EP 4 - Hardcore Con - The Homeless Billionaire

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "Hardcore Con – The Homeless Billionaire"

Podcast: Johnathan Walton Media
Host: Johnathan Walton
Episode: EP 4
Release Date: August 4, 2026

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Main Theme

This episode explores the life and manipulations of a master con artist—Daryl Heiligzitzer—unpacking the unsettling early signs of deception, how he evolved into a notorious scammer, and the devastating impact on his victims. Walton weaves Glenda Toews’s harrowing first-person account with broader reflections on the psychology and red flags behind confidence scams.

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Key Discussions & Insights

1. The Warning Signs of Dangerous People and Con Artists

• Walton opens with the idea that signs always precede extraordinary—often terrible—events and people, using infamous criminals like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Kaczynski as reference points for ignored red flags.
• Early behaviors (such as animal cruelty or detailed fantasies about violence) are cited as warning signs that went unheeded.
• “Con artists oftentimes give themselves away too when they're young.” (03:07, Jonathan Walton)

2. Daryl’s Disturbing Teenage Years and Early Misconduct

• Daryl Heiligzitzer becomes the youngest funeral home director in western Canada at 18, but displays a “moral compass…way off.” (04:16)

• Glenda Toews (author and key interviewee) recounts incidents of Daryl tricking friends into gross and traumatic situations with dead bodies, purely for the thrill and the power of manipulation:

  • Manipulating his friend Sandra into standing over a corpse under the pretense of “paperwork.” (06:02-08:59)
  • An incident where Daryl calls friends to see a dead teenage girl, only for everyone to realize the horror of what they’re complicit in. (10:02-11:16)

• These stories illustrate an early “lack of empathy and morality” and foreshadow Daryl’s later criminal activity.

  “Daryl hasn't learned how to conceal his true nature yet. Oh, but he will.” (09:21, Jonathan Walton)

3. Glenda’s Encounter in Chilliwack: The Homeless Billionaire

• Fast forward to 2020; Glenda, now a waitress living modestly, meets “Daryl Schmidt” (Daryl Heiligzitzer under a new alias) at Corky’s Irish Pub in Chilliwack.

• Daryl presents himself as humble, clean, and unassuming—her initial impression was that he was homeless, but subtle cues and storytelling quickly alter her perception.

• Daryl spins intricate tales: claims of owning casinos, starting famous restaurants, and business ties with the Cayman Islands—using compelling, hard-to-disprove details. (17:24-18:47)

• He offers a justification for his lack of flashiness:

  “He hated wealthy people who flaunted themselves. So he’s like the real wealthy people, Glenda, hide.” (20:26, Glenda Toews)

• His “wealth” and “philanthropy” are explained with nuanced stories—he is in Chilliwack due to pandemic border controls and his wife’s family event. Everything is detailed to appear plausible (21:37-23:23).

4. The Mechanics of the Scam

• Daryl expertly sets the stage for Glenda to approach him about investing rather than directly soliciting money—an important scam tactic noted by Walton:

  “He creates just the right kind of fictitious scenario to trick Glenda into offering to give him money. My con artist did the same thing to me.” (24:50, Jonathan Walton)

• Daryl and his phantom “hedge fund associate Danny” promise returns of $100,000 for every $100 invested (27:42-28:13, Glenda Toews & Walton).
• Glenda invests $70,000, believing she will launch a charity and transform her life.

5. Unraveling the Lie

• As the promised returns fail to materialize, Daryl blames global events—pandemic, Ukraine war, financial audits—leveraging headlines to excuse his delays (29:04-29:43).

• Ultimately, Glenda receives a news article revealing Daryl’s true identity:

  “A Calgary man, Daryl Heiligzitzer… sentenced… for a 1.5 million dollar investment fraud case. And he's now facing similar new charges.” (30:03, News Report)

• Glenda’s initial reaction is relief at knowing the truth (30:33), but the subsequent realization compounds her shame and sense of loss.

• Confronted, Daryl continues weaving plausible lies, leveraging pity and new stories until Glenda finally sees through him:

  "The newspaper said you were very good."
  "He actually kind of, like, smirked a little bit. Like he was proud." (34:03-34:14, Glenda Toews)

6. The Psychology of Falling for Cons

• Walton emphasizes that Glenda’s initial gut feeling—that Daryl was homeless—proved correct, but social pressure, empathy, and Daryl’s confidence led her to doubt it:

  “So out of the gate, Glenda's gut tells her Darryl is homeless. And in actuality, he is homeless… But Glenda does what so many of us do. She ignores her instincts because she doesn't want to be rude or mean.” (34:52, Jonathan Walton)

• The connection with the con artist, not just the financial loss, causes deep grief:

  “My best friend, like, died that day because he didn’t exist.” (35:54, Glenda Toews) “None of that was real… He’s a homeless man living at the Salvation army who tricked all of you very convincingly for a very long time.” (36:02-36:38, Walton)

7. Aftermath and Lessons

• Glenda goes to the police, only to be dismissed, so she writes two award-winning books—Spinning on a Barstool and Spun—to warn others. (37:08-37:37)

  “I'm a high school dropout and an award winning author.” (37:08, Glenda Toews)

• Daryl flees town and continues his scams, last seen in Duncan, BC.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The signs that a child or a teenager will grow up to be a con artist are all there from day one. You just have to know what to look for.” (03:33, Jonathan Walton)
• “She was just so grossed out…‘Daryl, you just punched somebody’s grandpa.’” (09:15, Glenda Toews/ Walton)
• “He would just tell me little stories… He basically, he’s like, ‘oh, well, you know, me and my friend started [the Cactus Club].’” (18:14, Glenda Toews)
• “Every time Glenda walks by Daryl’s table, he’s talking on his phone. I mean, he’s pretending to be talking on his phone about million dollar deals.” (23:36, Jonathan Walton)
• “You offered to give them your money. So it’s not a crime. But they’re wrong. Grand theft...by false pretense is a felony. It’s just a bitch to prove in court. Ask me how I know.” (24:50, Jonathan Walton)
• “I looked at him, and I said, the newspaper said you were very good. And he actually kind of, like, smirked a little bit.” (34:03, Glenda Toews)
• “My best friend, like, died that day because he didn’t exist.” (35:54, Glenda Toews)
• “There are so many more crazy details...Glenda only writes these books because when she goes to police...they told me there was nothing that I could do.” (37:08, Jonathan Walton / Glenda Toews)

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Key Timestamps

• 01:24-03:33 – Early discussion of criminal warning signs.
• 05:20-12:00 – Glenda’s stories revealing Daryl’s twisted behavior as a young funeral director.
• 15:09-20:41 – Glenda’s first impressions, Daryl’s “homeless billionaire” persona, and storytelling technique.
• 23:36-25:32 – Daryl’s performative con methods and Glenda’s path to investing.
• 27:42-29:04 – Details of the investment pitch and buildup of the scam.
• 29:43-30:33 – Discovery of Daryl’s criminal past and Glenda’s emotional response.
• 32:32-34:22 – Glenda confronts Daryl; interplay of denial and hope.
• 34:52-36:40 – Reflection on instincts, loss, and the emotional devastation of the scam.
• 37:08-End – Aftermath: Glenda’s books, Daryl’s continued scamming, and Walton’s closing remarks.

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Final Reflections

Key Lesson:
The episode underscores how complex stories, believable details, and manipulative charm are powerful tools for con artists. Even keen observers can fall for these scams, especially when they ignore their first instincts in the name of politeness or hope. Walton’s in-depth approach, together with Glenda’s candid testimony, serves as both a compelling story and a crucial warning.

For Further Reading:

• Glenda Toews’s books: Spinning on a Barstool and Spun
• Jonathan Walton’s Anatomy of a Con Artist: The 14 Red Flags to Spot Scammers, Grifters, and Thieves

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Transcript

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[Jonathan Walton]

I've always been a huge believer in signs. In my experience, before something extraordinary happens, good or bad, there are always signs that it was gonna happen. Tells ways people give themselves away before they do what they ultimately do.

[Tammy (Geico Subconscious News)]

Milwaukee police found body parts in a North side apartment. And now they wonder if they've uncovered some kind death factory.

[Jonathan Walton]

Jeffrey Dahmer was a serial killing cannibal responsible for the death and dismemberment of 17 victims. There were human heads and bones, and every drawer we opened, every cabinet we opened, there was body parts. But long before he ever murders anyone, he exhibits signs. Disturbing signs that something is seriously wrong with him. As a young kid, he enjoys killing and mutilating animals. That was a really bad sign that should not have been ignored. But tragically it was.

[Interviewer / Jonathan Walton]

In 1985, grad student John Hauser picked up a booby trapped notebook. The blast blew his fingers off.

[Jonathan Walton]

And before Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski starts sending out letter bombs in the mail and winds up killing three people and injuring 23 others, there were signs that something was seriously wrong with him. Years earlier, he quits his job as a math professor out of the blue with no explanation, moves to Montana, becomes a hermit, and writes extensively about the dozens of detailed murder fantasies he's having. All signs that something is really askew with Ted Kaczynski, but no one in his life picks up on it until he actually starts killing people. Con artists oftentimes give themselves away too when they're young.

[Narrator / Additional Storyteller]

Mayor Smith passed herself off as an Irish heiress and a member of nobility to cheat hardworking entertainment industry insiders out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. But it was swindled TV producer Jonathan Walton, who'd become a close friend, who finally brought Smith's con days to an end.

[Jonathan Walton]

The con woman who scammed me of almost 100 grand as a child would go out of her way to convince other children to do weird and unusual things like going into a stranger's house by convincing another little girl that it's her house. That was actually one of my scammers first cons. She didn't get any money from it. She was only 11 years old. But she did get the thrill and the practice of tricking someone into doing something they would otherwise never do do. And that's Con Artistry 101 right there. In reality, the signs that a child or a teenager will grow up to be a con artist are all there from day one. You just have to know what to look for. I'm Jonathan Walton and this is hardcore conversation. Episode 4 the Homeless Billionaire. It's the early 1980s now in Alberta, Canada. There's this really creepy funeral home off 5th street and 16th Avenue and an 18 year old kid named Darrell Heiligzitzer is its director. In fact, Daryl is the youngest funeral home director in Western Canada. But he really shouldn't be because his moral compass is off, way off. And his sense of right and wrong appears to be non existent.

[Glenda Toews]

He was embalming bodies from a very young age.

[Jonathan Walton]

That's Glenn the Tows, author of the books Spinning on a Barstool. A and Spun. She's known Daryl for a long time and knows him better than most at this point, as does a woman named Sandra Beard.

[Glenda Toews]

So Sandra was Daryl's childhood friend.

[Jonathan Walton]

And one day when Sandra and Daryl are teenagers heading out to go skiing, a work thing pops up for Daryl

[Glenda Toews]

and he's like, I've got some paperwork I need to drop off at the funeral home. Do you mind if we stop there first? First? And she's like, yeah, okay. They get in his Toyota truck and

[Jonathan Walton]

Daryl drives Sandra to the funeral home where he works. And as she's sitting there on the drive over in the passenger seat of that Toyota truck with the radio blasting the Steve Miller Band, Sandra's feeling a little uneasy. I mean, she's just a teenager and she's never been to a funeral home before. She knows that there are dozens and dozens of dead bodies there, and the whole thing kind of freaks her out.

[Glenda Toews]

They get to the funeral home. He's there. He's got his own keys to the funeral home. He's like, come on in. I'll show you around. And she's like, okay.

[Jonathan Walton]

And when they get inside, it almost looks like the lobby of a hotel. Almost. Sandra looks around. Nothing seems too scary or out of the ordinary. But then

[Glenda Toews]

he took her through the chapel into the urn room, and then he took her to the embalming room. And there was a body, a gurney with a sheet covering it. And she was kind of grossed out. She's like, this is. This isn't right. Like, this isn't right. And he's like, come on in. Like, don't worry about it.

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

Like, don't.

[Glenda Toews]

Just come on in. Have a look.

[Jonathan Walton]

The smell of that embalming room is enough to make anyone sick to their stomach. And Sandra is thoroughly disgusted. But the more she resists wanting to look at that dead body under the sheet, the more Daryl implores her to. Almost forces her to. Sandra is really put off by all the tubes and laboratory equipment and scalpels,

[Glenda Toews]

and he's like, don't worry about it. None of this hurts them.

[Jonathan Walton]

At this point, for the first time in her teenage life, Sandra is now standing over a dead body. It's covered with a sheet, but it's terrifyingly obvious what's under that sheet. I mean, you can see the toes poking up and the outline of a head and shoulders. Sandra suddenly realizes that the very premise that got her here in the first place. Daryl claiming that he had to drop off some paperwork at the funeral home, is a lie. A clever ruse disguised to trick Sandra into standing exactly where she's standing, over a dead body. Literally the last place on Earth. Earth she'd ever want to be. In a sense, Daryl got her here, tricked her here against her will, which is the exact reason he did it, because Daryl knows Sandra would never want to be standing 6 inches from a corpse. But the challenge of getting her to do just that excites him and makes him feel powerful. And then all of a sudden, he

[Glenda Toews]

lifted up the sheet and, excited, exposed the waxy leg of the dead person, put his hands into a fist and punched the leg. And Sandra's like, daryl, don't do that. And he's like, why? He can't feel anything. And she goes, no, Daryl, you just punched somebody's grandpa.

[Jonathan Walton]

Somebody's grandpa. Remember? Daryl is only 18 years old at this point, physically an adult, but mentally still a child blissfully unaware that his utter lack of morals and ethics is on full display for Sandra and everyone else in his life to bear witness to. Daryl hasn't learned how to conceal his true nature yet. Oh, but he will. There's another time, not long after this disturbing incident with Sandra, where Daryl reveals his egregious lack of empathy and morality to his close friends.

[Glenda Toews]

Daryl had been working on a teenage girl who had died in a car accident. And he phoned up his two buddies and he said, hey, I'm working on her. She's naked. Do you want to come and see? So the two buddies are like, okay, this sounds cool.

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

Let's go see a.

[Glenda Toews]

A dead teenage girl. Anyways, they get there, they're down in the embalming room. Then all of a sudden, they. Three of them hear steps, footsteps, and muffled voices. And Daryl quickly shoves the two buddies in a closet because of course, they're not supposed to be there, leaves them in the closet, goes running upstairs. You can hear him talking with whoever it is upstairs. In the meantime, the two buddies are in the closet going, oh, man, this is so stupid. Why did we agree to this? This is dumb. We're going to go to hell for this. We're really going to go to hell for this. I don't care when Daryl comes back, I'm leaving. Nothing is worth doing this. And besides, they were like in an embalming room surrounded by dead bodies. So a short while later, Daryl comes back down the stairs. He's ready to show him the poor teenage girl. And the buddies are like, nope, man, we're out of here. This is just royally.

[Jonathan Walton]

Keep in mind, Daryl is not just some teenage punk who breaks into this place. He's the funeral director here. This is his place of business. But clearly he doesn't care about the concept of right and wrong in human decency. And that turns out to be a huge red flag and a disturbing harbinger of what Daryl would become years later.

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

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[Jonathan Walton]

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[Jonathan Walton]

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[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

It was a pandemic. We were at half capacity.

[Jonathan Walton]

Glenda Tows is working as a waitress at Corky's for more than a decade. At this point, I am a high

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

school dropout, a waitress in a pub. I live in a fifth wheel in a forest.

[Interviewer / Jonathan Walton]

What's it like living in a fifth wheel in the forest in Canada? I imagine the winters are brutal.

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

Yes. The worst part about that is your plumbing freezing up, so we have heaters underneath the rv.

[Jonathan Walton]

Chilliwack is a small, bucolic Canadian city about 20 miles north of the U.S. border at Washington State. It's surrounded by a series of tall mountain peaks dissected by huge rivers and lakes. The air is clean and fresh here and everywhere you turn looks like a painting by Claude Monet or Thomas Cole. The beauty and grandeur of Chilliwack will take your breath away, But Glenda Tose can't appreciate any of that now. She's stuck inside waiting tables at Corky's, hoping for business to pick up as the pandemic drags on. All of a sudden a man walks in. A man she's never seen before. He looks to be in his late 60s or early 70s. He's got thick gray hair and kind eyes and he moves slowly and deliberately as he takes a seat at the bar.

[Interviewer / Jonathan Walton]

What was your first impression of him

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

when he walked through the door in the pub? Our pub is huge, right? And I was at the back patio door and he was walking in towards the bar and he sort of walked in with a limp. He was kind of hunched my Very first thought was that he was homeless because that's how the homeless people in Chilliwack carry themselves. So, and then I went closer to him and then I felt bad because he was very clean and he smelt good and the homeless people aren't clean and they don't smell good. So then I felt bad. I was like, oh, you know. And then he sat down. He was very polite. Just make me fit here. Just very, quite, very ordinary. He didn't wear jewelry, he wasn't flashy. He wore ordinary clothes. Like, he was just ordinary. His hair needed to cut.

[Jonathan Walton]

The man introduces himself as Daryl Schmidt, but he's lying. He's not Daryl Schmidt at all. He's Daryl Hilichsetzer, who decades earlier is that 18 year old funeral director. Director. Sneaking his friends into the embalming room to poke and prod and desecrate the bodies of dead people. Word on the street is he actually gets drummed out of the funeral home business and is blacklisted after he's caught stealing. But waitress Glinda Toews has no way of knowing any of that now. To her, Darryl is just a new customer at Corky's. And she waits on him again and again over the course of weeks. While he's not a great tipper, he is a great storyteller.

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

He would just tell me little stories. In Canada, we have one restaurant, it's called the Cactus Club. Everyone on the west coast knows it. He basically, he's like, oh, well, you know, me and my friend started that. He knew all of the ins and outs of the business mix going on with Chilliwack. Like, people would come in, I'd hear realtors talking about things. But I already knew that because Daryl already told me.

[Jonathan Walton]

Daryl appears to have his finger on the pulse of everything business related. Turns out he's kind of a mogul, or so it seems.

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

He owned casinos. He got his start actually in, in Cayman Islands. The Gambinos came down and visited him one day and he's like, I want you know, I saw here how you run your businesses. I'd like you to, to consider coming to Vegas and running MGM and went on from there. So MGM was his first casino he was running. And then he had lots of stories revolving these experiences. And then he just started buying casinos all over the world.

[Jonathan Walton]

Darrell has a lot of what I call stories from faraway places. It's a major red flag I write extensively about in my book Anatomy of a Con Artist. The kinds of stories from faraway places that Darrel's telling here are hard to prove false off the top of your head. And the way the mind works, when you can't prove something's false, you just accept it as true. That's what Glenda does. Darryl says he's a billionaire, a casino magnate, a restaurateur, a philanthropist, and he's got a ton of living, breathing stories from faraway places to confirm everything. And all of these stories just roll off his tongue with a palpable certainty and confidence. There's no hesitation, there's no stutter, there's no searching for words. Daryl effortlessly talks the talk. But when Glenda makes an offhanded remark to Daryl, telling him that he doesn't look like any billionaire she's ever seen, he's got the perfect comeback.

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

He hated wealthy people who flaunted themselves. So he's like the real wealthy people, Glenda Hyde. Like, they don't want people to know they're wealthy. They don't shout it out. And to me, that made sense, because if I was wealthy, yeah, I don't want people to know.

[Interviewer / Jonathan Walton]

And there. There are people like that. Famously, Sam Walton, the. You know, he is dead now, God rest his soul, but he started Walmart, and he became a billionaire very quietly. And he was notorious for going into his stores dressed like a. Like a schlub, almost like a homeless old man walking around just to see how customers were reacting to the stuff, to see how his employees were acting. And no one would have ever suspected this guy's a billionaire. So there is some truth to what he told you.

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

Yeah, so. And to me, it made perfect sense.

[Jonathan Walton]

And in case you're wondering what the hell a billionaire like Daryl is doing in Chilliwack, Canada, instead of, say, Saint Tropez or the Maldives or the Seychelles or any other billionaire playground, Daryl has a perfectly logical explanation for that, too.

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

He told me he was from the Cayman Islands and his wife is Canadian, and they came up for her daughter's graduation. She was guessing color in culinary school. They couldn't get back to the Cayman Islands because she wasn't a Cayman citizen. So he could give back, but the pandemic they had shut the island down, so he decided he was going to stake it with his wife.

[Interviewer / Jonathan Walton]

Did you meet his wife?

[Glenda Toews]

So his.

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

It was his lady friend. I kind of think she was also being pawned.

[Interviewer / Jonathan Walton]

So is this a situation where he's with this woman and he's telling you it's his wife? Or even better and more clever on his part, he's with this woman in Previous conversations. He told you he had a wife, and now you're just assuming that's his wife.

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

Correct.

[Interviewer / Jonathan Walton]

Although she never said I'm his wife.

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

No, no, you just assume. So he's like, my wife, blah, blah, blah. She would come. He's like, she's just had foot surgery. So, you know, and she would come in on a knee scooter.

[Jonathan Walton]

Daryl stories have so many intricate details, which makes them sound really believable, because when a regular person lies and you question them incessantly, they run out of details pretty quickly. And at that point, you can usually tell they're lying. But when a professional con artist lies, the more questions you ask, the more intricate details they spew. It's their innate skill. Details, details, details.

[Interviewer / Jonathan Walton]

They give the impression he must be telling the truth. He's got so many details. The Cayman Islands, the. The daughter, the culinary school, she can't get back. It's the pandemic. Cayman Islands won't let her back in. Like, so many details which make you think, oh, this is all true.

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

But no, and I think that the almost. The more stranger the detail, the more you believe it, because you'd be like, you'd have to be insane to lie about that. I don't. You know, you're like, who would lie about something like that? Like, you would get caught lying about that. It must be true, right?

[Jonathan Walton]

And the other thing that makes Darryl a brilliant con artist is his penchant for performing. For months, every time Glenda walks by Daryl's table, he's talking on his phone. I mean, he's pretending to be talking on his phone about million dollar deals.

[Daryl's Hedge Fund Associate (Danny)]

I made $20 million for him last year.

[Jonathan Walton]

And I'm done rolling over about turning away desperate investors.

[Daryl's Hedge Fund Associate (Danny)]

We're at market saturation now. I'm not taking in any more money.

[Jonathan Walton]

I'm sorry about trying to help a less fortunate friend turn a thousand dollars into a million dollars with his latest investment opportunity.

[Daryl's Hedge Fund Associate (Danny)]

I love you too, man. You don't need to thank me.

[Jonathan Walton]

Glenda is impressed with Daryl's apparent Midas touch. She witnesses these dramatic phone calls for four months. And now that his latest investment, Glenda eavesdrops, is blowing up big, she wants in.

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

If I hear him talking about it again, I'm gonna ask him about it.

[Jonathan Walton]

And at that point, Glenda gets up the nerve to ask Darryl if she can invest in his latest venture.

[Daryl's Hedge Fund Associate (Danny)]

Of course you can. Glenda, I consider you a friend now. I'm happy to help you any way I can.

[Jonathan Walton]

So it's important to Note here that Daryl never asks Glenda for money. Instead, he creates just the right kind of fictitious scenario to trick Glenda into offering to give him money. My con artist did the same thing to me. And this tactic actually helps a lot of professional scammers avoid criminal prosecution because police will oftentimes say you offered to give them your money. So it's not a crime. But they're wrong. Grand theft by inducement or by false pretense is a felony. It's just a bitch to prove in court. Ask me how I know.

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

Be the jury in the above entitled action. Marianne Smith, guilty of the crime of grand theft.

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[Interviewer / Jonathan Walton]

Jonathan Walton here from Queen of the Con.

[Jonathan Walton]

Getting scammed completely changed the trajectory of my entire life. And when the man you're about to meet got scammed, it changed the trajectory of his entire life too.

[Sponsor Narrator - Aura]

By day, I owned and operated the

[Narrator / Additional Storyteller]

Largest Lamborghini dealership in the world. But by night, I flew tons of

[Jonathan Walton]

cocaine for Pablo Escobar. This is the greatest story that's never been told because this guy's been in prison.

[Interviewer / Jonathan Walton]

You're out of prison, what, two days now?

[Jonathan Walton]

Yeah, three days.

[Interviewer / Jonathan Walton]

And here we are talking.

[Jonathan Walton]

Listen to Cocaine Air wherever you get your podcasts.

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

As for Darryl, the way his investments work, it was a hedge fund out of Seattle. Sophie's like, well, every hundred dollars would likely, Danny says, because Danny's his hedge fund guy in Seattle. Danny says that it will, you know, maybe be about 100 grand, give or take for. And I'm like, wow, I could help so many people's student loans and down payments on houses and stuff like that.

[Interviewer / Jonathan Walton]

So basically every hundred dollars would be worth a hundred grand in a year.

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

In a year, yeah. Wow.

[Jonathan Walton]

So Glenda scrounges together all the money she can get her hands on, which is approximately $70,000, and she hands it to Daryl to invest. And she waits. Months go by. Daryl is still coming into the pub every single day, assuring her that her $70,000 is growing fast and it'll be worth more than a million dollars before the year is out. And Glenda plans to use. Use some of that money to help homeless people and shore up the school system in Chilliwack and start a nonprofit called the foundation of Hope. But nearing the 12 month mark where Daryl is supposed to hand Glenda the first return on her $70,000 investment, it's just not happening. And Daryl's got all kinds of excuses.

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

You know, we're sort of just waiting for the pandemic to. And then, of course, course, the Ukraine war starts. Danny's his hedge fund guy. Danny's hedge funds are being audited to make sure that there's no old oligarchy activity.

[Interviewer / Jonathan Walton]

He would use the news headlines of the day and the calamity happening in the world in the pandemic. The war breaks out in Ukraine. My financial guys getting audited as reasons why you are expecting payments and these payments are not materializing. And that's why, because of. And you could prove these things because you could read about them happening. So it just strikes you as, oh, this is real.

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

Yeah, yeah, because everything's falling into, you know, the, the climate of our. What was going on at the time.

[Jonathan Walton]

And not long after Daryl's excusa palooza, someone sends Glenda a news report from years earlier, revealing who Daryl Schmidt really is.

[Sponsor Narrator - Aura]

A Calgary man, Daryl Heiligsetzer is in jail tonight. He was described by a judge as an economic predator when he was sentenced a decade ago to seven years in prison for a 1.5 million dollar investment fraud case. And he's now facing similar new charges.

[Jonathan Walton]

You'd think Glenda would be shocked and outraged by this news that the man she gave $70,000 to to invest is a convicted scammer. But Glenda's shock and outrage actually take a back seat.

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

My very first instinct was relief because then I knew the truth.

[Interviewer / Jonathan Walton]

Yeah, because up until that point, you're just guessing. Guessing, can't figure out where is this money? Why hasn't it come?

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

Yeah, this was going on for like 15 months. And it's exhausting to be sort of. And you can't plan your future because you think you're going to be a CEO of this foundation of hope. I was studying our community to find out how best that I could help them. Right. Visiting teachers and finding out what we can the best do to serve the community in that way. So I'm doing all of that thinking this is going to happen. Which added to the humiliation at the end of it because now I have to go and tell these people that it was a scam. Gosh, their help is not coming. No help is coming.

[Jonathan Walton]

The first con Darrell is ever convicted of and serves five years in jail for is an elaborate investment scam, a Ponzi scheme back in 2005 whereby Daryl fakes starting a company that buys used hockey equipment on the cheap and resells it to sporting goods stores all over the world for huge profits. None of that is real, but the intricate details makes it sound really real to investors. And Daryl dupes dozens of victims out of nearly $3 million, gets busted, goes to jail for five years, and then while he's out on parole, he starts a whole new scam and is busted again in 2015. And he spends four and a half more years behind bars for conning $400,000 out of 45 investors who earnestly believed Daryl was buying a casino and was going to make them all very wealthy. It's the same kind of story. He sells waitress Glenda toes over the course of a year, coming into Corky's Irish Pub every day.

[Interviewer / Jonathan Walton]

And did you ever confront Darrell?

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

I sure did. So I actually sent him the newspaper article. His. The immediate response was, who sent that to you? I am going to go through. I am getting Doug, his head of security. I'm getting Doug to go through all of your emails. Linda, you know I can do it. Because by this time she Was like, the owner of Amazon, Google, whatever. He owned everything. So. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead. So the next day, he actually came to the pub. I'm devastated at this point because the

[Interviewer / Jonathan Walton]

balls on that guy.

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

Yeah, he came to the pub. And I'm like, you're going to have to leave, Daryl. Because I just. He's like, I should have known better. I should not have come in. I understand. I'm so sorry, but please, can you come to a different pub? Characters with another pub we go to. He's like, can you please come so I can explain myself? So I finished my shift, I drove over to Characters. He's sitting there looking all really sad, and I sit down, he's like, I am Daryl Howard. Sets here. I did go into business. They were dirty cops. I changed my name because. Yeah, I changed my name because people have a stigma with people in prison. And he was going on and, you know, he was so good. I just wanted to believe him.

[Interviewer / Jonathan Walton]

And that's the thing. You did want to believe him. Because if. If he was telling the truth, that would mean you hadn't wasted a whole, like, year of your life pursuing this insanity that was never going to happen and lost all that money.

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

I wanted to believe him and I just.

[Interviewer / Jonathan Walton]

Did you believe him?

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

I looked at him and I said, the newspaper said you were very good. And he actually kind of, like, smirked a little bit.

[Interviewer / Jonathan Walton]

Like he was proud.

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

Well, like, you know. And then it went away and he was devastated again. It was like just this fleeting little look, right? And I was like. But I caught it.

[Jonathan Walton]

But here's the biggest takeaway from this entire conversation. And you all need to pay close attention to what I'm about to explain, because it can have drastic and powerful ramifications in your own lives. Remember near the beginning of this episode, when I asked Glenda what was your

[Interviewer / Jonathan Walton]

first impression of him?

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

My very first thought was that he was homeless. And then I went closer to him and then I felt bad because he was very clean and he smelt good and the homeless people aren't clean and they don't smell good. So then I felt bad.

[Jonathan Walton]

So out of the gate, Glenda's gut tells her Darryl is homeless. And in actuality, he is homeless. He's recently been released from jail after serving four plus years for that casino investment scam, and he's living in a homeless shelter. So when he walks into Corky's Irish Pub that day back in 2020, Glenda's gut is right on the money. He's Homeless. Her first impression is spot on. But Glenda does what so many of us do. She ignores her instincts because she doesn't want to be rude or mean or unfriendly. And Daryl has a captivating energy. All professional con artists do. And he gets Glenda to fall in like with him and admire him within the first five minutes of meeting him. Remember, con artist is short for confidence artist. And Daryl gains Glenda's confidence almost immediately that first day. And over the course of a year, she gets really close to him.

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

That was the sort of. The biggest sorrow is my, my best friend, like, died that day because he didn't exist.

[Interviewer / Jonathan Walton]

He never existed. And that's the double whammy of the, of the punch because a, you got conned, you lost your money. That hurts. But then also this guy that you thought you knew, that was your quote unquote best friend who you would have given your life for sworn. And yet none of that was real. He didn't own casinos. He didn't have all this money. He's not a financial investor. Do Gooder, philanthropic billionaire. He's a homeless man living at the Salvation army who tricked all of you very convincingly for a very long time.

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

Yeah. Yes, Very much so.

[Jonathan Walton]

Now, because of the time constraints of this podcast, I'm only giving you 20% of this incredible story. There are so many more crazy details I had to nix for time. But Glenda Toes wrote two whole books about Daryl. The first one is titled Spinning on a Barstool. Then the follow up is called Spun. I'm putting a link to both in the show notes. And get this, Glenda only writes these books because when she goes to police

[Glenda Toews (Interviewee)]

to report Daryl, they told me there was nothing that I could do. I'm like, well, what can I do? I need to go warn people. No, you can't warn people. And I'm like, what do you mean I can't warn people? And I'm like, what can I do? And they're like, you can just tell your experience. And I'm like, so I can tell my story? Yeah, you can tell your story. So I'm like, okay, well, I wrote a book. That book went on to win some awards. So now I'm a high school dropout and an award winning author.

[Interviewer / Jonathan Walton]

Wow.

[Jonathan Walton]

After Glenda goes public with her con story, Daryl flees Chilliwack. He was last spotted six months ago about 80 miles west in Duncan, British Columbia. And I have no doubt he's probably still scamming. Hardcore Con was created, written and hosted by me Jonathan Walton for Jonathan Walton Media Executive Producer Evan Goldstein. All editing and sound design was done by Jimmy O'. Holligan. My book, Anatomy of a Con Artist the 14 Red Flags to Spot Scammers, Grifters, and Thieves, is available everywhere. Books are sold in print and audio, so so it's like a podcast. And I recorded my audiobook in the same exact West Hollywood sound studio that Meryl Streep used to record her audiobook. So I feel like you can kind of hear that in my read. Make sure you subscribe to Jonathan Walton Media on whatever podcast platform you're listening on so you can get alerts when new episodes drop and new seasons. And if you've got a story you think deserves its own podcast, parents pitch it to [e-mail].

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