She Charmed Her Way Into Malibu Homes and Refused to Leave for Years. California’s Laws Let Her Do It.

For nearly a decade, the affluent beach enclave of Point Dume in Malibu, California was allegedly haunted by the same woman. According to a Vanity Fair investigation and subsequent Fox News reporting, a British actress and screenwriter named Ellie Mae McNulty developed an alleged pattern: charm her way into a homeowner’s trust, move in with a promise to stay “just a few days,” and then exploit California’s tenant-protection laws to remain for months while refusing to pay rent or leave.

Her sister, Mindy Marin, uncovered more than ten documented legal cases involving McNulty stretching back nearly two decades — the most recent cluster concentrated around Point Dume. The alleged victims include a 65-year-old artist battling stage IV cancer, an 80-something Santa Monica widow, and a yoga teacher who never received rent or reimbursement for classes. McNulty is alleged to have used a victim’s credit cards, changed locks while he was hospitalized, caused plumbing damage, and demanded up to $20,000 to vacate. California law — not a criminal statute — was her operating environment. Homeowners had to sue.

The story is now the subject of Episode 2 of Hulu’s new docuseries Squatters: Get the F*** Out of My House, which premiered June 4, 2026. Executive producers Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos brought the case to national television after Ripa read about it in Vanity Fair. McNulty has not been charged with a crime in connection with these allegations; the legal actions against her have been civil.

• 10+ legal cases — documented against Ellie Mae McNulty over nearly two decades, per Mindy Marin's investigation — Source: Fox News / Malibu Patch
• ~1 decade — span of alleged squatting activity concentrated around Point Dume, Malibu — Source: Fox News
• 14+ days — threshold after which California law can treat an unpaying guest as a month-to-month tenant, triggering the full civil eviction process — Source: CA AG
• 3–4 months minimum — typical eviction timeline under California law; police cannot forcibly remove someone deemed a tenant — Source: Good Life Property Management
• $20,000 — alleged demand Ellie Mae McNulty made to vacate Alden Marin's home — Source: Fox News

In the fall of 2021, Alden Marin, 65, a Malibu artist living in the Point Dume area while fighting stage IV cancer, made what he thought was a charitable gesture. He met Ellie Mae McNulty at Point Dume beach. She told him she needed somewhere to stay for a few days while her own home was being finished. He said yes.

Days became weeks. Weeks became months. What followed, according to Fox News and court records, was a campaign of psychological pressure that Marin later described in a request for a restraining order as “psychological terror.” The alleged conduct included unauthorized use of his credit cards, changing the locks on his own home while he was hospitalized, flushing cloth napkins down toilets until the pipes backed up, and a demand of up to $20,000 to leave. Marin eventually suffered a psychiatric emergency. He took legal action; a judge ordered McNulty to vacate in 2022.

Marin’s sister Mindy Marin began digging after the ordeal and found a paper trail stretching back nearly twenty years. She identified more than ten legal cases tied to McNulty, with the most recent concentrated in the Point Dume area. Past alleged victims included a widow in her eighties in Santa Monica and a yoga teacher who McNulty never paid for rent or classes. The pattern was the same each time: gain trust, get inside, weaponize tenant law to stay.

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McNulty’s alleged operating method was not a glitch in California law — it was a feature of it. Under California statute, a person who occupies a room in a house for more than 14 days within a six-month period can be treated as a month-to-month tenant “at will,” even without a lease, even without paying rent. Once that threshold is crossed, the homeowner can no longer call police to remove the occupant. The only remedy is a civil eviction — a process that typically takes three to four months at minimum, and in contested cases can stretch to years.

Police, per Fox News reporting confirmed by the California AG’s own guidance, can only “persuade” someone who claims tenancy to leave. They cannot forcibly remove them without a court order. That order requires serving notice, waiting for a response period, scheduling a hearing, and executing a writ of possession — all while the occupant remains in the home. For a stage IV cancer patient trying to manage his own medical situation, the process was ruinous.

Malibu real estate agent Liz Benichou told Fox News Digital she was baffled that McNulty had operated in the community for so long: “I don’t know how she got away with it for so many years in Malibu,” she said, adding that Malibu residents tend to assume their community is “a very tight-knit, secure community” — which Benichou said made homeowners less guarded, not more protected. California in 2024 enacted Senate Bill 602, which extended the validity of no-trespass letters to one year and allowed property owners to file them electronically — but those reforms apply to properties that are vacant, not to cases where a squatter has already crossed the 14-day threshold inside an occupied home.

“She saw in my brother a kind of perfect storm.”

Mindy Marin — sister of alleged victim Alden Marin · Fox News, 2026

The McNulty case became Episode 2 of Squatters: Get the F*** Out of My House, titled “The Parasite of Malibu.” The six-episode Hulu docuseries — produced by Milojo and ABC News Studios, executive produced by Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos — premiered in full on June 4, 2026, with other episodes covering cases in Queens, Newark, Colorado Springs, Los Angeles, and Jacksonville.

Ripa has said the project grew from a Vanity Fair article she read about the Malibu case during the pandemic. “I was shaking through half of these stories,” she told People magazine, “just like shaking from rage. I’m very much, if something is unjust, it enrages me.” Consuelos has noted that squatters often strip homes of appliances and fixtures before eviction, inflicting financial damage beyond unpaid rent.

The Malibu episode is built around the Marin family’s experience and Mindy Marin’s investigation of McNulty’s long history. It aired nationally at a moment when California property rights are already under scrutiny from multiple directions — wildfire-driven displacement, a housing shortage, and a tenant-protection legal framework that consumer advocates praise and homeowners increasingly describe as weaponizable.

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The legal environment McNulty allegedly exploited is a product of decisions made at the state level in Sacramento, where Democrats have held a supermajority in the California Legislature for more than a decade. Governor Gavin Newsom (D) and a succession of Democratic attorneys general have presided over the tenant-protection framework that critics say makes California uniquely difficult for property owners to remove unauthorized occupants. The relevant statute — the California Tenant Protection Act of 2019, known as AB 1482 — was authored by Assembly Member David Chiu (D-San Francisco) and signed by Governor Newsom.

AB 1482 was designed to protect renters from arbitrary eviction and rent spikes — a legitimate policy goal. But the same protections that shield a paying tenant from a predatory landlord also shield an alleged squatter from a homeowner trying to reclaim their property. The distinction matters: the statute does not require a lease, a rental agreement, or any payment. Presence inside the home for more than 14 consecutive days within a six-month period can be sufficient.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office — led by Nathan Hochman (R) since his January 2025 election, replacing recalled District Attorney George Gascón (D) — did not bring criminal charges against McNulty in connection with the conduct alleged by the Marin family or other Point Dume homeowners. Without a criminal conviction, the accountability ledger for the Malibu cases rests entirely on civil court orders, which Mindy Marin found had been obtained before — and had not stopped the pattern.

Mindy Marin found court orders against McNulty going back nearly two decades. A judge ordered McNulty out of her brother’s home in 2022. None of those civil orders appear to have interrupted the alleged pattern — they documented each episode and provided each individual victim with relief, but did not produce a criminal record, a probation condition, or any mechanism to flag McNulty before a future victim opened their door to her.

That is the structural problem the Malibu case illustrates. California law routes squatting disputes through civil court, not criminal court. A civil judgment removes the occupant from one address. It does not create a public criminal record, trigger any notification system, or restrict the subject from doing the same thing again. The alleged victim goes back to their home; the alleged squatter goes looking for the next one.

The docuseries does not resolve this. It documents it. McNulty has not been charged with any crime in connection with the conduct featured in the show, and the presumption of innocence applies to any unresolved civil or potential criminal matter. What the record does show — across ten-plus documented legal cases — is a pattern that California’s existing framework had no mechanism to interrupt.

Alden Marin, a 65-year-old cancer patient, was allegedly locked out of his own home while hospitalized, had his credit cards used without authorization, and eventually required psychiatric treatment before a judge ordered McNulty to leave in 2022. The cost to him — financial, medical, psychological — is undisclosed but documented in his restraining order filings. His sister spent months building a case file that revealed more than a decade of similar alleged conduct by the same person.

The cost to the California homeowner who fights a squatter through the civil system is not only the legal fees and months of displacement. It is the knowledge that the same tenant-protection laws designed to prevent unjust eviction apply equally to someone who never paid rent, never signed a lease, and allegedly chose the home specifically because their host was vulnerable. That is the frame the Malibu case puts around Sacramento’s tenant-protection architecture: a policy designed for one population that, without structural safeguards, can be systematically abused by another.

We will update this page if criminal charges are filed in connection with the conduct alleged in the Fox News reporting or the Hulu docuseries.

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