Melanie Mills, a.k.a.Elisabeth von Hullessem, a.k.a. Lisa Hackney
In late 2000, Writer Beware began to receive reports of a new literary agency: M.W. Mills Literary Agent, of Myrtle Beach, SC, run by a woman named Melanie Mills. The agency charged a $350 upfront fee, and required clients to provide their own query letters (a marker for an unprofessional agent). Later, it implemented a paid editing scheme, whereby Mills’s own editing services were offered to clients based on a false promise of publisher interest. Editing costs ranged from $800 to more than $1,500.
In 2003, Mills announced a writers’ conference to be held over Memorial Day weekend in Myrtle Beach (Writer Beware staff was not only invited, but offered an honorarium of $1,000 apiece–we found this pretty amusing, given that Mills was well aware that we were watching her, and had several times written us angry letters denouncing our warnings). In early May, the conference was abruptly canceled with no reason given. A reschedule date was promised, but never provided. Then, in June, clients of M.W. Mills were shocked and grieved to learn that their agent had been killed in a car crash in Germany. The agency was closed down; clients were released from all obligations.
Writer Beware was skeptical. There’d been signs that the agency was in trouble, and this wouldn’t be the first time a questionable agent had attempted to duck financial obligations and angry clients by faking her own death. Mills’s con games hadn’t been limited to literary scamming, either. According to the North Myrtle Beach Police Department, which we contacted on a tip from an victim, she’d also been involved in eBay auction scams and real estate rental scams.
In August 2003, we began to receive reports of a writers’ conference scam in Banff, Alberta. The conference’s organizer, Elisabeth von Hullessem, had announced a lavish event, accepted money from would-be participants, then canceled the conference and absconded with the proceeds. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police caught up with her in British Columbia on Oct. 30, arresting her on seven counts of fraud, two counts of false pretenses, and one count of theft. She was hauled back to Alberta to stand trial.
When news of the Banff scam first broke, Writer Beware was struck by the similarities to Melanie Mills’s fake writers’ conference in North Carolina, and also by the similar writing styles of the solicitation letters sent out by “Elisabeth von Hullessem” and correspondence we’d seen from “Melanie Mills”. Once Hullessem was arrested, we contacted the RCMP to inform them of our suspicions that Hullessem and Mills were the same person. They were already investigating the South Carolina connection, but we were able to fill them in on Mills’s activities there and also to put them in touch with the North Myrtle Beach police detective in charge of Mills’s case. In return, they told us that Mills’s/Hullessem’s real name was Lisa Hackney, and that she was wanted in Arkansas on six charges filed in 1999–including battery in the first degree, aggravated assault (Hackney allegedly attempted to murder her mother by running her over with a car), theft, possession of stolen property, passing bad checks, forgery, and failure to attend court (she spent 28 days in jail and then jumped bail, relocating first to Missouri and then to South Carolina, where she began her career as a literary scammer).
Lisa Hackney was able to broker a plea bargain in answering the charges in Canada, and was sentenced to time served (less than a month in custody awaiting her hearing) in exchange for a plea of guilty. She promptly went to ground, and–except for a bizarre posting on eBay, in which she attempted to auction off a copy of her vanity-published, semi-autobiographical novel Sins, plus “lunch with a fugitive author” for $10,000–appeared to have vanished for good.
But the saga continued. On March 23, 2004, Hackney was arrested in Victoria, British Columbia on an outstanding Canada-wide warrant of extradition. The arrest was accomplished by the Victoria Police Strike Force with the assistance of the RCMP Major Crime Unit, on a tip from a pair of Victoria realtors. Apparently Hackney had contacted the realtors, claiming to be best-selling author “Melanie Mills”, in town to purchase a multi-million-dollar estate. The realtors agreed to work with her, but were suspicious enough to do an Internet search, which turned up the Writer Beware website, among others.
While being held in jail, Hackney made an apparent suicide attempt, and subsequently claimed amnesia. A brief psychiatric assessment was ordered, and the extradition hearing was held over until April 1. On that date, with Hackney still claiming not to know where or who she was, the judge ordered a full-scale psychiatric evaluation, which concluded that her amnesia wasn’t genuine. On April 23 she appeared again, and a bail hearing was set for the following week.
On January 7, 2005, a Supreme Court judge in British Columbia ruled that Hackney should be extradited to Arkansas to stand trial on the charges she fled in 1999. Hackney fought extradition, but the following December she was delivered by US marshals to Arkansas and transported to Fayetteville, where she was officially booked into the Washington County Jail on Dec. 22, 2005, her 51st birthday.
On February 10, 2006, she pleaded guilty to all six charges, and was sentenced to two prison terms in the Arkansas Department of Correction, one of 15 years and one of 10 years, to run concurrently. All but 23 months of the 15-year sentence was suspended, and all but 22 months of the 10-year sentence was suspended, and she was credited with the 23 months she served in Canadian jails awaiting extradition. She was deported back to Canada, where she holds citizenship–but there was nothing barring her from returning to the USA, which she quickly did.
She’s now living on the West Coast and calling herself Roswitha Elisabeth Melanie (Remi) Mills-Hackney, and trying to market her memoirs. Scammers don’t generally change their stripes; we expect we’ll be hearing from her again.
