$100K Scam Story: How to Spot Con Artists with Johnathan Walton's Red Flags

24:48And it was amazing. It was an out-of-body experience. The TV anchors clapped and I was amazing. I walked back into the newsroom, all the anchors and reporters and my boss, Alan Little, God rest his soul, the news director, standing ovation, standing ovation. It was an out-of-body experience for me. I was the man. I felt king of the world, right? 60 seconds later, I go over to my desk and I get my first voicemail from a viewer. And it's this angry Texas woman cursing. Like, can I curse on your show? I don't know. I want to adequately express what I'm saying. You're welcome. I'll never - Please curse.

25:26These words have rung in my head for decades. she said you ball-headed motherfucking faggot you so fucking ugly how the hell you get on tv you ball-headed motherfucking faggot and i was devastated because a i had just come from a standing ovation for my marvelous piece and now i'm like too ugly to be on tv and b i wasn't even out yet and she's calling me a faggot like I was just crippled, crippled. I went to bed that night coiled in the fetal position, crying, wondering what have I done? I got to quit. I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this. But then as the weeks passed and I started getting into my groove, I quickly learned I can't look for people's opinions about me or what I do because I'll never get anything done.

26:18I have to turn a story a day, a feature story every day. It's like making a little movie every day, and I don't have time to be asking people, what do you think? What do you think? Let me please you. Let me please you. Let me please you. No, I got to please me, and I got to ignore what everyone says. So I was fortunate that from my early 20s, I learned that lesson. I don't care what anyone thinks. I can't. It'll destroy me. And that just multiplied when I came out at 30 years old. Any openly gay person has to resign themselves to accepting, not everyone's cool with this. Your family might disown you.

26:51People are not going to like it, but you know what? Fuck them. I got to do what I got to do. I only care about what I care about. I can't care what you think. So those two events in my life uniquely prepared me. After I got conned and I went to police, it never, and I'm not lying, it never occurred to me to even fathom what are people going to think? Didn't even occur to me. Didn't even occur to me. But yet, 99 % of every victim I speak to, that's the first concern. What are people going to think? But again, I think I was uniquely poised to bring this woman to justice because after she conned me, I went to police and they laughed.

27:33They thought I was making it up. They turned me away. But let me ask first though, how did she get up to the, and again, a lot of these stories you describe in the book and in a very riveting way. And there's so many details that we're obviously going to leave out, but how did she get you up to the hundred thousand point? That's like a lot of money. A little by little. Death by a thousand cuts, right? Little by little. So she concocts the story. Well, brilliantly, and this is a technique a lot of con artists use. I call it in the book, it's the red flag of beak wetting. They let you wet your beak.

28:05A lot of investment scams, a lot of romance scams. My scam, the inheritance scam, I loan her$5 ,000. She gets arrested and I bail her out of jail,$5 ,000,$4 ,800 something,$5 ,000. And she pays me back the next day. I come to find out it was another victim whose money she scammed to pay me back. But anyway, I got the money back the next day. So that gave me confidence, Con Artist is short for confidence artist, if you didn't know, that gave me confidence to loan her more money because I thought to myself, oh, this is a woman of her word. I extend myself five grand. I get it back the next day. I can trust her.

28:44You know, I have confidence in her. And then after that, she concocts story after story after story in a way that no AI could. First, the family, you know, pays off a dirty LADA to freeze her bank accounts. And then she needs to borrow money to live on. So I start paying her rent, you know,$4 ,000. I start loaning her money to live on. I get up to$20 ,000,$25 ,000. And then she says, well, this case against me that my family made up, my lawyer, you know, is going to make it go away. They're winning. And she shows me in the email from the lawyer. Again, it wasn't from the lawyer. It was a fake email account she created in the name of a lawyer to show me that email.

29:26But I believed it because I was naive. I didn't know. and there's also a level of sunk cost fallacy at work. If you're familiar with that, a lot of gamblers have it. A lot of people who start watching a movie on Netflix have it. You're 20 minutes into this horrendous movie. Why do you keep watching? Well, I'm this far in. I want to see how it ends. I might as well finish. I'm this far in. So that whole idea of I'm this far in. So I start loaning her more and more money, you know, to clear her name. And, you know, eventually it adds up to close to$100 ,000. And that's when I discover the first lie.

30:01In the four years that I'd known her, I'd never caught her in a lie because I'd never tried, because I just believed she was who she said she was. But then I caught her in the first lie. The first lie was, so after she won the case against her, the judge is angry at her that I let her charge my credit cards to pay her court fees, and that's money laundering, the judge said. He's slapping her on the wrist. You know, slap on the wrist, 30-day sentence. She goes to jail for 30 days. And then she gets out, gets her inheritance. You know, we all live happily ever after. Well, she goes to jail for 30 days.

30:33I believe this whole story. She's calling me from jail every day. About two weeks in, I want to come visit her in jail. She's like a sister to me. Of course I'm going to visit her in jail. She says, no, no, no. I don't want you to see me like this. No. But I ignore her because this is like my family in jail. I'm going to go. So I don't know if you've ever visited anyone in jail. But in LA County, it was an experience. You got to go to the website. You got to create like a Facebook type profile. You got to upload your ID, upload all your personal info. Then you got to click on the inmate you want to visit.

31:04And when you click on the inmate you want to visit, that's when the crimes come up. So I click on her name and then I see what she's in jail for. It's not money laundering. It's not a slap on the wrist. No, no, no. She was in jail for pleading guilty to stealing$200 ,000 from her employer. She pled guilty. So this whole cock and ball story about, you know, this case is going away. Her family made the case up. No, they didn't. She pled guilty. So that was the first lie I caught her in. And then I started, I confronted her. I recorded it. I put it on my podcast, Queen of the Con, The Confrontation.

31:42She just denies it. That's not true, Jonathan. That's not true. And then tears are in her eyes as she's denying it. But at that point, I knew those tears were fake. Like, this is all an act you're doing, lady. That's not true, Jonathan. That's not true. oh, I wanted to kill her. I wanted to punch her in the face. I was so angry. I can't even, you know, I'm a vegetarian, right? I'm a live and let live kind of guy. I always have been. But in the wake of getting conned by this woman who was like my sister, someone who I would swear for, someone who I thought I knew for four years, I was a shell. I was not myself.

32:16I had these murder fantasies all of a sudden. I had fantasies of murdering her. And did it start then with the first lie or like at that point, you know, the jig was up or? Well, yeah. So the first lie, you know, it's like that famous saying, lies are like rats. When you spot one, it means there are a thousand others hiding. And boy, there were a thousand others hiding. I did a background check on her. I found out she was charged with fraud and grand theft and passing bad checks in multiple states. You know, I confronted her. She denied it. I went to police. They initially turned me away, but then I started my own investigation.

32:52I started a blog and I started very quickly uncovering dozens and dozens of other victims in LA, in Florida, in Maine, in Tennessee, in Michigan, in New York. Like she's been scamming since she was a child. One of her early cons was when she was in high school. I heard from her high school boyfriend eventually. He was in college at the time. She was in high school. She would pretend to be pregnant. She would date college guys, have one-night stands, say that she was pregnant, and then shake them down for abortion money. And they all paid, no questions asked. Brilliant con from the mind of a teenage girl, right?

33:33And certainly not going to the police. No, they're not going to, they're just thankful she came to them and they don't want to have a baby. You know, they're in college, they have plans. So they paid her all to go away. So this is the woman I'm dealing with. I had no idea. So eventually, I built a really compelling case that police couldn't ignore. And I got her arrested and charged and eventually a trial and got her convicted. Jurors deliberated three hours. And she got sentenced to five years in jail. Wow, five years. Yeah, the max. And so now she's out though, right? Oh, the plot thickens. So she gets out early because of COVID, But part of what the blog uncovered, remember all the rats?

34:18I got a call from a police detective in Northern Ireland. He had been looking for her for 10 years. So she wasn't from Ireland, but she had moved there in 2000 and lived there for eight or nine years and married a local Northern Ireland guy and scammed a couple dozen people at a half a million dollars and disappeared. And this guy, this detective had been looking for her for 10 years. So back in 2017, when he's on the phone with me telling me all this, he tells me, I'm going to start extradition proceedings. Now, that seemed like impossible. Like extraditing an American citizen to another country is so hard to do.

34:55It's nearly impossible. So as the years pass, my con artist gets released from jail. I start the podcast, Queen of the Con. I start hearing from other victims of her. I know exactly where she's in. She moves to Maine out of jail in LA. She moves to Maine, the furthest you can get from me in California and still be in the contiguous United States. And she starts up new scams in Maine. She's raising money to run rescue missions in the Ukraine. And then she starts this satanic church. I kid you not. She changes her name to Lucia Belaya and she starts scamming Satanists. These Satanists start calling me for help and advice.

35:35Help. She infiltrated our group. what can we do? So I start working, you know, this goes back to the phrase, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I start working with devil worshipers to take this woman down, you know? And I do believe the satanic church thing, that was the straw that broke the camel's back in Northern Ireland because Northern Ireland is a deeply religious, deeply Christian country. and over the seven years, I've been feeding all her new whereabouts to the police in Northern Ireland. She was living out of Airbnbs. She was smart not to get a permanent address. She just kept moving.

36:17Every month or two, she's at a new Airbnb. And the podcast took off, so I know exactly where she is. Victims are telling me, she's at this Airbnb now. I just saw her there. She's my new neighbor now. Here's her address. So I send, once I send this, I have this video and it's on my website. a short clip of it, her satanic ceremony where she's wearing like this black robe and she's wielding a giant silver knife and the candlelight flickers on the knife. And she says, oh, father Satan, I summon you. Like when I sent that to Northern Ireland, like, hey, this is what she's doing now. Three months later, five US marshals show up at her door, at her Airbnb, the address that I sent to Northern Ireland.

37:00And they arrested her. This was back in February, 2024. and they extradited her to Northern Ireland. Right now, she is sitting in a jail cell in Northern Ireland. She's been sitting there for more than a year awaiting trial. The date keeps getting pushed and pushed and pushed. She's in jail. I'm hearing from parents of inmates in that same jail. She's still scamming people in jail. She's telling people her name is Maxine and she's in there because her IRA husband committed a murder and put it on her. Like she's still, these people will always scam. It doesn't matter how much you catch them. You give them people who don't know who they are, they're going to start telling stories.

37:35And what's her goal in telling these new stories? Well, con artists are all psychopaths. They don't operate like regular people. They have no feeling. They get off on inventing stories. They're always directing a movie and we're all taking part unwittingly. And they love that. They love creating worlds that do not exist. It brings them pleasure. They're not regular people. They're psychopaths. You know, and I say this in the book, criminals are criminals, right? You look at a mob boss who's ordered the hits of hundreds of people, has blood on his hands. But even a mob boss loves his family, loves his children, loves his parents, his brothers, his cousins.

38:17Con artists, mine included, they don't love anyone. They will scam anyone, their children, their parents, their brothers, their sisters, their cousins. Again and again and again, these are the cases I investigate. This con artist, they scam everyone. I don't consider them human beings as we understand human beings to be. They're psychopaths. And I used to take it so personal that she scammed me. But now I realize it wasn't personal at all. I was just next in her path. It's like a shark moving through the ocean. If you're in the path, you're going to get bit. Why do you think she targeted you? And I want to get into the actual anatomy.

38:52And you mentioned a couple of kind of red flags. but why do you think she targeted you for this scam? So she got$100 ,000 out of you, but she first saw you because you were putting up flyers around the building. Like, you think she did further research? It's like, oh, he's a TV producer in Hollywood. He must have some money or whatever. Looking back, and again, I didn't realize this until after writing the book. And recently, I didn't realize what I'm about to tell you, but now I realize it. So we lost the pool in our building. I took it upon myself to galvanize our residents and organize this effort to get the pool back.

39:29I was the do-gooder. Now that I know everything about her, she must have looked at that flyer I posted all over the building, and that told her all she needed to know to create the perfect con just for me. She must have read that flyer and thought to herself, huh, this guy's a do-gooder. I'm going to get him to do good for me because that's exactly what she freaking did. I was trying to do good for her. She was a damsel in distress. I was trying to rescue. And she came up with a unique con for every victim. She impersonated a psychologist. She had patients. She had people paying her for therapy.

40:07And she was scamming all of them. And none of them want to go to police. It's the most infuriating few conversations I've had with these people. I'm begging and pleading. Let me help you file a police report. Let me help. They don't want to because she knows their deep, dark secrets. One of the red flags I write about TMI. But she told people she was a child custody investigator for the courts. She told people she was a lawyer. She masqueraded as the manager of a hockey team. She had so many different personas that she used to scam disparate victims. You know, and she had all these, this is all while I knew her.

40:39I had no idea she has all these other personas scamming all these other people. I just knew her as this heiress in trouble that I'm helping, you know? But this was her full-time job, scamming people. That's so incredible. So your book is structured as a set of red flags and you tell different stories of different, some very high profile cons and scams in every red flag. But let me ask you, like the first red flag is be helpful. Then it's too kind, too quickly, too much information. You mentioned the fourth one, but there was technology and - Drama, drama, drama. They isolate you. They convince you they're better than you.

41:14There's an element of scarcity where you got to act fast. Right, and so - You want a bank wire. But like the, I want to help you and the too kind, too quick, the too much information, these things, a lot of, like, for instance, you're a helpful person. You helped the 444 residents of your building without even knowing them. You're going to be helpful. You obviously, you know, it's what made you impervious to going to the police. You're fine with sharing too much information. Like good people also have some of these qualities. I agree. And I say this again and again in the book, one or two of these red flags does not necessarily mean you're dealing with a con artist, but as they start to compound, if you notice three of them or four of them, another red flag my con artist and every con artist use, I call it the stories from far away places flag.

42:00Con artists like to snow you with stories from far away places because those stories are impressive and they're hard to confirm. And human nature being what it is, if you can't prove something is false, you're that much more likely to accept it as true. My con artist said she was on the Olympic team in Maine and her parents stymied her. She had stories from Ireland. You know, a lot of con artists like to tell stories from faraway places because you can't prove that they happened. You can't prove they didn't happen. So you'll just accept it. That's really fascinating. Do you think they instinctively know this or it's something they've learned?

42:36Oh, yeah. No, both. They, you know, most con artists have been doing it since they were children. I heard from a childhood friend of my con artist They were 10, 11 years old together, and she would trick this little girl. She's a 10-year-old girl. She's tricking another 10-year-old girl into going in a stranger's house, telling her it's her house. But it wasn't her house. Why would she do that? Because even back then, these effing people are psychopaths, and they enjoy their power over people. Even as children, they get off on it, and they get better and better and better. Every time they get caught, they get better.

43:10Every time they get caught, they're not going to do that again. They get better. So by the time I met Mayor Smith in her 40s, she was at the pinnacle. She could just lay it all out. And I drank it all up. You know, I believed it. I was naive. When someone tells you I'm from Ireland, you just believe it. Who's going to lie about where they're from? A professional con artist. That's who. What was the point where she all of a sudden realized you were too good? You had too much knowledge now. You knew what was going on. Well, after the confrontation, she denied it. And then I never saw her again. The next time I saw her was in criminal court, you know, testifying in court against her.

43:47And then what happened was, I feel like I got drafted into this con hunting thing because my story exploded. There was an article in the New York Times about me, the New York Times, like my story, you know. So all of a sudden, hundreds and hundreds of other victims of other con artists start reaching out to me to tell me that I've inspired them, to tell me they want to get their con artist can I help them? So not knowing any better, I just start helping them and investigating these cases. And some people play golf on the weekends. I hunt con artists. So it was in doing that over the past eight years, it suddenly hit me one day.

44:29I was like, wait a minute. All of these techniques that all these different con artists are using on their victims are identical to the techniques my con artists used on me. Identical. They offer to help you. They're too kind, too quick. The drama, the isolation, the beak wedding. Identical. And at that point, I had read a dozen books about con artists. Not one of them made this realization, you know? So I wrote an article about it. And that article eventually got published by the HuffPost. And I got contacted by a lit agent, a big time lit agent, gentle and free. God bless her, love her. And she said, hey, this would make a great book.

45:11I can sell this if you think you can write it. And I'm like, well, if you can sell it, I can write it. And by God, she sold it pretty quickly. It took me like almost three years to write it. And here it is, Anatomy of a Con Artist. And it's not just my case, as you pointed out, it's interspersed with other cases I've investigated, either of victims who've contacted me or cases I've done on the podcast, Queen of the Con. Crazy cases, but the underlying theme is the red flags are the same. They're not inventing anything new. It's the same old trick again and again and again. It's interesting because I really love reading stuff, this kind of stuff in particular, because I feel I get fooled quite a bit to the point when, let's say I'm going to visit a company that's seeking investment, and I know I don't want to invest in it.

45:59I also know they're going to convince me no matter what I'm thinking now. So I usually bring someone with me and I say, remind me after the meeting not to invest in this. Because often scammers find themselves raising money for companies. Absolutely. You got to go where the money is. I mean, that was several of the stories in your book. It's from people raising money for their companies or investment opportunities. I mean, Wall Street is filled with this kind of stuff.

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48:17What's the worst outcome you've personally seen or encountered from someone who was scammed? Well, I write about this in the book, this case, in the chapter of Beak Wedding, because this is a great example of Beak Wedding. And I have to be careful because the people involved do not want to go public because the people involved are my family. Without being specific, I will just say that my entire family, cumulatively, lost millions and millions of dollars to a con artist named David Smith. My family is from Jamaica. That's a whole other story. So this happened in Jamaica. You look very Jamaican.

48:55I do. I get that a lot. Below the waist, trust me. So David Smith was this foreign exchange whiz. He was like a Bernie Madoff, but this was before Bernie Madoff. So no one had a frame of reference. And he was offering 10 % per month on people's investments. And how he pulled it off was beak wedding. He claimed the first few hundred investors, and technology. He'd create a banking type of website you could log into his company and see your account. But obviously, it's all fake. But it feels real because you're logging in. There's your money. It's growing 10 % every month. You want to take out a couple thousand dollars?

49:37He'd give it to you. He'd let you wet your beak because he knew human nature is a hell of a thing. Again, con artists don't outsmart you, con artists outfeel you. And greed is a hell of a powerful feeling. So he knew that these people, they don't want to take the money out because the more money they take out, the less interest they're earning. They're earning compound interest of 120 % a year. So word spreads quickly and everyone starts investing. And it's easy to doubt David Smith, right? It's easy to be suspicious of David Smith. But when your brother, when your father, when your cousin tells you, hey, I'm making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on this investment, come on, don't be an idiot, get in on it.

50:29You're going to get in on it because now you're not just taking David Smith's word, you're taking the word of your family and friends. But ultimately, it was a Ponzi scheme. It was a Ponzi scheme before, you know, the Ponzi scheme of all Ponzi schemes. So no one had a frame of reference. This was years before Bernie Madoff. My whole family invested heavily in David Smith. And in one fell swoop, they lost millions of dollars. So did 2 ,000 other people. And I guess there wasn't enough money to pay people back after he was caught because he would use money from one to pay off another to keep the Ponzi scheme going.

51:04Exactly. What he did, and I lay this out in the book to explain how this works, he attended, he paid$4 ,000 and got certified in foreign exchange trading. He never made a dollar foreign exchange trading, but he knew the lingo. He knew the banks to use. He knew the paperwork to file. So he knew how to look like a foreign exchange trader. He just didn't know how to make money foreign exchange trading. And he never foreign exchange traded. He just, yeah, it was a Ponzi scheme. He robbed Peter to pay Paul. And he kept that going for a while, for years. For years. scammed 2 ,000 people. He never tried.

51:35Like, I always wonder about Madoff. I always think maybe in the very beginning, he tried to be legit. He turned out to be a bad trader and he was so ashamed of that, it turned into a Ponzi scheme. This is just my private theory. Right, I think that's your desire to see the best in people at play. But from what I know about the Bernie Madoff case, I think from the get, he knew exactly what he was doing. And he employed all the tricks. Whenever people would doubt him, He'd threaten to kick them out. Oh, you want paperwork? You don't believe? Well, go invest your money. Take your money. You try to give them their money back.

52:10And again, classic human nature. You try to tell someone, get out. They want to stay. No, no, no. It's okay. Don't look at me. You want to look at them. Don't look over there. You want to look over there. Bernie Madoff was a genius. And the other brilliant thing about his con was his returns weren't that huge. So they kind of snuck in under the radar. He was just on paper, like, what is it? 10, 12 % a year? Not huge. You know what was odd with him? It's interesting. From a Wall Street perspective, it was not the size of the returns. It was the consistency. That was the Wall Street equivalent of 10 % a month.

52:48Doing 1 % a month consistently is almost more unbelievable than 10 % a month if it's a little more volatile. And that's another paradox, right? Because that alone should be a red flag. And yet, it makes people feel confident. He can ride above all the fluctuations. He knows what he's doing. No, it's interesting because now it's making me think of a variety of things. One time, I ran what's called a fund of hedge funds. I was investing in other hedge funds. And there was one fund that was up also, a consistent 1 % a month. And that guy ended up paying a$100 million fine. And he didn't go to jail, but he ended up being guilty of something and paying this enormous fine.

53:26But he avoided jail. He knew he was probably going to get away with this if he somehow just accumulated enough money, which unfortunately is the case, actually, in a lot of other cases. Oh, I know. And that's one of the reasons I wrote the book. I'm hoping to shine a light on these effing people, and I'm hoping that laws become more stringent because right now, the message in between the lines is, lie, cheat, and steal, scam people, and you might serve a couple months in jail. You'll probably get no jail time at all if you have no priors. So go for it. That's the message. There's also, particularly in our society, there's a lot of people who've generated wealth without any actual knowledge of money.

54:05So for instance, sports figures and entertainers and so on, their business was playing football, not knowing anything about money. Then suddenly they get paid 30,$40 million. Do you think a lot of these people get scammed? You mentioned some high profile cases, which is why I bring it up. Absolutely. And I think those are not getting reported at all. There's a wonderful movie I highly recommend. It's riveting. It's on Apple. It's called Sharper. and it's about, I believe it's based on a series of real stories, but it's not, no one's going to say that anywhere, because it involves billionaires, right?

54:38It's an elaborate con of a billionaire. The son of the billionaire gets justice. He doesn't go to police. Billionaires don't go to police. When a billionaire gets conned, they're not going to tell anyone, because they could lose a fortune. If suddenly the CEO of this company or that company admits they fell for a$100 million con, suddenly they may not be the CEO anymore and they get fired. So there is this intense secrecy at that level. And I believe that that movie Sharper on Apple kind of exposes what that world is like. And these sophisticated teams of con people who get in there and you think you're reporting them to the police, but the police is another con man.

55:18It's a team of con people working in unison to scam these wealthy, wealthy people. So I don't have any evidence personally, because I don't run in those circles. But if you extrapolate, what happens with us plebeians on the ground is happening at that level too. And more so, they're not telling anyone. They're just quietly dealing with it, either taking the loss or in the movie I'm referencing, Sharper, they find out how to get the money back. And it was phenomenal. It's such a great movie. Oh, I'm going to watch that tonight. Great. Loved it. And there was a story in one of the early chapters, maybe it was the first or second chapter, about the, maybe it was a football player, forgetting now.

55:55He had... Eric Kramer. Yeah, Eric Kramer. Maybe you could describe that. Because he married this con man. His con woman. Yeah, it was just a series of things that conspired to really do him in almost. Eric Kramer, and I've been working with him. I'm doing a podcast about this story. It's called The Quarterback and the Con Artist. It's coming out September 2nd. Keep your eyes out for that. Keep your ears out for that. But when Eric Kramer, retired NFL quarterback, Chicago Bears fame, Detroit Lions fame, Eric Kramer, checks into a motel in 2015 and puts a gun to his head and pulls the trigger, he thinks all his problems will be over.

56:35But then he miraculously survives. And all his problems are really just getting started. Because for a couple years, he has the brain of a six-year-old boy. He's not an adult. He's got, you know, he's slow and he doesn't understand things and he does whatever you tell him. And during that time, a con woman sneaks into his life, marries him in a secret ceremony that none of his friends or family are invited to, and then proceeds to bleed him dry, stealing from him. And the shocking thing about this story that I write, it's in the book in chapter one, is that for a couple of years, judges police lawyers the system was on the side of the con artist she manipulated all of them and eric's friends and family were shut out and it looked like things were going down fast but then all of a sudden eric came to eric got his faculties back and in a moment he has this realization wait a minute i don't want to be married to you i didn't consent to this how are you living in my house?

57:45Get out. You know, he has this realization that he didn't consent to any of this and he's back now. But what does the con woman do? She calls the police and says he attacked her and they come and arrest him. Oh my gosh. They arrest him. But that incident was the beginning of her end. But man, for a while there, it seemed like she was just going to walk away with everything. How many people who are scammed kill themselves? You know, the statistics, it's never been studied because of the secrecy of it all. But I imagine a lot. I imagine a lot. I've spoken to a few people who I felt like I was talking out of suicide.

58:24I've gone through a dark place in my own life where I planned my own suicide and I had this guardian angel suddenly appear, long story. So I know what that's like to feel like you have nothing left to live for. And I tell these people, listen, I promise you, the only thing we can be sure of is that everything changes. And how you're feeling right now, I promise you, it's going to change. Everything changes. And the sun's going to come out again one day. You'll see. You can be laughing. You can have a happy life one day. And I know it feels like that'll never happen, but you don't know. Things change.

58:59So things are really crappy right now. Guess what? They're going to get good eventually. They can't stay crappy. everything changes. And when they're good, they're going to get crappy. So it's like, life is like this constant up and down. And I've been on the down, down, down. So I get it. But I don't know numbers. This is a thing. I don't, you know, how many victims? I'll tell you a crazy effing story. I went public with my story and my own mother called me one day. And she says, remember that woman? I don't want to give her name because she's not been convicted of anything, but we'll call her Rose.

59:35remember that woman Rose, the family friend you grew up with? I'm like, yeah. My mom's like, she scammed me. She got 20 ,000 from me, but she tried to get so much more. She tried to sell me real estate she didn't own. And I'm like, really? And my mom's like, yeah. And my mom's like, and I ran into this mutual friend we had and she scammed the mutual friend too. And then I ran into another mutual friend on an airplane and she scammed her too. So my mom starts doing this investigative work inspired by me. And she uncovers that this woman, this family friend of ours, she was at Christmases and Thanksgiving and birthdays.

1:00:07She grew up with us. She was a con woman, scamming everyone in my mother's social circle. No one's talking about it. No one's reporting her. And she just slinks away to the next scam. They move around a lot. That's another red flag. Con artists move around a lot. They have to. Because when the jig's up, you've got to leave town and find new victims who don't know you. And it was just, that's how close it cut, you know, my own mother not admitting any of this to anyone, but feeling she can trust me now because I'm a victim and I went public, you know? And this case, just as a random example, in this case with this Rose who calmed your mom, you have another red flag, which is very interesting, isolation, like try to isolate you from everyone else.

1:00:47Like for instance, Eric Kramer's wife slash con woman, isolating him from his family and friends, getting everyone to hate each other and so on. And this woman, Mayor, your con man, isolating you from your neighbor, your neighbor from you, like telling lies to each other about each other. how did this woman rose do it i think this woman rose she relied on the fact that these other women she was scamming didn't see each other every day so she could tell a story it's remarkably easy to do you and i never try stuff like this because we're regular human beings we're not psychopaths but if you're a psychopath wanting x not to talk to y all you got to do is say hey x y said that You're a fat whore.

1:01:30And I said, you're not, but why? And all of a sudden you hate why, but you're not going to confront them. You're just going to avoid them. You know, it's so easy to do. It's like that old saying, a lie can make it halfway around the world before the truth can get its pants on. Yes, lies are easy to believe because they're sensational and they're dirty and they're interesting and they're multifaceted. The truth is kind of boring. The truth is why I didn't say anything about you? Why likes you just fine? But no, I said you're a fat whore. What? I'll never talk to Wyatt again. You know, and that's what Mare did.

1:02:07That's what they all do. It's so easy to do. It's just that if you don't have that mindset, so the minute someone starts telling you so-and-so said something about you or don't talk to so-and-so, that's a red flag. Like, you gotta wonder, what is their motivation for, do they wanna hurt my feelings? Why would they be telling me this unless they don't want me to talk to that person? Let me talk to that person.

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1:04:48so it's so hard to protect yourself because even if you know all these red flags that you write about in the book like you said any two or three of them could manifest themselves at one time or maybe it is true that why i said you're a fat whore maybe someone really is very helpful and kind so some of these things it's easy for three or four of these things to show up one time another three or four to show up at another time like how do you really truly protect yourself i have this fantasy frequently, if I met my con artist today, knowing what I know now, would I know she's a con artist? And the answer is indisputably, yes, yes, yes.

1:05:32In the first 20 minutes of meeting Mayor Smith, she waved most of the red flags. She was too kind, too quick. She offered to help. She had stories from faraway places. There was so much drama. Yes, I would have known something was up. I would have been suspicious. And then what I would have, the current me, what I would have done, I would have read a background check on Mayor Smith. And guess what? Nothing would have come up because that's not her name. There is no Mayor Smith. So then I would have said to myself, huh, obviously that's not her real name. What is her real name? I would have snuck a picture of her license plate.

1:06:06I knew where her car was parked. She lived in my building. I would have ran her plate. Then I would have found her real name, Marianne Elizabeth Smith. Then I would have found the felonies for fraud and grand theft and passing bad checks in multiple states. Then I would have had nothing to do with her because I would think to myself, she's using a fake name. She's got a criminal record. I don't need to know anything more. I'll tell you a funny story. I went to a cocktail party the other night. Friends dragged me to it. I'm not very social. You can imagine why. I've never been very social. I like a certain tight group of five or six people and that's it.

1:06:40I don't want to know anyone else. That's how I am. Kill me. That's how I am. So my friends dragged me to this cocktail party, my husband and me, and we're there. And this, you know, it's like probably like 30, 40 people, wine and cheese, fancy, everyone's dressed up. And this couple comes in, a man and woman. They just moved here from Arizona. They're in their late 30s. They're beautiful. They look like an OnlyFans couple. So I'm talking to them and they're telling me, well, they just moved here from Arizona and they're retired now. They just want to spend the rest of their life in LA and see what's out here and blah, blah, blah.

1:07:13And that was kind of weird. I'm like, well, you guys are so young to be retired, but you made a lot of money. So, okay, retire. That's the dream. Everybody wants to retire young. Great. You're living the dream. But I started paying attention to them because I sensed the story. That's weird. Weird. So I start eavesdropping on them for the rest of the night. I would casually drift over to where they're talking to people. and I heard them tell three different origin stories to different people. So to me, they're retired. To someone else, they're saying they work in retail in like Macy's. To someone else, they're saying they work in security.

1:07:51And I start scratching my head, like clearly these people are scammers. I don't know who they're going, they're looking for targets. They're working the room. They're telling their origin stories. And by then I'm in the middle of the book, right? Like I don't have time to go pursue any other cases. No one's asked for my help. So I'm going to let this go, but I'm going to warn the host of the party. And I did. I said, listen, this is what I witnessed. In my experience, they're up to something. Like, avoid them. Don't invite them. And they're like, oh, we didn't invite them. They're a friend of a friend.

1:08:20I'm like, of course, they're a friend of a friend. But I have no doubt that OnlyFans couple appeared. They were con artists. They were looking for fresh meat. Why would they tell us different stories in the same locations? Wouldn't they think that people would talk to each other at all? Like, they took a risk there as a con artist. They did. But again, this mirrors my con artist experience, right? Yes, they took a risk, but that risk thrills them. My con artist would invite five or six different victims she's scamming at the same time to a cocktail party. We're mingling with each other. She told all of us different stories, different origin stories about her.

1:08:58At any moment, we could have compared notes, but we never did. You know why? We're polite people. People want to be polite. We don't want to be rude. I don't want to say, hey, so what did Mare tell you about her inheritance? Like, that's a crude, rude question, but that would have saved me a lot of heartache because she, I would have heard the different stories. But you know, most people only make, especially strangers at a cocktail party, you're just making polite conversation. No one's digging, but this is what they do. And con artists are psychopaths. The thrill they get, you and I would be freaking out.

1:09:32Oh my God, I've told five stories to five people and now they're talking. Oh my God. But their, oh my God is, oh my God, I've told five stories. Let's see if this works. They love it. They're evil bastards and they love it. That's what we have to understand. What causes you and I consternation and stress brings them joy and pleasure and bliss, makes them feel powerful when they get away with it. And she got away with it. She had these cocktail parties. Her cover was never blown. She felt that much more powerful. Identical to what's happening in the cocktail party I told you about with the strange, handsome couple from Arizona with different origin stories.

1:10:09I don't know what they were up to, but I can guarantee you it's nothing good. And they're looking for victims. You know what? I think that's your next book is following them around until they do something and seeing what happens. That's a TV show too. Yeah, I regret not getting their name and stuff, but I was so balls deep in writing this book. And I'm trying to, it was just, I'd never written a book before and it was so much work. From 5 a.m. to 10 a.m. every day, for like a couple of years, I would just write. And I just didn't have, I was so, my blinders were on. I could only focus on the cases I'm working.

1:10:40I wasn't looking for new cases. But I regret it. I wish I did get their real name and follow them up because I'd be curious to see where they are now. I know, I'm really curious too. I wonder if you can call the host of that cocktail party and just pursue it a little more. You know, maybe I will. Yeah, I can. Maybe I will. Well, let me know. I will. That's part two. Yeah. Well, Jonathan Walton, author of Anatomy of a Con Artist, such a riveting read. And I hope at the very least, this helps me avoid any con artists or scammers. And of course, I hope it helps everybody else who reads it. but really fascinating.

1:11:21The subtitle is The 14 Red Flags to Spot Scammers, Grifters, and Thieves. And also people should listen to your podcast, Queen of the Con, and whatever else you want them to listen to. You have a bunch of stuff going on. Yeah, there's one out now called Cocaine Air. By day, TJ Dominguez owns and operates the largest Lamborghini dealership in the world. By night, he's flying tons of cocaine for Pablo Escobar and his family has no idea. He himself only became a cocaine smuggler because he was the victim of not one, but two duplicitous con artists in his life. And this is how it changes you. It turned me into a con hunter.

1:11:57It turned TJ into a cocaine smuggler for Pablo Escobar. It's a crazy story. I have to ask, what's the... Oh, I'll tell you. Yeah. He comes from a good family. He was a good kid. His father was in real estate. His mother was a homemaker in Miami. Originally, they're from Cuba. And his father is working on this new real estate project and secures a$14 million loan. but then he gets cancer and he dies quickly. And on his deathbed, he tells 19-year-old TJ, promise me you'll finish this project. And TJ, you know, his father was everything to him, everything. And TJ promises him, yes, dad, I will, I promise you.

1:12:33So his dad dies, the 14 million the dad had secured, the bank won't give TJ because TJ's a 19-year-old kid. In their mind, you're nobody. Your dad had the loan, not you. So, you know, good luck finding the money from other places. So TJ tries to secure this money to open this. It was a sugar mill in Haiti that dad had invested in and started building from the ground up. And TJ meets with banker after banker, gets turned away. Eventually, he meets a banker who agrees to give him the loan for$100 ,000. He has to deposit$100 ,000 in a good faith deposit or whatever. TJ's 19. He doesn't know, deposits the money, never hears from the banker again.

1:13:11It was a scam. The banker scammed him. but TJ, which is why he will forever have my admiration and love, TJ gets his money back. TJ realizes this man's a con artist banker and concocts a con to get the banker. He has his buddies pose, and this is in the podcast, TJ tells it so much better than me, as rich Texas oil guys. So these rich Texas oil guys are driving around Miami in this big new Cadillac Brougham, you know picture it 1970s huge and they want to they want to buy some land and so they pick up this banker to take him around and maybe help him with a mortgage on some of the land they want to buy they have a lot of money but no they're just wearing costumes you know cowboy hat boots so they take this guy to an abandoned farmhouse on the outskirts of miami and um tj's there ties into a chair they beat the banker to the within inches of his life wow and tj tells him give me my effing money back.

1:14:11The banker's like, I don't have it. So what the banker did to make good, the banker was in a whole other scam. He had a cashier's check for a bank in the Cayman Islands made out to a local car dealership in Miami. So he gives TJ that cashier's check and TJ buys like a dozen luxury cars and sells them for pennies on the dollar to get his money back. So in the end, he got his hundred thousand and he took the guy's Rolex too. In the end, he got his money back in grand fashion. And then he went looking for the loan because he's still trying to open the sugar mill to keep a deathbed promise to his dad.

1:14:44And he finds another banker and he gets scammed again. Oh my God. He gets scammed again. And at that point he says, you know what? Fuck them. I'm going to be the bank. I'm going to do everything they're doing but better. And to raise some cash, he smuggles in a load of pot from the Bahamas and he's really good at it. And he's trying to raise 14 million. and he's making a couple hundred grand here and there. And eventually he starts doing cocaine. And eventually he's really good. He's the only cocaine pilot. You know, he had never flown a plane in his life. He bought a plane, learned how to fly.

1:15:19And he's the only cocaine pilot not doing cocaine, never done a drug in his life. And he stands out. He's always on time. He never loses a load. Eventually Pablo Escobar hears about him and agrees to pay him 5 million a week to fly a plane load of coke for him. And that's when he got deeply into cocaine for Pablo Escobar and was making, in the end, he was bringing home the equivalent of$100 million every month. He had 30 airplanes, mansions up and down the Florida coast. He had a Lamborghini dealership. He had the first cell phone beeper company in South Florida. It's a crazy, crazy story that never would have been if he didn't get scammed.

1:15:56Those two con men changed the trajectory of his life as con men often do to their victims in many different kinds of ways. So I'm definitely going to listen to that podcast, Cocaine Air. Cocaine Air. But I feel like if I made$100 million in a month, no one's ever going to see or hear from me again. I'm just retired. Not retired in the sense that couple that you met at the party, but just like, I'm never going to get any phone calls again. I'm just done. Well, listen, if you keep your current lifestyle, TJ had 30 airplanes. You know how much it cost to fuel those? TJ had an armada of boats and mansions.

1:16:31And like, it's a high dollar lifestyle. You know, every day you're burning through money. So you get kind of in this addictive cycle of money buys the big things, but the big things need more money, but the money buys the big things, but the big things need more money. And you're constantly chasing that dragon. Yeah, if you live a quiet lifestyle, you can last forever on a hundred million. But if you have 30 airplanes, that's a lot of upkeep. Just sell all the airplanes, sell everything and just be done with it. Yeah, and that's the irony too. I'm working on the episode right now. It's going to be 12 episodes.

1:17:03Nine episodes are up. But when he was winding down, he was walking away from Pablo Escobar and Pablo Escobar was not happy. But TJ kind of low key would miss a flight and have a pilot fill in for him. He'd have a pilot fill in for him. He would get pilots from American Airlines. We unload this in the podcast, how he would approach American Airlines pilots. He didn't want drug pilots because they have problems. They have a history. He didn't want that. He wanted to bribe a good American Airlines pilot with a couple hundred thousand hours of experience to fly for him, and they all did. He would pay them 200 grand a weekend.

1:17:41They would fly for American Airlines during the week. On the weekend, they'd fly to Columbia, pick up a plane load of cocaine for TJ. He had it figured out, and his downfall, he never got busted. His downfall came from within, Shakespearean style. He had an Iago in his midst, and his Iago brought him down. What does it mean? He was betrayed. He was betrayed by someone he loved like a brother. Betrayed him. Turned him over to the feds. Without that, he was backing out. He was winding down. He was going away, like you said. He had enough money coming in from the Lamborghini dealership, from the cell phone company.

1:18:17He had a housing development. He was doing a chartered airplane business at that point. So he was backing out of cocaine when it all came tumbling down. his underling got hooked on coke got sloppy got busted and pointed the finger at tj wow oh my gosh i gotta listen to this podcast oh it's so good every word of it is true i'm riveted and again he's like an anti-hero you know yeah he was a cocaine smuggler but when you understand how he got into it there but for the grace of god go any of us you don't know walk a walk a mile in a man's Jews. You don't know how they got there, how they became that.

1:18:54He never set out to be a drug smuggler, quite the opposite, but shit happens and we deal with it and we become different people. Wow. Well, again, thank you so much for coming on the show. Jonathan Walden, author of Anatomy of a Con Artist, but also podcasts like Queen of the Con and Cocaine Air, all interesting stuff that you're involved in. And also, I want to watch Wall Story now on HBO No, or Wall Street rather, about Mark Wahlberg's businesses. I think you'd enjoy it. I think you'd enjoy it. His ambition is infectious. He's not like a typical actor. Most actors are just looking for the next movie, but he's looking for the next business to open.

1:19:33And he's getting hit up on all sides. It's kind of like Shark Tank, his life. As you can imagine, people are coming to him to invest and he has to vet, is this legit? Is this BS? Do her numbers check out? It's fascinating. Well, again, you're welcome back to the show anytime. Well, thank you. Thanks again. It's such great stuff. Great storytelling also by you. So I really appreciate it. Thanks, man. It was great being on. Thanks for having me.

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