“I Never Showed My Face” by Tanya Smith. (Little, Brown/TNS)
Chris Hewitt | (TNS) Star Tribune
By the time she was 13 in 1973, Tanya Smith had already bought a plane ticket, flown to Michael Jackson’s parents’ house and begged him to let her meet him. By the time she was 20, she had amassed millions by breaking into banks’ computer systems. By the time she was 30, she had spent over 13 years in prison for wire fraud, bank fraud, conspiracy and attempted credit card fraud.
In his new memoir, Smith tells all those stories and more — including teasing a friend’s big brother, a guy named Prince, who rehearsed and performed at the Capri Theater, which Smith’s father owned at the time. Never Saw Me Coming: How I Outsmarted the FBI and the Entire Banking System — and Made $40 Million” hits stores August 13.
Reading more like a novel than an autobiography—especially the soap opera-like scene in which she avoids prison in court by parading her twin sister and asking eyewitnesses to tell the two apart—Never is a gripping book. It’s packed with: Incredible computer scams. Terrible decisions made by men who, she writes, stole much of the money (some of which she hid and never got back). Prison escapes (like the one that opens the book). And heartbreaking losses—Smith is very close to her daughter, recent college graduate Makala, who learned about her mother’s past life ten years ago through newspaper clippings. But she declined to discuss her other two children, born while she was in prison.
Smith now lives in Los Angeles, where she bikes 15 miles a day, stops to care for the homeless along the way, and works a part-time customer service job. The conversation has been condensed for length and clarity.
Q: You have been out of prison for 25 years and many of these memories are painful. Why are you now processing them in a book?
A: My daughter urged me to tell the story. I was against it. She said, “Mom, you have this great story. You need to tell the world everything you went through.” And finally I did. I wanted it to be really raw and relatable.
Q: How did this process go?
A: I sent (a proposal) to a few literary agents, about 15 of them, and they all wanted to represent me. But actually it took me about four years to write the book because there were so many changes and I had to get everything right. I really wanted people to know me and understand my feelings.
Q: Will you clash with laws that dictate to people who profit from their crimes?
A: I think there’s a statute of limitations on that. But I don’t know. That really wasn’t my point. I wanted to be honest.
Q: Issa Rae, the creator of the Insecure series, advertises your book on the cover and I can easily imagine her in a film or series based on the book. …
A: You actually brokered my first movie deal with Netflix. You and David Heyman, who (produced) Barbie. But I’m not with Netflix anymore. I have other things going on that I’m not allowed to talk about.
Q: So there’s a movie in the works?
A: We have some great things coming up. I wish I could talk about them. But I’ll have to leave that to other people. (After a “lively auction,” Smith’s publisher says there’s “exciting news about the adaptation” coming soon.) My life has been a rollercoaster. People needed to feel that to understand me and know why I did what I did.
Q: Why did you start stealing money and depositing it into the accounts of friends and family?
A: My parents always said I could have been anything I wanted. But when I was younger, I always thought, “I want to change the world. I want to make it a better place.” My two best friends – it drove me crazy when people discriminated against them. It drove me crazy when people tried to be someone they weren’t, so I always defended them. I always wanted to help people.
Q: Some funny stories in the book are about Prince before he was famous (see excerpt). You were friends with his younger sister Tyka. Did you have any idea that he was destined for greatness?
A: No, never. Prince was just — we knew he was talented. We watched him from a young age playing all these instruments. But he was just Tyka’s brother. He was always a nice person. As we got older, I noticed he had gotten a lot better. (He and his band) were playing a lot of other artists’ music and adding a little bit of this and that, and we thought, ‘They sound better than the real record.’
Q: As a teenager, how did you manage to break into banking networks and steal tens of millions of dollars using a computer you hid in your family’s attic?
A: Somehow my brain kicks in and I can figure things out. I can make it happen. That’s how I’ve always been.
Q: Still?
A: If someone has a problem and needs help, I can probably help them develop a strategy.
Q: You write about your questioning by the Minneapolis police, who refused to believe that a young black woman was smart enough to do what you were doing. You reacted strongly to them falsely insisting that someone else was pulling your strings, right?
A: I grew up in north Minneapolis and never experienced racism. My friends were of all races and religions, and I grew up in a household where we were all just human. The first time I experienced racism was when I was in that interrogation room. That was the turning point for me. I always tried to help other people, but then I thought, “OK, let me show you how smart this black woman is.” That’s when it became a game of cat and mouse. “Let me show them what I can really do.”
Q: And if you hadn’t been treated that way, do you think your life could have taken a different course?
A: The thing is, if they had come to me and said, “Tanya, you’re brilliant. You’re smart. Let’s find a way for you to help us stop people from doing this kind of thing with banks,” I would have been more than happy and willing. But that didn’t happen.
Q: And the racism continued in prison?
A: I never minded taking responsibility for my actions, but getting 24 1/2 years for a crime that only carried a five-year sentence was my biggest problem. I believe in equality. If someone does the same thing, you don’t get more time because of the color of your skin. I kept writing these letters to judges, always mentioning Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky (white male financiers whose crimes involved more money but who received lesser sentences). I expected nothing but justice.
Q: Although you were incarcerated in the country club prisons, you yourself spent a significant portion of your time in solitary confinement, sometimes because of escape attempts.
A: That’s why I feel this treatment is unfair. Even when I was incarcerated – I never took drugs, I never sold drugs, I was never violent – they treated me worse than the violent criminals in prison.
Q: Speaking of abuse, you write that your taste in men is consistently terrible. What does that mean?
A: I know, I know. I just wanted to try to change life and make it better. I think they looked at me with dollar signs in their eyes and I was looking for real, genuine relationships. I was looking for someone who would appreciate me for being smart and for being who I am.
Q: The book was originally announced for 2021, but isn’t coming out until three years later. Why?
A: For a long time before I decided to write this book, I never talked about my life. Nobody ever knew. My daughter never knew. So it was very hard for me because I had to keep all of that inside. I felt like I wasn’t who I really am. It was a huge weight off my mind to be able to say, “I’m Tanya Smith,” because it was really (she starts crying) difficult not being able to be who I am. I don’t think I became free until I started writing this book. Even when I got out of prison, I couldn’t get a job because of my past, or if I was hired for a job, they did a background check.
Q: But someone finally gave you a chance: the man who hired you for the part-time customer service job you’ve been doing for over eight years now. Was it difficult to tell him the truth about your background?
A: He doesn’t know yet. I haven’t told him yet. But when the book comes out, he will know. For now, I’m OK with that.
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I never showed my face
By: Tanya Smith.
Publisher: Little, Brown, 425 pages, $32.
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