Dana Lawrence, 43, of 17.5 Jefferson St., Nashua.

NEW YORK – The bizarre case of Dana Lawrence, the woman accused of conning hundreds of thousands of dollars from people in 16 states using 15 different aliases before an FBI agent from Nashua nabbed her as she posed as a City Hall grant writer, is the subject of a CBS documentary to air tonight at 10 p.m.

A CBS News spokesman said Monday via email that the one hour program, “The FBI Declassified: The Swindling Seductress,” tells the story of how FBI Special Agent Mark Hastbacka, a former Nashua police officer, picked up Lawrence’s trail and began his “quest to outsmart the mysterious grifter.”

In addition to convincing Nashua city officials she was Genevieve Kaplan, a Harvard graduate and a highly successful grant writer, and conning them into allowing her to volunteer as a grant writer in City Hall, Lawrence hit the end of the road when officials, growing suspicious of her behavior, notified police, who launched an investigation that led to her arrest in May 2017.

She was living on Jefferson Street in Nashua’s French Hill neighborhood when police took her into custody on May 11. She was 43 at the time.

In retaliation, Lawrence made personal accusations against some staff members, then demanded $5 million for being subjected to emotional distress and having her character defamed, according to Telegraph stories at the time.

The Nashua case, however, lacked the drama of many of Lawrence’s scams, such as when she posed as an heir to the Estee Lauder cosmetics fortune, and passed herself off as working for Hollywood filmmaker George Lucas.

“This is a story of a woman and her manipulations and cons over the last 20, 25 years,” Hastbacka says. “We have the identity theft. The credit card theft. … fugitive from justice. She’s forging checks … straight up larceny, taking the rent money.”

“The Swindling Seductress,” according to the CBS spokesman, “takes viewers inside Hastbacka’s months-long investigation: how he located multiple victims, followed a complex paper trail and how he enlisted one of Lawrence’s daughters to help unravel the scams.”

The program is narrated by Alana De La Garza, host of the CBS drama series “FBI.”

Dean Shalhoup may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.

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