows this woman. This is her name that she goes by in the mayor's office. And Jenna Kaplan's role is writing these grants. And as we hear in Mark's clip, you don't need the account numbers to write the grants, so that's someone else's job. But this woman, I don't think that Jenna goes directly to her to ask about the account numbers. I think she just sort of hears that Jenna's really pushing for these account numbers.

[Hannah Smith]

Gotcha.

[Patia Eaton]

And she's like, this feels off to me. So she leaves Mark with four pieces of information to go off of the name Jenna Kaplan. She says Jenna has a three year old daughter, she works in the mayor's office, and she's also has some volunteer role in a nonprofit called My Brother's Keeper, a local nonprofit. So Mark takes these few notes and on Monday, he does a little digging. He told me he really wasn't even thinking much of it. He figured he'd just run a quick search, you know, tell her it was like a weird coworker and move on with his life. But pretty quickly, things weren't looking right. So he begins with a search for the name Jenna Kaplan.

[Mark Kasbaka]

When I checked out the name she was using, there was only one person by that name in the entire country. And it was like an elderly woman in Long Island, New York I knew I was dealing with somebody who was, you know, in their late 30s. So then it piqued my interest, thinking, well, is it a possibility of having a parental kidnapping here? Because obviously she's using a drop phone that you can buy at, you know, the convenience store or CVS or Walgreens or whatever. Any old stores, you pay as you go. And that combined with the fact that she's got this three year old in tow and nobody knew anything about her.

[Hannah Smith]

She's using a drop phone.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. So one of the things that comes up in this search is that she has a lot of different addresses, phone numbers, and currently her phone number is essentially a burner phone.

[Hannah Smith]

Interesting.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. Like, you don't picture someone in the mayor's office using a burner phone.

[Hannah Smith]

How bizarre.

[Patia Eaton]

How bizarre. So, okay, now he's like, these are some real red flags. Now I'm going to find out who this person is. So the first thing he does is he goes about finding her current address, which is nearby. So Mark goes and talks to the landlord, and this makes so much sense. I'm like, should I be an FBI agent? He asks, you know, did you run a credit check? Because that would have a lot of very personal information about this person. And can I see it? And landlord says he actually didn't run the credit check. He had her fill out the application and never ran it because he didn't want to pay the 50, $75 it would have cost him. His rationale was like, well, she works in the mayor's office. She's got to be trustworthy.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah, good story.

[Patia Eaton]

And so he didn't end up feeling like he had to run it, but he did have the application, and he provides that to Mark. And this application has a Social Security number on it.

[Mark Kasbaka]

I had their Social Security number. I checked it on my systems and I found it belonged to some woman in her late 50s in Western Massachusetts. And I pulled up that driver's license and had a photograph. So with that photograph now and that Social Security number, I went to the police department where I formally work.

[Hannah Smith]

So is this an identity theft situation?

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah, and it expands from there. But what Mark is currently. That's the trail he's following. Right? Identity theft.

[Hannah Smith]

Like she might have taken someone's, like, purse or something.

[Patia Eaton]

Right. So why is this person, who's living under an alias, using a burner phone and claims to be Harvard educated, working at the mayor's office writing grants, but nobody really can verify anything about her?

[Hannah Smith]

There's a lot of red flags there.

[Patia Eaton]

A Lot of red flags. And I love that this woman who worked with her in some capacity, trusted her intuition because had she not, you know, maybe she would have gotten those cat numbers. So Mark had mentioned in an earlier clip he's questioning could this be a parental kidnapping because, you know, since those cross state lines, they can fall into the FBI's jurisdiction or whatever you call it, and become their investigation.

[Hannah Smith]

And that's just for anyone who doesn't know, like when a parent kidnaps their own child.

[Patia Eaton]

Right.

[Hannah Smith]

So maybe there's another parent somewhere who doesn't know where this child is.

[Patia Eaton]

Right. It happens with like disputes over custody, you know, and people not wanting to give their children to their ex partner or whatever. So he's questioning if it's that because why else would she be living under an alias and have a three year old with her? And he has contacts in this community, in law enforcement because he formerly worked in the police department there. And so he brings this identification that he's found with her photograph on it and this information for a woman in Massachusetts or someplace, he brings it to the police department because the nonprofit that Jenna Kaplan is a part of, My Brother's Keeper, meets at the police department once a week. So they would know her there. So he goes to the police department and he shows them this picture and he's like, do you know this person? Never seen her in my life. And okay, so Mark kind of knew that was the answer he was going to get. But great confirmation. So they know she's lying about who she is, but they don't know why. The chief of police in Nashua, he says to Mark, I'm going to send a detective back over to her residence to see what we can find out and we'll let you know what we find. So that detective goes over there and who opens the door but a criminal defense attorney.

[Hannah Smith]

Weird.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah, a guy named Nick. And the detective says, I'm looking for a woman named Jenna Kaplan and this three year old girl. And he says that that's his girlfriend and that's their daughter and that Jenna and their daughter are actually on a bus to New York City. They'd had an argument and she'd just taken off for the weekend to get some space.

[Hannah Smith]

What is going on?

[Patia Eaton]

What is going on? Cause this is an attorney they're talking to.

[Hannah Smith]

Did she get wind of something?

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. So the boyfriend, of course being an attorney, he knows better. I'm not going to let you inside. I don't have to let you inside and therefore I'm not going to we.

[Hannah Smith]

Assume that he's an actual attorney.

[Patia Eaton]

Yes.

[Hannah Smith]

Okay.

[Patia Eaton]

Yes. And this further piques suspicions, like, why would she happen to be in New York that weekend? What's going on? So the detective goes back to the police chief, who then updates Mark and they decide that, okay, Mark's with the FBI. That's scary. Not that a police detective should be taken lightly, but I think the FBI, if you're an attorney, you know, you don't want to be in trouble with the FBI.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah. It's also just like a way to get cases actually like looked at. And an FBI agent bringing this to the police department and saying, let's look into this is different from just a random citizen bringing this in. You know, like there's like, it's gonna get looked into more.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. You at least know that multiple people are interested.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah.

[Patia Eaton]

Like it's not gonna slip through the cracks. They're gonna keep hunting this information down. So the boyfriend doesn't let the detective inside. This makes them more suspicious. And so Mark goes down to the house and again tries to talk to the boyfriend to see if he'll tell him anything because they get the sense he knows more than he's saying.

[Mark Kasbaka]

So I went down to Nashua, called the detective, he met me at the house.

And gave me a brief rundown and we went over there. And to this point, the boyfriend, the attorney, had always met the detective on the front steps of this multi family home. And the detective had never had an opportunity to go inside. So I think the game kind of changed. Instead of the police officer being there, it was the FBI knocking on the door. And this is a criminal defense attorney. And, you know, I just persuaded him that would be, you know, let's not talk about your business out here on the porch with all the neighbors around. Why don't we go inside and talk privately? When we got inside that house that a lot of alarm bells started going off because the floor inside this house. Well, the floor, the floor was covered with Legos. And anybody that has kids, now this, this woman and her kid is supposedly gone for four or five days. Anybody has kids knows you're not going to leave Legos around on the floor. You can step on it.

[Hannah Smith]

Painful.

[Patia Eaton]

Painful. And you know, I can't speak for everybody, but the moment my kid is asleep or at childcare, out of the house with my husband, I'm cleaning. I love her, but I don't want to see her stuff.

[Hannah Smith]

Well, especially Legos, like strewn in the walkway. That's unrealistic.

[Patia Eaton]

So unrealistic. Like, that would make me crazy. So there's Legos all over the floor. But this kid is supposedly gone for the weekend, which he.

You know, when he says they're in New York for the weekend, that means, you know, when they're coming back. Roughly.

[Hannah Smith]

Right. Because it's, like, just a train ride away. A short train ride, I assume. Right.

[Patia Eaton]

Cause they're in New Hampshire. So the boyfriend sticks to his story at first, and he just says, yeah, it's kind of messy. It doesn't bother me. But he eventually consents that. Mark and the detective take a look around inside the house, and they go into the primary bedroom, and there's a pile of papers on the bed, along with multiple cell phones and computers. Why did he consent to this?

[Hannah Smith]

I don't know. I don't know. It sounds like Mark's pretty persuasive.

[Patia Eaton]

Yes, Mark is pretty persuasive. I did love that. Like, we don't want to have this conversation out here.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah, that's pretty good tactic.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. So they go into the bedroom. They notice all this stuff. And of course, Mark asks if he can look through it all and take it with him and make copies. And oddly. And I don't know why, but the boyfriend consents to this. So Marc takes everything with him, and he says, you know, why is all this here? And the boyfriend's response is that Jenna just threw it all in the bed before she left. I'm not a neat freak, but I'm not gonna sleep in a bed that's, like, got a bunch of stuff all over it for a whole weekend.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah, but, you know, people do weird things.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah, that's true. That's true.

[Hannah Smith]

I don't know, but it is strange, right? And it's strange that he allowed them to take it. Although maybe since he's an attorney, he's thinking if I say no, I'll look like I'm hiding something.

[Patia Eaton]

Right. Okay. So Mark takes everything with him, and he's pretty happy with this haul. And it's a lot to look through. But within 15 minutes of leaving their home, the boyfriend calls him, and the.

[Mark Kasbaka]

Attorney calls me up and tells me that he'd been lying to me the whole time, that she'd been hiding in the basement with a baby behind the boilers. We never had a reason to go into the basement. Right. It's a multifamily home whatnot. But that was probably the delay in him coming to the front door so she could go down the back stairwell. But he told me that she was down on main street, trying to get her stuff back, her paperwork. So I immediately called the detective. They arranged for a police officer to pick her up on the street and give her a ride to the police department. And I turned around on the highway and went back. And by the time I got there, she was there. She signed into the police department under her fake name.

[Hannah Smith]

Wow. It's all coming together.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. We jump in time a little bit in this clip. But what Mark is saying is, so he leaves the house shortly after, like, within 15 minutes, he says the boyfriend calls him. Hey, I've been lying. She was at the house with.

[Hannah Smith]

She was hiding.

[Patia Eaton]

Her daughter, she was hiding. But now she knows that you took all her stuff, and she wants it back. So she left, and she's trying to get to the police department and say, give me my stuff back.

[Hannah Smith]

So she came upstairs probably and was like, why is all my stuff gone? So this explains the toys being out and also all the stuff in the bed that he may or may not have known what it was or why it was there. Maybe she was in the bedroom with it whenever they arrived, and then she rushed into the basement. Why wouldn't she grab that stuff? I don't know.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah, exactly right. Exactly right. So, of course, this is kind of great for Mark. He's like, here's the person I've been wanting to talk to, and you're right here at the police department, and you have this little girl, and we don't know who you are.

[Mark Kasbaka]

So.

[Patia Eaton]

So he asks if she will speak with him.

[Mark Kasbaka]

So she comes into the interview room, agrees to speak to us, whatnot. And I'm not sure she knew how much of the stuff of her stuff I had with me that the fiance had given me. So she was sticking to her story until I started pulling out documents.

And one that really stood out was there was an application for a birth certificate out of Denver, Colorado. And up until this point, you know, the person originally called it in the boyfriend. And even her, during the interview, kept referring to this little girl as Isabella.

[Patia Eaton]

So I left the name in there because it's actually not her name, which we'll get into later. But of course, she's, you know, a minor, but that's not her name. So Mark's.

[Hannah Smith]

The birth certificate had a different name on it, essentially.

[Patia Eaton]

Right.

[Hannah Smith]

And I'm curious. I don't know if you went into this, but the name on the birth certificate, the mother's name and the father's name, did that match up with her and the attorney, or were you gonna get into that later.

[Patia Eaton]

I'm definitely gonna get into that.

[Hannah Smith]

Okay.

[Patia Eaton]

But these are great questions. I'm glad you asked.

[Hannah Smith]

I'm just so curious what he finds with these papers and everything. So. Okay, yeah.

[Patia Eaton]

So he knows she's lying, and now he has all these papers, but he didn't have, like, a bunch of time between getting all of these documents and realizing, oh, she's here to even look.

[Hannah Smith]

At what he has.

[Patia Eaton]

Right. So he's just kind of doing a quick scan of everything, and it's already not checking the boxes. But she agrees to talk to him. So he confronts her with these discrepancies, and she tells him, well, I'm running from an abusive relationship, and my real name is Dana Lawrence. And this is true. This is her name, Dana Lawrence. Hmm.

[Hannah Smith]

Okay.

[Patia Eaton]

But she's been lying about her identity using someone else's Social Security number. She has multiple fake pieces of identification or pieces of identification that are stolen and not hers. And notably, because we're gonna come back to this. Mark has located this birth certificate for the little girl that they're referring to as Isabella, and the father is listed as unknown. So Dana is arrested at this point because they know she's falsifying her identity, and they don't know exactly what the extent of it is. But she's arrested on this alone, which, for this little girl, super sad. She has to go into state custody at this point because her birth certificate shows that the father's unknown, which means she's not legally, you know, related to this boyfriend either, even though she's clearly been living with him and under his care.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah, that's rough.

[Patia Eaton]

Really rough. So the boyfriend comes down to the police department in the midst of all this, and he's very upset because this little girl clearly means a lot to him. So he tries to tell Mark that he's the little girl's father. So Mark's like, okay, we'll take a DNA test. Then his story changes again, and that's.

[Mark Kasbaka]

When he changed his story to, well, I'm not the birth father. I'm the adopted father. And again, we hit him up as well. You know, we'll have agents at the courthouse in Baltimore tomorrow morning to get the adoption paperwork. And once we get verification that you have legally adopted her, you can take your daughter and be on your way. And then, yet again, he changes his story to say, well, I don't know if she, meaning Dana, ever turned the paperwork into the courthouse.

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[Patia Eaton]

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[Hannah Smith]

Greenlight.Com iheart It's 1972. A young British family is attempting to sail around the world when disaster strikes. Their boat is hit by killer whales and it sinks in seconds. All they have left is a life raft and each other. This is the true story of the Robertson family and their fight to survive. Hosted by me, Becky Miller. Listen to Adrift, an Apple original podcast produced by Blanchard House. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah, so it's really sad. The boyfriend clearly cares for this little girl, but he and Dana were never married. He's not related to this child. So now Mark needs to find out who her father is because, you know, nobody wants her to be in state custody.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah.

[Patia Eaton]

So Mark continues the conversation with the boyfriend. And he did say the boyfriend was really never that cooperative, but they did speak on a few occasions where he gave up a little bit more. Mark is trying to understand why a criminal defense attorney would get into a relationship with someone like who we now know as Dana Lawrence and also continue to lie for her. Because as an attorney, there are consequences for that. So apparently, shortly after this guy and Dana had met, she'd told him she was pregnant. But shortly after that, she'd run off to Texas. And since he truly believed that she was pregnant with his child, he hired a private investigator to go and find her.

[Hannah Smith]

Okay, this is all so wild. Wait, can you clarify? At what point in their relationship did she say, I'm pregnant, and run off to Texas?

[Patia Eaton]

Basically, at some point, after meeting Nick and beginning to date him on the East Coast, Dana takes off again with Isabella, who's very little. So Dana runs off to Texas with Isabella and calls Nick from Texas, and she's like, I'm in Texas. I'm here with my mom. She has Isabella with her. And so Nick goes to Texas, and he's like, what's going on? And he talks to Dana's sister Billy, who tells Nick her real name is Dana Lawrence. Well, Nick is really confused at this point, because somewhere along the way, Dana had also told Nick that she might be pregnant with his biological child. Okay, so.

[Hannah Smith]

But she's not.

[Patia Eaton]

But she's not and never was.

[Hannah Smith]

Got it.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. So Nick then hires a PI Firm back in New Jersey, because that's where Dana says she's running from. And he says, I want you to find out everything you can about Dana Lawrence and tell me what's going on here. Well, this PI Firm said that Dana had defrauded a family and a rabbi in New Jersey, both different versions of a faked pregnancy. So she was on the run because her whole M.O. with this fake pregnancy was financial support. And so they had been providing that.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah. Interesting.

[Patia Eaton]

But she was never pregnant.

[Hannah Smith]

And it also said, yeah, it's not the first time that she had pretended to be pregnant, so. Okay, well, that clarifies a lot.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. So the whole thing was of Frau. She was never pregnant that time around at all. Gotcha. But that is why Nick was so invested, even after she ran off to Texas, came back, finds out she's a criminal. I think I had also mentioned a conversation where he did tell Mark or tell someone that he had always wanted a family, and so that was big for him.

[Mark Kasbaka]

So now he knows. But yet, given all that, he moves her from Texas to Philly and sets her up in an apartment that's owned by a former client of his. And he's bouncing back and forth between Philly and Baltimore because she's wanted nationwide at this point. And he knows she's wanted nationwide, but he's hiding her out until she has some problems in Philadelphia. Neighborhood dispute, neighbors calling the police on her whatnot. So she's got to get out of Dodge quick again. So now the attorney has to move her again. And he complained to the landlord, who he knew because he'd represented them in a civil case, that it was like the sixth or seventh time he had to move her. And then, you know, they probably went up to Maine, into Vermont, you know, they wandered around for a little, but they did end up settling in Nashua.

[Hannah Smith]

So when he said she's wanted nationwide, there's an arrest warrant out for her essentially for like identity theft or fraud.

[Patia Eaton]

Or something, various identity theft and fraud charges. And they're in multiple states. A lot of them are on the east coast, but there's multiple places where she's wanted.

[Hannah Smith]

Gotcha.

[Patia Eaton]

So for a while, this kind of works and they fly under the radar. This criminal defense attorney, his practice was in Baltimore, but he would return on the weekends to this little apartment that they had rented. Now, this chapter of Mark sort of unraveling things is really where we see how methodical Dana Lawrence is and get a sense of how many times she must have done this, because while her boyfriend is working in Baltimore during the work week, even though he's rented them an apartment there, she goes to a women's shelter with her daughter. And she says that I'm running from an abusive relationship and I need shelter here. So she does this and she really weaves herself into this community. And part of the way that this shelter works is you do volunteer work, because, of course, you know, you're not paying rent to be there. It's for your safety. And she really immerses herself in this community of volunteers. And at first, it's on a very part time basis. And through this volunteer work, Dana cozies up to people who work in the mayor's office. So, okay, back to the police station. Dana's arrested, and we know the little girl's taken, and she's sent to live with the foster family. So Mark's really his first priority is I need to find out who her dad is and get her out of this situation. He needs the full story. So he's got the birth certificate, and he's seen that the child's father is listed as unknown. So from that birth certificate, Mark is able to locate a nurse that helped deliver the baby. And the delivery happened in Colorado. That's where the baby was born. So he calls up this nurse, and.

[Mark Kasbaka]

I got a hold of her in Colorado, and she remembered the birth because when the baby was born, she had certain things in her Stool sample that triggered an alert to Child Protective Services. And she also had a conversation with the dad, who she never got his name, but she knew he was from. Originally from Massachusetts. They had that conversation because that nurse Mary was her name. She was from Massachusetts, and she remembered he was either from north or South Carolina. So I knew I was looking for Matt. Well, I should back up. The landlord never met him, but knew that the boyfriend was named Matt. I was able to identify two individuals that fit that profile living in that general vicinity where she was during that three month time frame. And the very first one I was able to reach was a guy in South Carolina. And he says, well, look, I don't know. Isabella, my daughter's name is.

My girlfriend left with my daughter, you know, two, three years ago and never came back. And I've been looking for her ever since. But I don't think that's my daughter because, you know, we were in Colorado at the time, then we were in South Carolina. Last I knew, she was in Florida.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah.

[Hannah Smith]

Oh, but is this him? I mean, it sounds like it could be him.

[Patia Eaton]

It's him. So we know now this little girl's name is not Isabella. Obviously, we're not going to reveal her actual name, but she has a dad who's been out there looking for her since her birthday. And he had been looking for her by checking arrest records in every place that he thought Dana might be.

[Hannah Smith]

Oh, my gosh. And the child, AKA Isabella, not her real name. She's three years old at this time.

[Patia Eaton]

At this time, she's three years old. Oh, yeah.

[Hannah Smith]

That's three years of him doing this.

[Patia Eaton]

Totally. I mean, it's just heartbreaking, like, so much time lost. And so even though he's checking all of these arrest records and every place that he thinks there's even a possibility she could have been, he doesn't know her name is Deena Lawrence. He knows her by the name Genevieve Morgan.

[Hannah Smith]

A different name.

[Patia Eaton]

A different name, but interesting that.

[Hannah Smith]

What is her name? Jenna.

[Patia Eaton]

So at first it was Jenna Kaplan.

[Hannah Smith]

Jenna Kaplan.

[Patia Eaton]

Now it's Genevieve Morgan. Yeah, she had a lot of different names. Yeah. So they go ahead, they do a DNA test, they confirm that he's the father, and so now they need to get Isabella into her father's custody. So Dana's in jail, but they have a custody hearing for Isabella coming up, and so they fly him up there. And they're at this hearing. Dana's trying to talk her way out of this. She wants her criminal defense attorney boyfriend to get custody. She's trying to argue that point because they're in a relationship. The daughter's comfortable with him, supposedly. But meanwhile, Mark's been in contact with this actual father of the child, and he's flown up to New Hampshire for this hearing.

[Mark Kasbaka]

Dana kept insisting she didn't know who the father was until all of a sudden, the doors swing open and here comes the dad. And then she's like, oh, yeah, now I remember. He is the father. Now, mind you, they've been living together on and off for, you know, a couple years.

So the court eventually gave Matt custody of his daughter, but from jail, she was calling him, calling Matt, trying to persuade him not to take Isabella away from her and her boyfriend, that they could all live on the one roof, the three adults, and raised her bananas.

[Hannah Smith]

So when he says they've been living together a couple years, he means the boyfriend.

[Patia Eaton]

He is actually referring to the father of this child. It was not some fling. This was like another relationship that she had been in.

[Hannah Smith]

They were living together for multiple years. Off and on. They were in a relationship. She had the baby and then what, just disappeared?

[Patia Eaton]

She disappeared. She listed unknown on the paternity side of the birth certificate and jetted.

[Hannah Smith]

Wow.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. I think I can speculate a reason why she does this, but we'll get into that later. But, yeah, so then she has this, like, wild idea that, okay, father of Isabella, first named Matt, just come and live with us. We'll be one big happy family. Yeah, Matt's, like, wild. Absolutely not. So, yeah, that was maybe one of the crazier little moments in this interview, actually, is that she even thought that was a possibility. But Matt returns to South Carolina with his daughter, which I'm sure was a massive adjustment for both of them. And Dana Lawrence is in jail, and they're trying to decide what to charge her with. They eventually land on identity fraud, which is because she was using a Social Security number that wasn't hers on various mental applications and other sort of forms. So In September of 2017, Dana was convicted of fraud and sentenced to prison.

[Mark Kasbaka]

She got 18 months federal time for using the Social Security number on that rental application. I credit her daughter Kennedy for a lot of that, because Kennedy actually took the stand against her mother in the sentencing, and she. She hit the nail on the head. She told the judge, if you let her go, she's just gonna go do this to other people. Kennedy's like, she destroyed my life, my siblings lives, and every person she touched.

[Patia Eaton]

Who is Kennedy? So Dana Lawrence is sentenced to prison, and part of why she got an 18 month sentence is because another daughter of hers actually showed up to testify against her. And now is where I learned that Dana Lawrence has six children.

[Hannah Smith]

Oh, my gosh.

[Patia Eaton]

With six different men. Which of course, like, I don't have any judgments on that as an isol fact.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah.

[Patia Eaton]

But given her pattern of deceiving people, I think it's very telling.

[Hannah Smith]

How old is Dana Lawrence?

[Patia Eaton]

Dana Lawrence, I think now is in her early 40s. Okay.

[Hannah Smith]

So she got charged.

[Patia Eaton]

So she's charged with fraud.

[Hannah Smith]

All of these people come out of the woodwork.

[Patia Eaton]

Right.

[Hannah Smith]

And had they all been looking for her?

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. So as Mark is putting together this, like, case against her and helping the prosecutors get everything they need together, he's unraveling her past, which I'm now gonna get into. And part of that, this daughter, Kennedy. So we find out Dana has a lot of children with different fathers, and that she uses pregnancy to, you know, manipulate and deceive people and defraud them of money. In certain instances, real pregnancies. Real pregnancies and fake pregnancies. And she is always leaving the father as unknown.

[Hannah Smith]

Because on every birth certificate.

[Patia Eaton]

Right? On every birth certificate, except for her first birth certificate of her first daughter, Brittany, who I'm gonna talk. But we learned that Dana is from St. Augustine, Florida. Her first child, a girl, is placed for adoption. And she's a teenager at the time. So until recently.

[Hannah Smith]

No, she's a teenager at.

[Patia Eaton]

At the time of her first daughter's birth.

[Hannah Smith]

Oh, Dana's a teenager.

[Patia Eaton]

Okay.

[Hannah Smith]

Okay.

[Patia Eaton]

So she's placed for adoption and no one really knows anything about this baby girl or her life. But we'll come back to that. Then Dana gets married a few years later to a man who lives in Utah. So she moves to Utah. She tells him that she's from a very wealthy family associated with Kentucky Fried Chicken. Not true. The marriage ended and Dana went to Illinois and then to New York. In New York, she met a very wealthy man and entered into a relationship with him. But then he broke up with her and she began stalking him.

[Hannah Smith]

Oh, wow.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. So his family hires an attorney, kind of gets rid of her. She tried to tell him she was pregnant with his child. She wasn't.

[Hannah Smith]

How much time has passed?

[Patia Eaton]

You know, I'm not sure. I think this is over the course of, like, less than 10 years, all of this.

[Hannah Smith]

Wow. So she. I'm just like, trying to track all the movements. And then she gets to New York. She's in a relationship with someone and then stalks him. Like, what was going on with that relationship.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. So she learned that he was very wealthy and she started behaving in a way that was strange to him. And so he broke things off, which really upset her. And so she got pregnant in New York and put no name on the father side of the birth certificate. So this is her second daughter. Her first was placed for adoption when she was a teenager back in Florida. So this is her second daughter, Kennedy. We're in the late 90s in New York. Dana is keeping herself afloat with essentially credit card fraud. She's spending a lot on credit cards that she has no business with being in the possession of. And she's leaving really generous tips at a local bar, really getting to know the staff there, and ends up sleeping with someone who works at the bar. And she then conceives a second daughter.

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[Hannah Smith]

It's 1972. A young British family is attempting to sail around the world when disaster cluster strikes. Their boat is hit by killer whales and it sinks in seconds. All they have left is a life raft and each other. This is the true story of the Robertson family and their fight to survive. Hosted by me, Becky Milligan. Listen to Adrift, an Apple original podcast produced by Blanchard House. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts. Winter usually wrecks my skin, but I started using KPS Essentials Kindness Powered Skin Care and it's actually working. The Renew Serum, the texture, the scent, the way my skin drinks it in KPS is actually different. And about 30 minutes later, my skin had volume, looked smoother, firmer, brighter and noticeably more bounce. If you're like me and demand performance and organic ingredients, then give your skin some kindness. Browse their products, take their skin care quiz and find your [e-mail] owning a.

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[Mark Kasbaka]

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[Patia Eaton]

So Dana and her two daughters move to Florida. That's where she meets another man who is, I think, a pilot.

[Hannah Smith]

Okay.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. And so with this pilot, they then all move, Dana, the pilot, the two daughters, to Indiana. In Indiana, during their relationship, she has an idea for a small business, and he gives her $5,000. And as soon as she's got that five grand, she's gone again. Okay.

[Hannah Smith]

She's not using it to start a business.

[Patia Eaton]

No.

[Hannah Smith]

Okay. She's just taking the money. Sounds like she's already kind of running fraud, like, all the time.

[Patia Eaton]

All the time. These, like, small time scams.

[Hannah Smith]

Scams, yeah.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. So she takes her two daughters to Massachusetts, but eventually, for whatever reason, calls this pilot back up and says, actually, I'm pregnant. So he then leaves Indiana and goes to Massachusetts to be with her.

[Hannah Smith]

He's now moved from Florida to Indiana for her, and then now to Massachusetts.

[Patia Eaton]

Right. And Dana, shortly after that. So this is in the early 2000s, gives birth to a son.

[Hannah Smith]

Okay.

[Patia Eaton]

And from what I understand, that son is the pilot's son.

[Hannah Smith]

Gotcha.

[Patia Eaton]

So that is his dad. But once again, she leaves his name off of the birth certificate.

[Hannah Smith]

Wild.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. And then the whole family, all of them, move to rhode island in 2003. She tells people she's Harvard educated, she has custody of her nieces, and she starts telling her daughters to tell people that they are her nieces, that she has gained custody of them after a family tragedy.

[Hannah Smith]

Wow.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. And so she also starts telling people that she's going to inherit millions of dollars, and she's just. Her inheritance keeps getting held up. So she's running in these wealthy social circles kind of pretending that she's this wealthy Rhode island mom slash aunt with custody of her nieces. I mean, it's wild.

[Hannah Smith]

This reminds me of the Peggy Fulford story we did where she was Dennis Rodman's financial manager and she was telling people her son was her brother.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah.

[Hannah Smith]

And I think I remember she said she did that because she wanted to look younger. Like she didn't want to be aged by that. She had him very young. But she was similarly like lying about your kid's. Identity is so strange.

[Patia Eaton]

And I can't imagine asking your kid to lie.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah. Like, horrible.

[Patia Eaton]

Like, to think that you don't want to identify to people that you're their mom would be, like, so sad.

[Hannah Smith]

So sad.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. And so she tells her friends in Rhode island that she's having a lot of trouble getting her inheritance. I'm not exactly sure what her stories consisted of, but she steals from her friends, they loan her money, they loan her credit cards. She takes them for a ride. That's what she does. And she knows she's going to get found out in Rhode Island. So she flees to Canada with her three kids, leaves the pilot, I don't know where.

[Hannah Smith]

Pilot's not coming with them.

[Patia Eaton]

Pilot's gone.

[Hannah Smith]

Okay.

[Patia Eaton]

Not even the ability to fly a plane will get him there with her. So while in Canada, Dana gives birth to another child.

[Hannah Smith]

Whose child is this?

[Patia Eaton]

I don't know.

[Hannah Smith]

Okay.

[Patia Eaton]

And then she comes back to the United States. But since she's wanted, she has multiple arrest warrants at this point all over the East Coast. She stopped at the border with her four kids. With her four kids. So she puts the son that she gave birth to in Canada. She places him for adoption in Canada.

[Mark Kasbaka]

Wow.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. I don't know if he actually would have been placed for adoption in Canada or the U.S. but she gave birth to him in Canada.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah.

[Patia Eaton]

And conceived him, I think, in the.

[Hannah Smith]

U.S. and so he doesn't come across the border with them.

[Patia Eaton]

I don't know exactly how that turns out, but she places him for adoption. Interesting. Yeah. And so she goes to New York and she faces charges. And in the process of that, she loses custody of the two daughters that she has in tow, as well as the son that belonged to the pilot.

[Hannah Smith]

And what happens to the son?

[Patia Eaton]

So the son goes to be with his dad, who we know is the pilot. And the daughters, they have to go somewhere.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah.

[Patia Eaton]

So the youngest daughter, they locate her dad, who was the person who worked at the bar, and she's now sent to live with this family as a young kid she's never met before.

[Hannah Smith]

That's so wild. And also, she's been raised with these siblings, and now they're all being separated. That's gotta be so hard.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah, it was really hard. Kennedy was interviewed about it at one point and talked about just how hard it was, and she was actually sent to live with Dana's sister Billy.

[Hannah Smith]

Okay.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. Dana asked even her own children to lie for her. So sometime around 2010, when Kennedy is 12 or 13 years old, Dana Begins dating another attorney and they're living with him in Boston. And then she tells him, I need to go to Florida. I'm gonna be arrested if we stay here. He's like, okay. And they all go to Florida. Wow.

[Hannah Smith]

Because whenever she was initially arrested after coming back into the US and then her son gets sent to live with his father, her daughter goes to live with her father, and then the other daughter goes to live with her sister, she's sent to prison, but I'm guessing for a very short amount of time because it's for fraud or credit card theft or something. So she's probably out in like a year or less. And then it sounds like she gets right back into her old tricks.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. And she regains custody of Kennedy because Kennedy was with her sister.

[Hannah Smith]

Wow.

[Patia Eaton]

So they go to Florida. Dana, 12 or 13 year old Kennedy and this new attorney she's dating. And then just like always, she then does something in Florida and has to leave. Well, this time she does something pretty unimaginable and leaves Kennedy behind. Hmm.

[Mark Kasbaka]

You know, when he and Dana left Miami beach, she had stolen somebody's identity at her place of employment and got credit cards in that woman's name.

[Patia Eaton]

That's horrible.

[Mark Kasbaka]

That all started unraveling. The police called her in for an interview. She told her, hey, I can't make it now today. I'll be in there tomorrow after work. It's four o'. Clock.

[Patia Eaton]

Who would believe that?

[Mark Kasbaka]

Well, North Miami beach police, you know, gave her that courtesy. And she went home that night and told Kenny, we're on the run, we're moving again. Because she used to say, the boogeyman's coming. She would say, the boogeyman's coming. And Kenny's a small kid at that time. She grew up with it. But at 13 years old now, yeah, Kenny's like, I'm done. I have friends here. I'm not going.

[Patia Eaton]

Good for her.

[Mark Kasbaka]

Her mother and Jonathan, my boyfriend, gave her $20 and left her in an apartment by herself in Miami.

[Patia Eaton]

A 13 year old girl.

[Mark Kasbaka]

Right. So she's. But, you know, give that kid credit. She survived for about two weeks and she went to school every day because that was important to her. Taking a city bus. And then when the money ran out, she turned herself. She called the police and says, hey, can somebody come take care of me? My mother abandoned me. So the police came, put her in foster care and told her Aunt Billy could come down and lay claim to her.

[Hannah Smith]

Wow.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. Since the beginning of really her late teenage years, she's had this pattern of being on the run from state to state in different relationships and having children and taking them along with her. So Kennedy goes back into Billy's care at that point. And, you know, we still don't know much about this first daughter that Dana had as a teenager. But all of the other siblings that can be in touch are in touch. So the two younger daughters and then the son that she had with the pilot. And so Mark didn't know anything about this first daughter. And then when all of this came out about Dana's arrest and her 18 month prison sentence in New Hampshire, Mark was asked to do a TV interview and he got in the car to go to the interview and he got a call from a guy in Maryland.

[Mark Kasbaka]

I got a call from a guy in Thompson, Maryland, who the weekend before was at a bar with his wife. They had just flown in from out of town, stopped to get a bite to eat, a drink, and who did they run into but Dana Lawrence in the bar. She had now finished her sentence. She was done her parole or probation, I should say. And she had business cards with her true name this time, Dana Lawrence, Social justice center or something. But she told them that she worked for ABC developing new reality shows and wanted to know if he and his wife would be interested in being in this new reality show that ABC was putting together. And, you know, if they were, you know, could they provide their information to her and she would get them a casting call. The wife was all excited by this, was ready to jump on board, but the husband's like, yeah, if it sounds too good to be true, let's just hold off a little bit.

[Patia Eaton]

You know, as soon as she got out of prison in New Hampshire, she was right back at it.

[Hannah Smith]

New scheme, reality TV show.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. And this person who reached out to Mark actually found him the same way I did, which was at this point, Dana's case is Googleable. And so Mark's name comes up because he's interviewed about it, and he reached out to him on LinkedIn. So that's how he got in touch with Mark. So this is all still happening. And at this point, Mark doesn't know anything about the first daughter that Dana ever had. And actually, just before our interview, like the weekend before, he heard from her on LinkedIn. And then they got on the phone.

[Mark Kasbaka]

Brittany was the first of Dana's kids. She was born in like 1991, the very beginning of the stuff. Dana was very, very young. And nobody knew what ever happened to Brittany. Nobody could tell you. You know, her sister couldn't tell me the kids couldn't because Brittany was gone before any of them were born. Right. According to Knew Billy, the sister. Yeah, they knew she went for adoption. But, you know, as luck would have it, Britney's adopted family gave her a 21andMe kit. And she took it, submitted it, and she sat on those results for a while. It never hit the link like who you might be related to. She got the data back, but never hit it until very recently. And she hit like who you might be connected to. And it was through that she was connected to Dana as our birth mother. So she reached out for Dana, not knowing any of this stuff. Dana tried to suck her into her same scheme, telling her that she's heir to some lumber mill or sawmill fortune, that she travels down to Dominican Republic every year during the holidays to give gifts to the underprivileged down there, that she spends most of her time in Spain. You know, it's the same type of stuff she told other people in the past, you know, being connected to the Royal Family or to Jack Nicholson, and she was, you know, sucking Britney in. Now Britney is not Britney anymore. Britney's now her adoptive family, dude. So something just didn't sit well recently with her about these conversations with her mom. And her mom sent her a picture of her when she was a kid. And, you know.

She.

Was doing a research online and saw this story and saw the mug shots of Dana and noticed that there was a mole on Dana's mugshot between her eyes. The same mole was on the picture Dana sent to Brittany from years ago. So she started digging. You know, she found my name. I didn't know, like, this was just this past Sunday, you know, I. I get, I get a message on LinkedIn. At first, I get a request on LinkedIn to be a contact. So when Brittany called me, she's like, you know, this is a story that I'm being told. And she says, my parents adopted me. I've been living in Tennessee. I obviously never met my birth parents, and I'm an only child. But putting the pieces together because Dana is back in, I guess, Washington, D.C. area.

[Patia Eaton]

Okay, so it's a lot. But Mark is basically saying that Dana's first child is reaching out to him and she's learning on her own through Googling that her mom is a con woman and that she's been just so horrible.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah. I mean, also thinking about, like, this child you haven't talked to in so long reaching out to you, and then she just starts spitting these lies to her it's just hard sometimes to understand how someone could be such a pathological liar and just also be only thinking about how she can use people.

[Patia Eaton]

Totally. And it's like there's no big buildup to a prison sentence here. She's out. I mean, at least when I talked to Mark, what, two weeks ago, she wasn't in prison. I think the longest sentence she had was the New Hampshire one. She's likely still doing this.

[Hannah Smith]

Can I ask a question about the daughter who's we're calling Brittany, but that's not her name.

[Patia Eaton]

Right.

[Hannah Smith]

You know, it's gotta be such a disappointing thing maybe, I mean, to understand that your mother is a sort of serial scammer. But was she able to connect with any of her siblings?

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. So Mark has stayed in touch with definitely the two girls now, young women that he got to know over the course of her trial and conviction. And he did put them in touch. And I don't know what that resulted in, but I know that he was able to connect them and maybe they'll have a relationship of some kind. And yeah, it's just gotta be so disappointing if you're someone who is looking for a biological parent and then you find out that the first thing they do is lie to you.

[Hannah Smith]

The first thing, yeah.

[Patia Eaton]

Horrible, horrible. So Britney's only interactions with her mom have just been her lying again. And you know, I was asking Mark, like, how is it possible that she's not serving more time for the kind of crimes she's committing? And I think it kind of goes back to something we see a lot of in these sort of small time scams. You convince someone that you're pregnant, but how do you prove that you are not pregnant? How does someone else prove that you were never pregnant?

[Hannah Smith]

Or like you run a bunch of cons, but they're not violent, you know, this is not violent crime. So, you know, she's up in the east coast like stealing from her friends and then she does get a conviction, but it's, what was it, like 18 months or something. And so then she's just out again. And a lot of times also good behavior. Maybe she doesn't even serve those 18 months. And you know, so she has a record, but it's not like she's done anything that legally could put her behind bars for a very long amount of time, right?

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah, totally. It's like all small enough that she can skip town and not be at the top of someone's list.

[Hannah Smith]

This is like the essential problem with serial scammers is that we see all the time is that, you know, if I'm meeting someone like Dana, I want to know because, like, you know, she's going to probably try to scam me or whatever. She comes into a community, it's like, they probably want to know, but it's so difficult to actually stop people like this because they just continue to move and do the same thing over and over again.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah, absolutely. And she probably does gain the trust of people by saying she's a mom and she's a single mom, and I can see how someone might fall for that. Like, who would suspect it? Yeah, I wouldn't. All the way back in the beginning when Mark was contacted about her behavior in the mayor's office, you know, he at least intercepted the case before she got those account numbers.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah. And the fact that he did something about it and that it actually led to some charges is pretty amazing because I feel like that's actually kind of rare when it comes to scams.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. And some press. So now she's more Googleable, which I'm sure Britney is not the first person to google her with suspicions and now find out the truth. So. Yeah. Dana has also told people that she's the heir to the Estee Lauder fortune, that she works for George Lucas at a film company. I mean, she has all kinds of stories. She's conned wealthy businessmen, the pilot, a rabbi, her own family and friends, all manner of romantic partners, a lot of people who didn't ever know who she really was. And, you know, female con artists, I think, is less talked about in how violating it is. But if you're in a relationship with someone and they've completely lied to you about everything and there's intimacy there, it's like, have you consented really to anything? No.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah. That's really horrible.

[Patia Eaton]

It's really horrible. And so she's probably out there and still doing this. And, you know, I also wanted to mention that the attorney, the criminal defense attorney that Mark interacted with, he was actually disbarred.

[Hannah Smith]

Wow. Because of this. Because of his lies or.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. He can no longer practice law there because he lied. Yeah.

[Hannah Smith]

Wow. Yeah. I mean, that makes sense.

[Patia Eaton]

Can't do that.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah. Can't be doing that. What a story. I can't believe she's still just out there. I mean, I can, but it's just like. It is mind blowing.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. I know that got so confusing in the middle of trying to explain her history, But I think that's by design.

[Hannah Smith]

Truly. Like, truly trying to figure out if You're a person who meets her and then trying to, like, sort through her history or past. It would be incredibly confusing.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. Like, all of these different fathers of different children, none of them on their birth certificates. Different locations, different identities and careers. Everything about her is like she's a chameleon.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah. And what about her family? Did you ever learn anything about them?

[Patia Eaton]

I didn't. I heard sort of a rumor from someone I called that didn't interview that she had a very difficult upbringing, but I can't verify that, and. Yeah.

[Hannah Smith]

Wow. Well, thanks for telling me that story.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah. Thanks for sticking with it.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah.

[Patia Eaton]

Lots of twists and turns.

[Hannah Smith]

So many twists and turns. So much travel.

[Patia Eaton]

Yeah.

[Hannah Smith]

Well, listen, I don't have a great true crime recommendation right now, but you.

[Patia Eaton]

Have a medium recommendation?

[Hannah Smith]

I have a recommendation. It's just not. It's not true crime. But I have sort of been. I've been loving it. I got on the train later. There's three seasons. It's called the Gilded Age. It's on hbo.

[Patia Eaton]

So this is a show.

[Hannah Smith]

This is a TV show.

[Patia Eaton]

Okay.

[Hannah Smith]

Scripted, not documentary. And it's like, following families in the late 1800s, like, 1895, like, very close to the turn of the century in Brooklyn, New York. And it's just, like, about society, and it's like the new money versus the old money. Families that are like, well, we've been around since the American Revolution, and you just got here and they're, like, constructing brownstones, and it's sort of like Downton Abbey, except it's in New York. And, you know, there's a lot of historical parts, like the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge happens, and it's just really fun and sort of an easy, entertaining watch.

[Patia Eaton]

When you see them building the brownstones, do you want to reach through the TV and say, just buy them all? Just buy them all.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah. Someone please invest that I'm related to in the future. It is fun. Like, they're living in the brownstones, but it's still horse and buggy.

[Patia Eaton]

Love that.

[Hannah Smith]

So they're, like, pulling up to the brownstone. That's awesome. In the carriage. So Ben and I started watching this as just like a relax at the end of a stressful day. Put on a couple episodes of this. But there's one storyline, and I don't want to spoil it for anyone. I mean, there's three seasons out and they've been out for a while, but there's a storyline of one of the characters who meets this woman who, like, everyone's like, who's her family. We're not sure. We're not sure. And then she sort of surreptitiously gets him in on this investment deal. And I was like, it's a scam. It's a scam. And Ben was like, what? Are you sure? I was like, 100%. All the red flags are there. This is a scam. Just you wait. And it, it was, wow, it all played out. And he was like, wow, you really spotted that. And I was like, even in the.

[Patia Eaton]

Show, you're like, I can spot a scam.

[Hannah Smith]

I spend too much time or maybe.

[Patia Eaton]

The right amount because it's not going to happen to you. You're interviewing the people who scam you.

[Hannah Smith]

Yeah, I'm very on alert for all the red flags. Even in escapist tv.

[Patia Eaton]

Better safe than sorry. Yeah.

[Hannah Smith]

So there was a little bit of a scam in there, but not a true crime show.

[Patia Eaton]

Well, I'll have to check it out. Yeah.

[Hannah Smith]

Well, that's our episode for today.

[Patia Eaton]

Thanks for listening.

[Hannah Smith]

We'll be back next week.

[Patia Eaton]

If you have a story for us, we would love to hear it. Our email is the knifexactlyrightmedia.com or you can follow us on Instagram Henife Podcast or bluesky at the Knife Podcast.

[Hannah Smith]

This has been an exactly right production. Hosted and produced by me, Hannah Smith.

[Patia Eaton]

And me, Pasha Eaton. Our producers are Tom Bregel and Alexis Amorosi.

[Hannah Smith]

This episode was mixed by Tom Breyfogle.

[Patia Eaton]

Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.

[Hannah Smith]

Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport.

[Patia Eaton]

Artwork by Vanessa Lilac.

[Hannah Smith]

Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer.

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