Fort Wayne's Famous...

Several years ago, on a flight from Chicago to Fort Wayne, I happened to sit next to a buxom blonde woman who, like me, was a native of the Summit City. After discovering that we both lived in Los Angeles (I was a student at USC), and I asked her what she did for a living.

"I'm an adult film star," she replied matter-of-factly.

And she wasn't kidding. She quickly reeled off her porn star credentials: she had dated both Matt Dillon and Charlie Sheen.  Then she handed me a business card. It didn't have "porn star" written on it, but it did feature a half naked picture of her.

She told me her stage name (Farrah) as well as her real name. It turns out I had met her mother several years earlier. We also talked about how we felt about Fort Wayne and where we went to high school (she graduated from Wayne).

As we landed at Fort Wayne International, she wrote her cell phone number on the back of her card (I didn't ask for it) and invited me to see one of her shows at a local strip club where she was dancing while she was home. (I decided not to go, for a lot of reasons, one of them being that I was only 19 at the time.)

We exited the plane and I bid my traveling companion adieu, and that was that. Oh sure, I told the story of my plane ride with a porn star to my friends (along with the tale about the time I met one of Hugh Hefner's seven girlfriends waiting to check-in on a subsequent flight), but I never called my old friend Farrah.

After all, what was I going to say?

Then, last year, I stumbled upon the following story:

The former porn star known as Farrah was busted at a Washington Mutual branch in Emerson, N.J., after allegedly scamming $40,000 from six other New Jersey banks, according to news reports.

Joy Marquart gave a teller a driver's license with the name Olga Mendoza on it but the teller realized the license was a fake and contacted local police, the reports said.

Marquart had allegedly pulled off the identity-theft scams at banks in Emerson, Fair Lawn, Hackensack, Oradell, Ridgewood and Westwood, N.J., in recent months, Emerson Police Detective Sgt. George Buono was quoted as saying by the New York Post.

She walked away with $6,000 to $7,500 each time, he told the newspaper.

Dressed in a black pinstripe business suit and heels, Marquart allegedly used the identification, account numbers and forged IDs of real customers, according to the reports.

Marquart would either ask to cash a phony check or make a withdrawal and then talk on her cell phone during the transaction to prevent tellers from asking too many questions, the reports said.

A report from NorthJersey.com had more on her history in adult entertainment:

The arrest marked a bizarre turn for a porn actress who required only single-name billing in direct-to-video titles such as "Farrah's Deceptive Desires," and "Farrah's All-Girl Adventure 2."

Adult movie producer Kevin Beechum called Marquart a blue-chip performer who had an avid following in the late 1990s.

"She was a known girl at the time," said Beechum, who owns and operates K-Beech Video, a Chatsworth, Calif.-based company that produced many of the 50 or so films that he said she appeared in.

Marquart also worked for Vivid Entertainment in 1998, said Shylar Cobi, a production manager with the adult movie giant.

Vivid later acquired and released some of Marquart's films under its own label, with Marquart appearing in the cover photos.

"She was hot. Great tan," Cobi said. "And she was friendly - not mean, like some of the other girls I work with."

Her mother, XXXXXX XXXXXX, described Marquart as a Midwest girl whose good looks have been a double-edged sword.

Reached at her home in Fort Wayne, Ind., XXXXXX said her daughter wanted to be a clothing designer with her own boutique. Marquart left Fort Wayne 10 years ago and got into stripping in Florida, she said.

Eventually, she landed in the San Fernando Valley, the cradle of the adult-film business.

Marquart moved to the Bronx a few months ago to see friends and look for work, her mother said.

"She's always kind of depended on her looks to get her where she wanted to be," XXXXXX said. "There were plenty of people who preyed on that."