In a 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 Theatre in Minneapolis, in the US state of Minnesota, then owned by Smith’s dad.
Never Saw Me Coming: How I Outsmarted the FBI and the Entire Banking System – and Pocketed $40 Million went on sale earlier this month.
Reading more like fiction than memoir – especially in the soap-opera-worthy scene in which, on trial, she avoids a prison sentence by producing her twin sister in court and challenges eyewitnesses to tell them apart – her book is a page-turner.
Smith now lives in Los Angeles, where she rides her bike 24 kilometres (15 miles) a day, stopping to care for unhoused people along her route, and works a part-time customer service job. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
You have been out of prison for 25 years and a lot of these memories are painful. Why pour them into a book now?
My daughter was pushing me to tell the story. I was reluctant to do it. She was like, “Mom, you have this great story. You’ve got to tell the world everything you went through.” And I finally did it. I wanted it to be really raw and relatable.
How did that process go?
I sent [a proposal] to some literary agents, about 15 of them, and all of them wanted to represent me. But it actually took about four years to write because there were so many changes and I had to get everything right. I really wanted people to know me and understand my emotions.
My parents always said I could have been anything I wanted to be. But when I was younger, I used to think, ‘I want to change the world. I want to make it better.’
Will you bump up against laws against people profiting from their crimes?
I think they have a statute of limitations on that. But I don’t know. That really wasn’t my concern. I wanted to be truthful.
So there is a movie in the works?
We’ve got some great things coming up. I wish I could talk about it. But I have to let other people announce that. [After a “lively auction”, there’s “exciting adaptation news” coming soon, according to Smith’s publisher.] My life has been a roller-coaster ride. People needed to feel that to understand me and why I did what I did.
Why did you start stealing money and depositing it in the accounts of friends and family?
My parents always said I could have been anything I wanted to be. But when I was younger, I used to think, “I want to change the world. I want to make it better.”
My two best girlfriends, it drove me crazy when people would discriminate against them. It drove me crazy when people tried to be who they weren’t so I was always defending them. I always wanted to help people.
Some fun stories in the book have to do with pre-fame US singer Prince. You were friends with his younger sister, Tyka [Nelson]. Did you have any idea he was destined for greatness?
No, never. Prince was just … we knew he was talented. We watched him play all these instruments ever since he was very young. 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] used to play a lot of music from other artists and add a little of this and that in there, and we would think, “They sound better than the real record”.
How were you able as a teenager, with a computer you hid in your family’s attic, to bust into banking networks and steal tens of millions of US dollars?
Somehow my brain just kicks in and I can figure stuff out. I can make it happen. I’ve always been like that.
Still?
If somebody has an issue and they need help, I could probably help them figure out a strategy.
You write about being questioned by Minneapolis police, who refused to believe a young black woman was smart enough to do what you were doing. You had a strong reaction to them incorrectly insisting someone else was pulling your strings, correct?
That was the turning point for me. I was always trying to help other people but that’s when I felt, “OK, let me show you how smart this black woman is”. That’s when it became this cat-and-mouse game. “Let me show them what I can really do.”
And if you had not been treated like that, do you think your life could have gone another way?
The thing is, if they would have came to me and said, “Tanya, you’re brilliant. You’re smart. Let’s figure out a way you can help us stop people from doing these things with banks,” I would have been more than happy and willing. But that didn’t happen.
Even when I got out of prison, I couldn’t find a job because of my background, or I’d get hired for a job and then they’d run a background check.
And the racism continued in prison?
I never minded taking responsibility for the things I did but being given 24½ years for a crime that only carried a five-year penalty, that was my biggest problem.
Yet, while they were in country club prisons, you spent a significant amount of your prison years in solitary confinement, sometimes because of escape attempts.
That’s why I consider it unfair treatment. Even when I was locked up – I’ve never done drugs, I’ve never sold drugs, I’ve never been violent. But they treated me worse than those violent offenders in the facilities.
The book was originally announced for release in 2021 but it is coming out three years later. Why?
For so long, before I decided to write this book, I never talked about my life. No one ever knew. My daughter never knew. So it was really heavy because I was keeping this all inside. I felt like I wasn’t being who I really am.
It was a heavy burden lifted, being able to say, “I’m Tanya Smith”, because it was really [she begins crying] difficult not being able to be who I am. I feel like just at the beginning of writing this book is when I became free.
Even when I got out of prison, I couldn’t find a job because of my background, or I’d get hired for a job and then they’d run a background check.
But someone finally gave you a chance, the man who hired you for the part-time customer service job you have had for more than eight years. Was it hard to tell him the truth about your background?
He doesn’t know yet. I didn’t tell him yet. But when the book comes out, he will. I’m OK with it now.
Never Saw Me Coming, by Tanya Smith, is published by Little, Brown
