Admittedly, I have a certain sympathy for fraud if it's done elaborately well and feeds on the low to
very low instincts of the right people.
...
Which case in Michigan?
Not a fraud case, but the same outrageous defense.
Abigail Simon, Catholic school tutor in Grand Rapids, Michigan, caught having an affair with a high school sophomore about 10 years ago. She was charged with criminal sexual conduct and offered a plea deal that would have given her a year in prison and put her on the Michigan sex offender list. She rejected it and went to trial.
Her defense was that she was totally under his control, terrified of him, and unable to do anything about it for fear of her safety. This, despite a monumental amount of evidence that she initiated it and appeared to be blissfully happy. On the stand, she whined, cried and made such a scene that she was admonished by the judge. She was found guilty and sentenced to 8 to 25 years. She was paroled late last year.
She was the subject of the NBC Dateline episode called Dangerous Liaisons, you can probably find it online. As I recall, Dateline made no mention of the fact that the victim was black (she's white), which to me added a worse aspect to her ridiculous defense.