“But what am I going to wear in jail?” The question fell from her lips as naturally as she adjusted a stiletto heel. DEA agents looked at her and smiled. Behind her, on the tarmac at the Columbus, Ohio airport, 13 luxury suitcases sat open under the glare of police cruiser lights. Inside were more than 225 kilograms of marijuana, pressed into bricks and wrapped in plastic.
It was June 14, 2010. Lisette Lee had just stepped off a private Gulfstream jet wearing Chanel shoes, false eyelashes, and lavender eyeshadow. Following her were two personal assistants and a bodyguard standing over two meters tall and weighing nearly 140 kilograms. When federal agents surrounded her with guns drawn, she opened the door of her Escalade and shouted, “What is going on here? I’m a model.” No one believed her. Yet the extraordinary thing is that, for four years, almost everyone *had* believed it.
Lisette Lee arrived in Los Angeles from South Korea as a teenager. In the United States, she crafted a complete identity with the precision of a Hollywood script. She presented herself as an heiress to the Samsung empire, a model who had appeared in the pages of *Vogue*, a Harvard graduate, and an alumna of Buckley—the private Los Angeles school where, she claimed, she had tormented Paris Hilton to the point of tears. She asserted that she had been romantically involved with Channing Tatum, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Cristiano Ronaldo. She also claimed her family had founded Sony and amassed a fortune in casinos.
