Meet the Minneapolis native who teased Prince, hacked into banks and pocketed $40 million

By the time she was a 13-year-old in 1973, Tanya Smith had procured a plane ticket, flown to Michael Jackson’s childhood home and begged to meet him. By the time she was 20, she accrued millions by breaking into banks’ computer systems. By 30, she was spending what would be more than 13 years in prison for wire fraud, bank fraud, conspiracy and attempted credit card fraud.

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 Theater, then owned by Smith’s dad. “Never Saw Me Coming: How I Outsmarted the FBI and the Entire Banking System — and Pocketed $40 Million,” is in stores Aug. 13.

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 — “Never” is a page-turner. It’s packed with: Unbelievable computer scams. Terrible choices in men, whom she writes stole much of the money (she hid some and never recovered it). Prison escapes (like the one that opens the book). And heartbreaking loss — Smith is very close to her daughter, recent college graduate Makala, who learned of her mom’s former life a decade ago when she stumbled upon some news clippings. But she declined to talk about her two other children, born while she was imprisoned.

Smith now lives in Los Angeles, where she rides her bike 15 miles a day, stopping to care for unhoused people along her route and working a part-time customer service job. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: You’ve been out of prison for 25 years and a lot of these memories are painful. Why pour them into a book now?

A: 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.

Q: How did that process go?

A: 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.

Q: Will you bump up against laws against people profiting from their crimes?

A: 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.

Q: “Insecure” series creator Issa Rae blurbs your book on the cover and I can easily imagine her in a movie or series based on it. ...

A: They actually had my first movie deal with Netflix. Her and David Heyman, who [produced] “Barbie.” But I’m no longer with Netflix. I have other things going on that I’m not at liberty to talk about.

Q: So there is a movie in the works?

A: 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.

Q: Why did you start stealing money and depositing it in the accounts of friends and family?

A: 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.

Q: Some fun stories in the book have to do with pre-fame Prince (see excerpt). You were friends with his younger sister, Tyka. Did you have any idea he was destined for greatness?

A: 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.”

Q: 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 dollars?

A: Somehow my brain just kicks in and I can figure stuff out. I can make it happen. I’ve always been like that.

Q: Still?

A: If somebody has an issue and they need help, I could probably help them figure out a strategy.

Q: 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?

A: Growing up in north Minneapolis, I never experienced racism. My friends were all races of people, all religions, and I grew up in a household where we were all just human beings. So the first time I encountered racism, really, was when I was in that interrogation room. 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.”

Q: And if you hadn’t been treated like that, do you think your life could have gone another way?

A: 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.

Q: And the racism continued in prison?

A: I never minded taking responsibility for the things I did but being given 24 ½ years for a crime that only carried a five-year penalty, that was my biggest problem. I believe in equality. If someone does the same thing, you don’t give one person more time because of the color of their skin. I kept writing these letters to judges and I always mentioned Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky [white, male financiers whose crimes involved more money but who received lighter sentences]. Fairness was all I expected.

Q: 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.

A: 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.

Q: Speaking of being mistreated, you write that your taste in men is consistently horrible. What’s that about?

A: I know, I know. I just wanted to try to change lives and just make it better. I think they were looking 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 release in 2021 but it’s coming out three years later. Why?

A: 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.

Q: But someone finally gave you a chance, the man who hired you for the part-time customer service job you’ve had for more than eight years. Was it hard to tell him the truth about your background?

A: 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.

One of those artists was my friend Tyka Nelson’s big brother, Prince. The Nelsons lived six blocks from us. Taryn [Tanya’s twin] and I would often pack up our Barbie dolls and head to Tyka’s to play. Born in 1960, like us, Tyka had a beautiful singing voice. Her parents were both jazz musicians. Her father, John, played the piano and used the stage name Prince Rogers; her mother, Mattie, was a singer. There was always music playing in their house, especially in the basement, where her big brother played the drums or the keyboard.

“You girls go on downstairs to play,” Tyka’s mother would say when we would get too loud.

We’d pack our dolls and trek down the stairs. Tyka’s brother, whom we called ‘the Ogre,’ would start banging on the drums to get rid of us. Annoyed, the three of us would stand there, rolling our eyes and grumbling. He’d laugh and keep on banging.

“Mom,” Tyka would complain. “Prince won’t let us. ... “

“Prince,” their mother would yell. “You’re always down there. Give the girls a chance.”

After a few more shouts from his mother, Prince would get all huffy and stomp up the steps. He wasn’t a big talker, but his icy sneer let us know he was pissed off.

We enjoyed tormenting Prince. Even when we didn’t want to play Barbies, we’d push Tyka’s mom to run him out of the basement.

“You twins. Why are you here again?” he’d demand. “Go home.”

One day, he was waiting when we got down to the basement.

“You two,” he said. “This is for you.”

He’d written a song to taunt us called “Lippy Lippy Lou” about a nasty girl with big lips. I was too mad to take in the words, but I still remember the song’s funky beat. All his banging on the drums and keyboard was paying off.

Excerpted from “Never Saw Me Coming,” by Tanya Smith. Copyright © 2024 by Tanya Smith. Used with permission of Little, Brown and Company. New York, N.Y. All rights reserved.

Never Saw Me Coming

By: Tanya Smith.

Publisher: Little, Brown, 425 pages, $32.