Mary Carole McDonnell claimed she was heir to the McDonnell Douglas fortune. She allegedly stole $30 million from banks, employees, and her own sons before fleeing the country.
Mary Carole McDonnell walked into a Banc of California office in Los Angeles in 2018 carrying two pies. She was 66, dressed in a white-collared shirt and blue jeans, wearing her signature pearls. She told the bank she was heir to the McDonnell Douglas fortune–the aerospace company that merged with Boeing in 1997–and that an $81 million trust would arrive the following year. She needed a $15 million bridge loan.
The bank checked her story. McDonnell ran a true-crime production company called Bellum Entertainment, valued at $125 million in her loan application. She listed a $1 million stash of jewelry and art, several investment properties, and a net worth of $77 million. She agreed to put up a $28.6 million account at Northern Trust as collateral. Banc of California approved the loan.
Within six weeks, she had withdrawn nearly the entire $14.66 million, according to a lawsuit the bank later filed. The Northern Trust account did not exist. The bank's lawyers said she used forged documents and a notary who admitted he never saw the papers she signed.
By the end of 2018, McDonnell had fled the U.S. with her husband, an ophthalmologist named Jeffrey Nilles. The FBI placed her on its Most Wanted list in December 2025. The case spans at least seven federal charges, including bank fraud and aggravated identity theft.
McDonnell did not stop at Banc of California. Another lender, The Credit Junction Holdings, had already sued her over a similar $8.6 million loan. The Banc of California money partly went to pay off that earlier debt, according to court filings. An attorney for the bank called it a "Ponzi scheme borrowing from one party to pay off the prior party."
Her victims also included her twin sons. She allegedly forged their signatures in August 2017 on a $2.5 million loan from a short-term lender. When she defaulted, the lender garnished $56,000 from the sons' accounts and another $502,700 from a property sale. A document examiner later determined the signatures were likely not theirs, according to an affidavit one son filed.
More than 100 wage claims were lodged against Bellum Entertainment between 2016 and 2019, according to California's Department of Industrial Relations. Former employees and freelancers alleged they were owed from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands. One source estimates the total unpaid wages at $4 million.
Banc of California placed most of the sales team that handled the loan on administrative leave. Jami Rice, then a vice president at the bank, said the handling of the situation drove her to leave banking and start a true-crime podcast called Murderish. Rice later produced a podcast series, Dirty Money Moves, about the McDonnell case.
"I never would have left banking if she hadn't come in and blown everything up," Rice told Rolling Stone.
McDonnell's flight to Dubai, and later possibly to Switzerland or the Czech Republic, has stalled civil suits. The bank obtained a judgment, but enforcement has been impossible. A separate lawsuit by a Dubai resident who claimed McDonnell and Nilles falsely accused her of stealing $100,000 was dismissed. The resident said she has cooperated with the FBI.
Retired FBI agent R.W. Simpson, who worked financial crime for 26 years, said the Most Wanted notice could be a tactic to pressure McDonnell. "They could be shaking the trees a bit with the publicity," he told Rolling Stone, adding that his "gut" felt the agency had something in the works.
McDonnell's whereabouts remain unknown. Former colleagues and friends said she cut contact with everyone, including her own sons. "She's not coming back and going to prison at 75 years old," said Boots Walker, a longtime friend who said she lost $800,000 in an investment she made with McDonnell.
Director and producer Phil Paul Call, who worked on Bellum shows, summed up the sentiment of many who dealt with McDonnell. "What happens when people decide to do this? There's no punishment," he said. "There's people that lost their apartments and this changed their lives."
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