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Fool in love:
Wendy Corley's story
Says she too was conned by Celeste Miranda
By Marisa Hoheb
The last time we looked in on
Celeste Miranda, whom we first got to know as Keli Swenson, she was
in a jail cell in San Diego, facing a raft of federal and state
fraud charges.
In early July the former editor and publisher of Female
Entrepreneur and several other business titles had turned herself in
to authorities in Canada, where she had fled to avoid arrest on a
series of outstanding warrants. She returned to the U.S. in
handcuffs.
Miranda's story, if you believe law enforcement and a slew of
people claiming to be her victims, is of a gifted gab artist who
talks people out of their money on promises she seldom keeps. She's
a con woman.
Miranda's bail is set at $500,000, and she faces a
preliminary hearing on Oct. 19 on 50 counts of grand theft and four
counts of forgery relating to a travel business she ran a few years
ago in which she allegedly stole $4 million.
But as an editor and publisher, Miranda is also accused
of bilking numerous writers, editors and designers out of thousands
of dollars in unpaid fees for work done on various magazine titles
she acquired and then closed. At one point it appears Miranda was
running a half-dozen or so titles.
Many of Miranda's victims got in touch with one another
over time, eventually launching a web site, www.espiritholdingsllc.com.
The site served as a sort of a Celeste
Miranda listening post as police closed
in on her.
But even to her enemies just how Miranda
operated was something of a mystery, no
less so than her whereabouts when she was ducking police.
Now there's a major new turn in the story. In recent weeks a
woman named Wendy Corley has come forward to claim she was Miranda’s
lover of several years and an unwitting witness to some of Miranda's
hi-jinks.
Corley's is an engaging story. She claims that she too was
Miranda's victim, betrayed in love and lied to. At one point, during
a police raid, she tells of the horror of having child welfare
authorities take her child from her.
“I suppose when you care for and love a person
unconditionally as I had, you have blinders on,” writes Corley in
a recent email to Media Life. “She has the ability to turn the
tables on you and make you believe her. I did.”
But the question among Miranda’s victims is just how
credible Corley's story can be. They have their doubts, as do police.
How do you spend three years with another person who is actively
engaged in swindles without catching on?
How naive could one person be?
They believe Corley has come forward claiming ignorance
for fear of being implicated in those schemes and also out of fear
for her young son.
As Corley tells her story, there were warning signs early on in their relationship, which began in early 2002, when
police arrived one day to search their home.
“While we were still in the states, they came to our house
and confiscated materials pertaining to [Miranda's business] Cequis,” she writes.
When Corley asked Miranda why police were after
her, she said she was being framed. Corley says she believed
her.
"It did appear strange, and
I felt they did not have substantiated evidence for the above action
taken, so I let it go."
Cequis International was a vacation home rental company run
by Miranda that closed its doors in 2002 after the Better Business
Bureau of San Diego received more than 70 complaints. Tourists who
paid Miranda to rent vacation homes claimed that when they arrived
they found themselves locked out.
Corley says she and Miranda then left San Diego
for Las Vegas, where Miranda took control of another rental company,
Private Escapes.
“Things went sour there too,” she writes. “I don’t
know what happened specifically, but we left there very abruptly.”
They next moved to Vancouver, arriving in January 2003,
and it was here that Miranda began her career as a magazine
publisher.
“She had no prior experience, but that has
never kept her from doing something she is so passionate about. I
respected that and supported her new venture,” Corley writes. Her
first magazine was Female Entrepreneur. She was forced to later rename
the title after Entrepreneur filed suit.
It was at this point that Celeste
Miranda became Keli Swenson. The reason Miranda
gave for adopting the alias was that she had been told by an
advertiser that the magazine would fail if readers knew she was both
its editor and publisher.
Miranda adopted her name from the very city they
had so hastily departed.
“Swenson came from a street in Las Vegas,” recalls Corley.
“Keli was something she thought of on the spur of the moment.”
Corley became a writer for the magazine, and Miranda
suggested she take an assumed name as well. Corley became Jayden Collier.
Miranda decided to launch another business title,
Vancouver Health & Wealth.
“From there she began calling advertisers from other
publications and pitching the supposedly high circulation of her
magazines,” says Corley.
She eventually befriended one of those
advertisers, and the two immediately became close. And at first the
magazines appeared to be prospering. Miranda and Corley moved into a
new house, and Miranda got a Mercedes.
But something was happening, as Corley soon came to
understand. Miranda began to push Corley away.
“I realized too late that I had lost her to
something I did not understand," Corley claims. She then began
suspecting that Miranda's business practices were not on the up and
up.
“I did confront her weeks before everything exploded,
and she denied doing anything wrong and defended her business ethics as well,” she writes.
Shortly after, Miranda disappeared, Corley presumes with the
other woman, one of her advertisers.
Then one day the Canadian police arrived at Corley's
door. It was a raid. Corley was arrested and cuffed. Her son was
taken by welfare officials.
Miranda surrendered to authorities around this time,
though Corley would not specify whether the raid occurred before or
after.
“They arrested me because of her and also because we
intended to stay in Canada beyond the time we had been granted,”
she says.
Corley was later released, and within two days, her son was
returned. But she says the shock of having her son taken from her
remains with her.
Corley says she has not spoken to Miranda since
her arrest, and she continues to insist she was never privy to her
schemes.
"She led me to believe from the beginning of our
relationship that people were after her, and they wanted to frame
her. I believed her," she writes.
"I am very sorry for all the people she has
hurt. She has done the same to me and my child as well. I was
betrayed and unknowingly participating in a scheme that has become
a nightmare for my child and I. Needless to say, I have been
devastated over all that has occurred."
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Aug. 24, 2004
©
2004
Media Life
- Marisa
Hoheb is a staff writer for Media Life.
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Bad girl
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