James Montgomery
Using the Internet to meet and defraud women

James Montgomery, left, and Kathy Macking, right, in a photo from Christmas, 2003. Their daughter, who was conceived and born while Montgomery was married to Donna Andersen, is on Santa's lap. At the time they were living in Bejing, China.

The real James Montgomery

Andersen filed for divorce and began to unravel Montgomery's web of lies. She discovered:

• A woman from California met Montgomery in 1987, and ended up giving him more than $250,000. She actually sold her California home, which had appreciated dramatically, to finance his projects. Montgomery signed a promissory note for $180,000 in 1990, which was to be repaid by 1992. She never received a penny.

• Montgomery met Kathleen Maloney from Massachusetts in 1989 and married her in March, 1990. By the following November, the relationship was over. At Montgomery's insistence, Maloney had remortgaged her home and acquired credit cards. She was left with nearly $200,000 in debt.

• Montgomery met Gale Lewis from Mays Landing, New Jersey, online, and married her in September, 1995. Lewis had purchased and furnished the townhouse before she met him — Montgomery never owned it. Montgomery kept pressuring her to ask her parents for money, which they kept sending—until it totaled more than $130,000. Lewis died suddenly at home in May, 1996, at the age of 43. Montgomery, who was home with her, called an ambulance.

• When Montgomery married Lewis, he had not even filed for divorce from Kathleen Maloney in Massachusetts — which most people would consider bigamy.

• Montgomery met the woman from Pennsylvania online, and had been having an affair with her since May, 1997. She gave him more than $100,000, including the computer, most of which was financed on her credit cards.

• Andersen left Montgomery on February 12, 1999. On February 22, 1999, Montgomery married Kathy Macking in Florida—bigamy again.

• Montgomery's "meeting in New York" to sell the Titanic artifacts was actually a tryst with the woman from Pennsylvania in a hotel outside of Atlantic City. He never went to New York. In fact, the woman flew down to Orlando to stay with Montgomery on February 23, 1999 — the day after he got married to Kathy Macking.

• Montgomery has been sued by American Express and several law firms for nonpayment of bills.

• Although Montgomery claimed to have no money in court documents he filed in the Andersen v. Montgomery divorce, subpoenaed bank records indicated that more than $130,000 went through his three First Union bank accounts between December 1998 and September 1999.

• Montgomery was not an American citizen. Official correspondence seemed to indicate he was working in the country illegally.

• Even though Montgomery gave keynote speeches at Memorial Day parades and spoke to school children about the Vietnam War on Veterans Day, he was never in the military. All of his military documents were forged.

Montgomery briefly participated in the divorce from Andersen. Then he fired his attorney, declared he was representing himself and stopped showing up. In an uncontested hearing, Judge Max A. Baker found Montgomery had committed fraud against Andersen. He ordered Montgomery to pay the $227,000 taken from her, all of the credit card debt and attorney's fees. He also ordered Montgomery to pay $1 million in punitive damages.

With a court order for his bank accounts, Andersen collected a grand total of $517.

Read the court finding of fraud against James Montgomery.

Epilogue