1305: Johnathan Walton | How to Spot Scammers, Grifters, and Thieves

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Jordan Harbinger Show – Episode 1305

Guest: Jonathan Walton
Topic: How to Spot Scammers, Grifters, and Thieves
Date: March 31, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the world of professional con artists with Jonathan Walton—himself a former victim turned advocate, investigator, and author. After being scammed by someone he considered family, Walton not only brought his scammer to justice but also set out to educate and warn others. Jordan and Jonathan break down the emotional and psychological tactics of con artists, detail the 14 red flags of cons, recount wild stories, and offer practical advice on reporting scams and protecting yourself. The episode is both a cautionary tale and a toolkit for recognizing manipulation, focusing on the emotional hooks that leave people vulnerable to scams.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Psychology of a Professional Con Artist

• Psychopathy & Emotional Manipulation:
  “A professional con artist is a psychopath. And they're not like you and me... The fun is creating these worlds that do not exist and watching with a godlike sense of glee as we say what they want us to say, we do what they want us to do.”
  — Jonathan Walton [01:10]

• They Out-Feel, Not Out-Smart You:
  “Con artists, they don't outsmart you. They're not smarter than you. They out feel you.”
  — Jonathan Walton [08:13]

• Con Artists as Directors:
  “It's like they're directing a movie. We're all their actors, but we don't know it, but they do. And that's what they get off on.”
  — Jonathan Walton [01:10, 14:21]

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2. Emotional Hooks and Shame

• Shame as a Weapon:
  Victims are often shamed into silence—an advantage for cons who rely on secrecy to keep scamming new targets.
• Trauma Bonding:
  Walton’s scammer bonded over shared trauma, pouncing on raw emotions to build trust (see [10:08]).
• Victim Fantasies:
  Walton describes how intense anger and violence fantasies are common for victims, offering a candid look at the psychological aftermath ([05:19]).

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3. The 14 Red Flags of Con Artists

(Representative Flags Discussed in Detail)

• Red Flag #1: "I'm Here to Help"
  Cons often enter lives by offering unsolicited help.
  Case Example: NFL quarterback Eric Kramer’s con artist swooped in during his concussion recovery, offering support but ultimately scamming him out of $700,000 ([29:35]).

• Red Flag #2: Too Kind Too Quick
  Dramatic gestures, lavish gifts, and sudden affection are designed to break down skepticism fast.
  “Con artists are too kind, too quick. They're going to buy you dinner, walk your dog, watch your kids...”
  — Jonathan Walton [37:34]

• Red Flag #3: Drama, Drama, Drama
  They engineer constant emergencies (illnesses, family deaths) to capture attention and sympathy ([43:50]).

• Red Flag #6: Technology Use
  Digital fakery is rampant: fake texts, emails, doctored bank sites, fabricated identities.
  “Technology is easy to fake. You can create a fake bank account. You can create a fake bank statement in Photoshop or whatever...”
  — Jonathan Walton [64:16]

• Red Flag: Isolation Tactics
  Con artists isolate victims from friends/family by sowing mistrust (“Don’t talk to so-and-so…”), blocking outside input ([58:28]).

• Red Flag: Scarcity & "Beak Wetting"
  They close doors to create urgency ("No more new members" in investment scams), or let you "withdraw" a little to make you trust them ([69:51]).

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4. How Scams Actually Work

• Mingling Victims:
  Instead of keeping victims apart, cons sometimes bring victims together—to corroborate their lies and reinforce legitimacy ([54:58]).

• Fake Philanthropy and Jobs:
  Scammers use jobs or charity as a cover (“They have jobs. They work for AT&T. Mine worked for Pacific Islands Travel Agency..." [72:25])—the real money is always in the con.

• Real-Life Scammer Profile: “Maire”
  Walton’s con artist used bandages/lupus stories to gain sympathy, coordinated fake texts/emails/voices, and made up extreme stories about herself to support her cons ([38:03], [61:09]).

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5. Why Smart People Get Scammed

• Confidence and logic aren’t enough:
  “If you're the type of person that thinks they would never get scammed, you're exactly the kind of person that I want to meet because I'm going to scam the shit out of you.”
  — Jordan Harbinger [07:11]
• The biggest risk factors: emotional connection, urgency, greed, isolation.

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6. Reporting to Police: It’s an Art

• Pitch Like a TV Show:
  “Pitching a criminal case to police is like pitching a television show... Make it sexy, make it interesting. Do the work for them.”
  — Jonathan Walton [19:48]

• Organizing Evidence:
  Prepare a timeline, notarized witness statements, organized evidence. Only share enough to show a crime—don’t lead with contracts (cops see that as ‘civil’ not criminal) ([86:47]).

• Persistence Pays:
  Call police daily to keep your case top of mind; do not rely on their initiative ([88:52]).

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7. Practical Advice & Prevention

• Run Background Checks:
  Use services like BeenVerified or Intellius to check for criminal/civil records and address histories (multiple addresses = giant red flag) ([73:01]).
• Freeze Your Credit:
  It’s free, effective, and prevents accounts being opened in your name—do it now ([90:05]).
• If in doubt, check facts—even if it feels rude.
  Always verify claims, especially if someone tells you to avoid someone else ([58:28]).

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Victim Silence:
  “No one's talking about it. I see this all the time.” — Jonathan Walton [10:08]
• On Emotional Hook:
  “Once you're making decisions with your heart and not your head, you're going to get scammed.” — Jonathan Walton [08:26]
• On Reporting to Police:
  “Give them an easy case, do the work for them. That’s the trick.” — Jonathan Walton [88:52]
• On Background Checks:
  “By the time I met my con artist, she had 46 different addresses.” — Jonathan Walton [71:36]
• On The Endgame:
  “When I got conned and I went to police and people asked me, weren't you scared to go to police? Weren't you ashamed? ...No, it never occurred to me.” — Jonathan Walton [18:10]
• On Conviction in Court:
  “Once you catch a con artist, it’s over. She couldn’t find a single solitary person to testify on her behalf... That omission is huge.” — Jonathan Walton [83:10]

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Episode Timeline & Timestamps (Key Segments)

• [01:10] — The mind of a con artist: “directing a movie”
• [04:06-06:49] — Walton describes his obsession and emotional fallout after being scammed
• [08:13-11:31] — Why smart (and skeptical) people get conned; emotional hooks
• [13:12-15:19] — Tears, manipulation, and the “God complex” of cons
• [19:37-20:56] — How to pitch a scam case to police & why police often do nothing
• [29:35-32:14] — Red Flag #1: Helpers & the Eric Kramer scam
• [37:34-39:26] — Red Flag #2: Too kind, too soon & Maire’s entry into Walton’s life
• [43:50] — Red Flag #3: “Drama, drama, drama”
• [54:58-56:32] — Victims mingling: why scammers introduce their targets to one another
• [58:28-60:49] — Isolation tactics & how they work
• [64:16] — Red Flag #6: Faked technology, digital screens, and fake bank sites
• [69:51] — Beak wedding and Ponzi scams: letting you “try out” the con
• [71:36-73:02] — Walton’s current “trust but verify” regime: background checks for all
• [76:55] — Con artists can be easy marks too: their own arrogance blinds them
• [80:04-83:10] — How Walton used his con artist’s password to help convict her
• [86:47-88:52] — Building your case, evidence, and pushing police to act

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Practical Takeaways

• Don’t Trust the Hyper-Generous or Overly Quick Friendships: Genuine relationships take time; watch out for anyone who escalates too fast.
• Verify Everything, Especially Emotional Stories: Trauma, illness, sudden emergencies—cons use emotion to bypass your logic.
• Share Your Story: Shame is the con artist’s best friend; sunlight is the best disinfectant.
• Con Artists Don’t Just Target the “Gullible”—They Prey on Everyone: If you think you can’t be conned, you’re at higher risk.
• When Reporting, Do the Detective Work for Police: Lay it out plainly; don't expect instant understanding of complex or emotional cases.

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Final Words

“Shame is the con artist’s greatest weapon. Sunlight is your revenge.”
— Jordan Harbinger [Main Takeaways Wrap-Up]

Resources and Jonathan Walton’s Red Flag List are available in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com.

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Share this episode with anyone at risk, and remember: trust but always verify.

Transcript

[Jordan Harbinger]

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[Jonathan Walton]

Show, a professional con artist is a psychopath. And they're not like you and me. We get a thrill from riding a roller coaster and wee like that's fun fun. But for them, the fun is creating these worlds that do not exist and watching with a godlike sense of glee as we say what they want us to say, we do what they want us to do. It's like they're directing a movie. We're all their actors, but we don't know it. But they do. And that's what they get off on. That's what brings them joy. They're not regular people. They are psychopaths.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers and performers, even the occasional neuroscientist, Russian chess grandmaster, Emmy nominated comedian or extreme athlete. And if you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation, psychology and geopolitics disinformation, social engineering, China, North Korea, crime and cults and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today on the show, we're talking scams, real scams. Not the Nigerian prince wants your bank account kind of thing, but the kind that comes wrapped in a hug, sits at your dinner table and calls your mom auntie. Our guest today was scammed by somebody he considered family. And instead of crawling away, ashamed like most victims, which, by the way, is exactly how scammers keep operating, he went nuclear. He sent his scammer to jail. Then he made it his mission to warn the rest of us. Because con artists don't outsmart you. The good ones out feel you. They don't beat your logic. They beat your emotions. And once his story went public, thousands of people came to him with their own con artist horror stories. And he started noticing patterns, red flags that show up in just about every scam. The that's what we're going to go over here today on the show, and we'll walk through every single one of those red flags, talk about con artists who move constantly, who build complex scams on purpose, who use technology to fake phone calls and text messages, who manipulate trauma, and who mingle their victims together like a deranged matchmaker and who treat you like the art in their own twisted gallery. We'll also get into why reporting to police is basically like pitching a TV show, why contracts are a con artist's best friend, why police often say there's no crime here when there absolutely is, and how to actually get law enforcement to take action. Of course, we'll show you what to do if you've been scammed already and how to keep it from happening again. All this and more today here on the show with Jonathan Walton. Here we go. Man, you got scammed by somebody you considered family and then made it your mission to not only get revenge, but to warn others. I love it already.

[Jonathan Walton]

Yeah. And what's funny is everyone's celebrating me now. You know, my husband, my friends, my family, what a great job I did getting her arrested and convicted twice and writing a book and everything. But I gotta remind them, early on, months into it, when no one was doing anything, when police weren't doing anything, when the con woman who scammed me managed to convince dozens of people that I'm the crazy one and she's the victim, everyone Thought I was crazy and unhinged and obsessed. And at one point, my husband, you know, told me, you gotta let this go. We have to move on, let this go. So for a while, I pretended to let it go. I did all of this in secret. You know, I was, like, crouched in the corner going to the. The Starbucks down the street to research and investigate because everyone thought I was obsessed and I was obsessed. And you have to be obsessed to catch a con artist. That's just the plain truth. It has to be an obsession or. Or they'll win.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah. You know, it's interesting that you say people thought you were unhinged and nuts and you had to do everything in secret, because there's probably a very fine line between, okay, you need to go to a therapist and get, like, mental help for this, like, victim complex that you have, and you got to put this woman in jail and somebody should be supporting you. But since no one is, you just got a vendetta and you're just doing it.

[Jonathan Walton]

Yeah. And it got even crazier than that. Shortly after realizing she conned me out of close to $100,000. And I was devastated and cried, and I got so angry. And I'm a live and let live kind of guy. I'm a vegetarian. I catch the spider inside and take it outside and release it. Yes, I don't hurt or harm anything. But for three or four months after the fact, I started having these daydreams, these murder fantasies. One, I was throwing her off the top of my building and watching her body, splat, hit the floor. Another, I was throwing her down 20 flights of stairs and watching her tumble to her death. And my favorite one, the one I relived the most, was strangling her and watching the life drift out of her eyes. And these things made me happy. These things brought me joy and relief at a dark time. And I remember telling my best friend about at the time, Evan, the look of horror and shock on his face, and he's like. Starts backing up, and he's like, man, you need to see a shrink. Like, this is not okay. So I looked into therapy. I looked into seeing a shrink. And while I was looking to find the right therapist, because this is not me. I'm not a murderer. I don't have fantasies of hurting anything. But I found out it's totally normal for victims to fantasize about harming their perpetrators. It's totally normal, and it usually subsides on its own. And it did. After three or four months, for me, it went away. And I'm back to releasing spiders that I catch inside my house. Let them outside. But for a while there, yeah, it was dark. I had no recourse other than fantasizing about killing her.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, it's funny because I was going to ask you what your favorite was, but you already said,

[Jonathan Walton]

I look back at that man I was and I don't recognize that I'm not a killer. But listen, until you've been effed over by someone you swore loved you and then you find out it was all a scam for years, it was a four year long con, the rage you feel is just, you know, ineffable.

[Jordan Harbinger]

What I liked about the book that I read was most books on scams, they don't have real life experience. It's like a guy, well, there's Frank W. Abagnale who's just a con man and you know, lied about everything. But then there's other scam books that are like, don't do this, don't do that, don't do this. And the perspective is kind of usually I'm so smart I would never get scammed. And I'm telling you the things that I do that keep me from getting scammed. And whenever I read something like that, I kind of put the book down after the first chapter. Because I know some con men and I know some anti con men who are like magicians that expose con men. And one of the things that they always say is some variation of if you're the type of person that thinks they would never get scammed, you're exactly the kind of person that I want to meet because I'm going to scam the shit out of you. And so anybody who writes a book that's like, I'm scam proof and you can be too. It's kind of like, okay, so you just don't understand that you're vulnerable to this because you think you're too smart. And so your advice has an Every single thing in that book that that person writes has an asterisk next to it, which is, hey, this is kind of untested and may not work.

[Jonathan Walton]

Yeah. And it's also a level of victim shaming. Right. I'm too smart for that. And I say that in chapter one of my book. Con artists, they don't outsmart you. They're not smarter than you. They out feel you.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yes.

[Jonathan Walton]

They create this emotional bond. They get a hook into your emotions and into your heart and they trick you into falling in love with them or falling in love and caring about something, they created a cause or something. Because once you're making decisions with your heart and not your head, you're going to get scammed. And yeah, I double down on what you just said if you think I could never get scammed. Yeah, you're exactly who they're looking for.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yes.

[Jonathan Walton]

Because you don't think it can happen to you and that's when it happens to you.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Exactly. And the whole emotions versus logic thing, a lot of people who are smart, they're just like, no, I'm really smart. I look into things and I'll hear this from other people who they'll go, oh, how did you get screwed over on such and such business deal? Didn't you have an agreement? And I'm like, I'm a lawyer, of course I had an agreement. What you're not understanding, it's like this Dunning Kruger thing. Like, what you don't understand is, oh, like someone will go, well, that'll teach you a lesson about not having a contract in place. And I'm like, dude, do you think we didn't have a contract in place? How do you sue a Dubai company with a Russian guy running it who you thought you trusted, who sent you a fake bill of goods? It's fraud. It's a crime. It would trick anybody who does business as a matter of course because it's fraud. You're not smarter than me for having not had this opportunity to get scammed. You just don't run in circles where you would have even had this. It's like infuriating, right, because it's like, I wouldn't have gotten scammed. Dude, no one's calling you for this because you're literally too small of a fry. Ok? I wouldn't. Don't count your winning chips just yet, pal. But it's the emotions that get involved too. Like, oh, I would never get scammed. I would always check on a deal. Would you? If you did it with your cousin? Well, my cousin wouldn't scam me. Are you sure about that? Because that's who scams you. Family members, people you're friends with. These people just that when they write stuff like this, they just don't get it. You know what I mean?

[Jonathan Walton]

I agree 1,000%. And that's exactly what I lay out is the fact that most people are operating under this false belief, this assumption that a con artist is somewhere out there, someone you don't know. But that's not true. Everyone listening and watching this right now, I guarantee you. You know, a con artist Right. There is a con artist in your life right now. They just haven't scammed you yet. And the people they are scamming, your friends, your family, your acquaintances, they're not talking about it. The vast majority of victims who get conned don't tell anyone. And that lets the con artist scam again and again and again. No one's talking about it. I see this all the time. And the other thing, the emotional hook, is not to be underplayed. It's a powerful thing. We're human beings. We're creatures of emotion. My con artist told me her family had disowned her after I confessed that I'd come out as gay, and my family disowned me. I hadn't been home for Christmas in almost eight years, so I was in a raw place from that. So she pounced. And, well, my family disowned me. That bonded us, you know, we weren't just two new friends in Los Angeles. We were like these two discarded souls making each other family when our own families didn't want us. So it's a powerful hook. The emotional bond and the fact that you probably already know a scammer, just like that sounds like you got scammed by someone you knew.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So I haven't been scam scammed, but I've been screwed over on a business deal. And it's the same thing.

[Jonathan Walton]

Yeah.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Because the only difference is the intent from the jump with the other party was not to screw me over. Whereas in a scam, it's the intent from the jump. But really, I was thinking about this towards the end. Like, when you're in litigation with somebody who's really vindictive and has, like, all their ego wrapped into something, it's kind of the same thing. They're going to screw you. They want to torture you, they want to needle you. They get a thrill out of it. They want to keep your money because they can't afford to give you what's rightfully yours. It doesn't. The sort of end result is the same, even if the function was not originally to screw you over. It became so later on. So a lot of the feelings, I think, are probably quite similar. I think it hurts less to get screwed over in a business deal because everything goes awry and you realize the other person is crap and everything falls apart from there. Whereas with a scam, that person is smiling to your face the whole time. Like in a business deal, they go, all right, we're lawyering up. Screw you. I'm not paying you this and you're like, yeah, you are. And then it's like, da, da, da, da, da. Back and forth, back and forth. Whereas with the scam, they're like, oh, my God, I'm so sorry you didn't get the wire. I. This is ridiculous. Okay, I'm going to Indonesia, and when I come back, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you're like, they're so nice. And then meanwhile, they're like, what an idiot. You know, that's worse. So getting scammed is worse because they take advantage of you. And that's the plan from the jump. And you just think, what kind of sociopath. Whereas a business deal that disintegrates. What an asshole. Yes. What a crazy psychopath that planned this from the very beginning. Not really. You know, it's different.

[Jonathan Walton]

Yeah. And when I look back, you know, she was my best friend. She was like a sister to me for four long years. The moments where she would cry, I'd be consoling her, hugging her, and her tears are wetting my shirt collar.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Right.

[Jonathan Walton]

All over her family that's trying to destroy her. And, like, none of that was real, but she's cry. Like, it's hard for me, my brain, to connect the two things. It's all fake, but I felt emotion from. No, that wasn't real. She's an actress. Like, she's so good at crying at the drop of a hat. And even though I'm a gay guy, a crying woman has a power over me. I was raised by a single mother who cried a lot, I guess. I don't know. But a crying woman, a damsel in distress, is a powerful lure that I fall for and I fell for. And it just reinforced what she was saying. This was a woman being attacked and disowned by her family because they're trying to get her disinherited. And. And the tears really sold it. My God.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That's another level of sort of psychopathy, right? Is like, these people. I look at the amount of work that these scammers in your book put into scamming other people, and it's like, get a job. You'd be great at it. You'd be so good at sales, you know, where you could make millions of dollars selling something and it wouldn't put you in federal prison. But they don't want to do that. Right? The. The whole thing is, I got one over on these people, and I'm better than them. That's what's crazy.

[Jonathan Walton]

Yeah, you nailed it. I mean, they are psychopaths. You know, a professional con artist is a psychopath. And they're not like you and me. We get a thrill from riding a roller coaster and wee like, that's fun. But for them, the fun is creating these worlds that do not exist and watching with a godlike sense of glee as we say what they want us to say. We do what they want us to do. It's like they're directing a movie. We're all their actors, but we don't know it, but they do. And that's what they get off on. That's what brings them joy. They're not regular people. A regular person would lose sleep. Yeah, wondering, how am I going to keep all these stories straight? I told this guy this. I got this woman doing this. I'm a psychic. I'm a psychologist. No, no, no, I'm a witch. No, no, no. I'm a Satan worshiper. Lucia Belia, I started my own satanic church. She had all these characters going. How do you keep them straight? It would drive a regular person mad.

[Jordan Harbinger]

It really would.

[Jonathan Walton]

But it makes a con artist happy and fulfilled.

[Jordan Harbinger]

They create all this chaos that they're just controlling around them. It's really actually insane. You mentioned before shame. Most people who get scammed are ashamed. So this helps the con artist continue to con others because someone gives them 30 grand and doesn't want to say anything, and they do their best to cover it up, which is a dream for the con artist. Right? Like, oh, you're never going to tell your husband. You're going to continue to stress out about this until basically he does a financial audit in 10 years and wonders where the savings from the last three years went. I mean, you know, it's crazy. And you had to sort of get around that to send her to jail because otherwise the shame allows them to cover and keep going.

[Jonathan Walton]

Absolutely. And two important points I want to make here is, number one, it's actually one of the red flags. It's red flag number 13, TMI. They use this TMI technique. Too much information. Where you meet a con artist for the first time. New girlfriend, new boyfriend, new friend, new neighbor, in my case, and all of a sudden they start opening up to you and revealing all these personal details and these dark secrets of their lives. And that's powerful. It does two things. Number one, it makes you think, oh, wow, this person must really trust me to tell me their deep, dark secrets. And number two, it makes you start revealing your deep, dark secrets to them. So by the time the money changes hands, could be weeks, could be Months could be years in my case. You don't want to go to police because the con artist knows all your stories, knows all your secrets. And the last thing you want to happen is to have to recite that to a police officer. Or God forbid, you're sitting on the stand and they're cross examining the con artist. And is that true? Did you do that? You know, and sudden you're on trial for your stuff. So that's what keeps victims quiet. But I look back at my own life and I wonder what made me so different. How am I the one to write this book about these 14 red flags? Nobody came up with this before me. Okay, it had to be me. But another reason I'm the perfect vessel for this. Early on, I was a TV news reporter. My first on air job, I was 24, 25 years old, KBB TV in San Antonio. I'd never been on the air before and I got hired as a feature reporter, right, to do, like, fun stories. So I spent all day writing and shooting my story and getting it edited and I fronted it. First night on the air, never been on the air. I'm a kid and I was a hit. The anchors applauding and laughing. At the end of my story, I walk back into the newsroom, standing ovation from producers and reporters and photographers and the guy who hired me, Alan Little, God rest his soul, and Greg Kelfkin, my God, I felt like a king of the effing world. And then 60 seconds later, I go to my desk and I get my first viewer voicemail. And it's this angry Texas woman and she's like, you bald headed m effing faggot. You so effin ugly, you b. Like, she tore into me and I laughed it off while people were watching because it was on speaker and everyone heard it and I thought, oh, this is funny. But inside I was dying. I went home that night, I fell asleep coiled in the fetal position, crying because I'm like, I can't do this job. Like, what am I? Am I this brilliant, funny reporter that would go on to win Emmys and get applause? Or am I too ugly to be on tv? Like this angry woman who hate? Like, what am I? What am I? And I'm 24, 25 years old. And over the ensuing weeks, I learned out of sheer necessity because I couldn't do a job like that without knowing I can't care what anyone thinks. I can't solicit anyone's opinion about what I'm doing. Because if you ask 10 people, what do you think of this? What do you think of this? What do you think of this? You're going to get 10 different opinions, and I'll never get any work done. I got. I'm on a schedule, you know, turning a package a day, we call it in the news business. It's a herculean task. It's hard. You got to shoot, right? Come up with an idea, go shoot it, interview people, track it, write it, edit it together like, and then run to get it on the news just in time, every freaking day. So I learned early on not to care what people think, not knowing what a blessing that experience would become. Because when I got conned and I went to police and people asked me, weren't you scared to go to police? Weren't you ashamed? Weren't you worried what they would think? No, it never occurred to me. Because at that point, I'd had two decades of practice not caring. It literally never occurred to me, and it surprised me. In all these cases I investigate, it is the chief concern of every victim. Like, what are people going to think? Like, I really didn't care.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah. This is interesting. You also mentioned that reporting to the police is essentially an art. How is reporting a scam to the police? Well, maybe it's like a TV show pitch, given your industry.

[Jonathan Walton]

Yeah. Pitching a criminal case to police is like pitching a television show to a network executive. You gotta make it sexy, you gotta make it interesting. You gotta do the work and tell the story for them. Most victims think you can go to police and you say you were scammed and the emotion, and you're crying. They don't care. They'll turn you away. And they turn a lot of victims away. They turn the majority of victims of scams away. They tell them, quote, it's not a crime. Go hire a lawyer and sue this person. It's not a crime. Especially if there's any kind of forged paperwork involved that turns cops off right away, because that tells them civil, not criminal.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Which is not correct, because forgery is a crime and fraud is a crime.

[Jonathan Walton]

Exactly. But the way the hierarchy is, you're pitching this cop on the front lines, right? And it's. He's the judge and executioner. He's going to decide if a crime happened, and if he doesn't think a crime happened, he's not going to take a report. Simple as that. And you think a guy in a badge. I remember when the cop turned me away, he's like, it's not a crime. I'm like, okay, he Must know what he's talking about. He's got a badge. But he was wrong. And I pushed back and I found dozens of other victims. And I built a strong criminal case on my own that they could not ignore. And I presented to them on a silver platter. I made it sexy and exciting.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Walton]

And that's what you have to do. You can't just go to police willy nilly. You gotta pick a time. I recommend Sunday and a 5am when no one's there. You have an audience with a cop and you gotta vanna White present your evidence, and you gotta write up an affidavit. You gotta get witness statements. And I show people how to do this in the last chapter of my book because I realize in so many victims who call me for help, and I end up investigating their cases, most of them, the cops already turned them away. And I send them back armed.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I don't want to disparage cops, but I will say that everybody looks for ways to make their job easier. Like for journalists, if you basically write the whole article for them, they'll sort of rewrite the thing and go, yeah, all right, I'll cover you. I mean, I've had cops tell me that package theft off my porch wasn't really a crime. And I'm like, I got to draw the line here. Palace, how long have you been doing this job? Just write the report. And he was like, you can file one online, but I'm not gonna take one. And I was like, you, sir, are useless. But I also kind of get it. Like, it's the 8,000th package theft of the week in San Jose, California. You don't want to fill it out, you're not gonna go after them. I have nothing to give you other than, gee, someone took something off my porch, maybe. I think kinda so who cares? And the answer is, my insurance company and Amazon at that time cared because it was an expensive item. And so I need this report because I'm not paying for this. And Amazon needs this for their insurance. So you are going to sign this effing report or I am not letting you out of my house. You know, it was that kind of thing, but it was. That's how ridiculous it is, right? They'll say, well, this isn't really a crime. And it's like, this is the definition of theft. Okay, this is the easiest crime. But when something gets complex, a lot of times cops are either too new and not trained at this, or they go, man, it's early. My coffee hasn't kicked in yet. I can't really wrap my head around why this is a crime. So it's civil. I mean, say this is another real example. A friend of mine had a bunch of cryptocurrencies stolen from him, and they were like, well, it's out of our jurisdiction. And I was like, no, dude, the cryptocurrency, yes, it's on the blockchain, which exists sort of wherever, but it's in every jurisdiction because it's on the freaking blockchain. And it was your cryptocurrency that you have technically custody of in your home. And the cop was just like, but it's on the Internet. And I was like, just get out your little pad and let somebody. Let somebody with more than three brain cells decide if this is a crime. How's that? Because they just couldn't wrap their mind around it. Because cop's defense, he's probably never heard of bitcoin at the time, so he thought it was data theft, which also they said was not a crime, which is also wrong. It's just they don't get this stuff. They get someone smash windows, someone came in, grab TV and leave. That's what they understand. I kind of get it. I understand why that's the limit. The FBI usually handles the other stuff. They're marginally better at understanding when a crime has occurred. But again, I'm not trying to crap on these guys. They're kind of the backbone of safety in our society in many ways. But everybody wants their job to be as easy as possible, and sometimes this is just not the way to do it right. Reporting something right.

[Jonathan Walton]

And that's definitely a factor. But the other factor that I think is more the majority of cases that people don't consider, you know, when you're the victim, you kind of have tunnel vision and you think everyone's against you. But, you know, I've since made friends with a lot of detectives and investigators and FBI agents and prosecutors. I've been fortunate. I've done six seasons of that podcast, Queen of the Con. I've interviewed a bunch of them. So I kind of know how the system works now. And it's not that they don't want to do the work. It's that especially in major metropolitan areas like Los Angeles or New York or even San Jose or, you know, big cities, there is so much bloodshed. There are people who got beat up and raped and shot. Those take precedence. Those get everyone's attention, and they're overwhelmed. These cops are overwhelmed. So it's almost like Being in a triage unit on the front lines of World War II, it's like you got a guy coming with a little sore and a cut, and you got a guy missing an arm and his eyes blown out. You know, send the cut away. Let's deal with the missing arm guy. So it's like that. Like, you know, your scam pales in comparison to what they're dealing with. So. And nobody tells victims this, but I say it again and again in the book, the onus is on you, the victim, to make your case.

[Jordan Harbinger]

What really opened things up for me, aside from just being a lawyer and seeing some of the inside of this, was I just couldn't help but notice that when I was in New York City, if a crime occurred and I reported it or somebody else reported it, it was always, always, always, quote, unquote, a civil matter or not a big enough deal for the cops. And if the cop was related to the victim, they had an APB out on the person that took the cell phone from the taxi cab in Lower Manhattan on a Friday night. And I was like, aha. They can do things if the incentives are there. If Aunt Mabel is going to find out that her, you know, nephew cop didn't do shit when her, you know, son's phone was stolen, that's going to be annoying for him. And he's going to figure out how to remedy that situation. If there's no consequence other than yet another citizen is sort of mildly disgruntled with the police, they're not gonna give a shit. That's just the fact of the matter. And you're right, there's somebody else who's got a sexual assault sitting there trying to file a report with shaking. And they're obviously going to be more important in that moment than the fact that you left your Bitcoin to some dude in Pakistan. Now, here's something that won't ruin your life. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Boll and Branch. People spend about a third of their lives in bed over the course of just 10 years. That's like 30,000 hours with your sheets. So when you look at it that way, investing in good bedding, it's not indulgent. It's just a smart upgrade. And that's why we're so into Boll and Branch. Their signature sheets are made from 100% organic cotton. They feel incredible buttery soft because you want to sleep in some butter. Breathable, instantly more comfortable the moment you climb into bed. They somehow make your whole bed feel cooler, cleaner and more put together and and you won't have to laugh at your own jokes if you buy these. And the thing about bad sheets is they don't usually fall apart all at once. First they start slipping off the corners, then they feel a little scratchy, a little thinner, a little warmer than they should. You get used to it. And then finally you replace them with bowl and branch and you realize just how much better sleep can feel because again, you're sleeping in some juicy soft butter. It's one of those upgrades that pays off every single night. And I can personally say they really do get softer with every wash. We wash ours every week and they just keep getting better and butterier.

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[Jordan Harbinger]

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[Jordan Harbinger]

If you're wondering how I manage to book all these great authors, thinkers, creators every week, it is because of my network. And I'm teaching you how to build your network for free [e-mail] Now I teach this stuff to three letter agencies in law enforcement and it has been brought to my attention that con artists are almost certainly also using these techniques. So what better reason do you need than to learn them for yourself so you can see if they're being applied to you in a way that's white hat or black hat. The best way to avoid being manipulated is to know how these things work. This course is designed for you to be able to apply this in a non manipulative white hat way. Six minutes a day is all it takes and many of the guests on our show subscribe and contribute to the course. Come on and join us. You'll be in smart, honest company where you belong. You can find the course again all free and free of [e-mail] now back to Jonathan Walton. Your book is helpful. It goes through all these red flags. Red flag number one, I'm here to help essentially somebody who is overly helpful. Is that fair? I would love to go through what the red flag is and then maybe like a brief story of this in action so that people can really internalize the concept.

[Jonathan Walton]

Absolutely. And the case I write about in the book is the Eric Kramer case. For this red flag, Most con artists, 90% of the time in the cases I've investigated, and we're talking hundreds of cases over the past eight years, the con artist enters the victim's life offering to help. Because who doesn't love a helper? My con artist offered to help me and retired NFL quarterback Eric Kramer, his con artists offered to help him. He had battled depression on and off for 20 years, probably CTE, but we won't know for sure until you know, he's that there's an autopsy after he dies. So his son died of a drug overdose and his mother died and his father was diagnosed with cancer and he was in a really dark place. So he checks himself into a motel room, puts a gun to his head, pulls the trigger, but he lives. But he's got the brain capacity of a six year old for a couple years. And during his recovery, a con artist swoops in an ex girlfriend who immediately sensed upon checking on him that he doesn't remember what happened in their relationship and she wants back in. So she gets in his life, convinces his friends and family that she just wants to help. She wants to help him recover. Before long, she moves into his house. They start to get suspicious. They notice Amazon packages Piling up on the doorstep. They're from her. She quits her job. She starts taking hundreds of dollars a day off of his credit card and cash advances and buying Visa gift cards at Walgreens. Like, that is the currency of scammers, right? Gift cards.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So it really is. Like, the fact that those exist, I would love to see from these companies what percentage of these are legit business. Like, oh, we sold $10 million in iTunes gift cards. Okay, but what percentage of that was redeemed for songs in Apple Music? And the answer is going to be, like, 0.1%. The rest of it's going to be scammers abroad.

[Jonathan Walton]

Scammers? Yeah. Be suspicious of gift cards. Yeah. So once she figures out they're onto her and they've gone to the sheriff's department and there's a criminal investigation, what does she do? She marries him. Now he's got the brain capacity of a child, so he just says yes to whatever. So secret ceremony, no friends and family, she marries him and continues scamming him. By the time he comes to, he regains his mental capacity. You know, all of a sudden, three years into it, three years into his healing, and he realizes she's scamming him, and he tells her to get out of his house. She calls the cops and runs another scam that he beat her. So the cops show up, and because of O.J. simpson, they arrest Eric Kramer.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Immediately.

[Jonathan Walton]

Headlines across the country, retired NFL quarterback Eric Kramer, you know, in jail for battery, and I fear for my life. They're quoting her court records that she fears for her life. It was all another scam. So.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Right.

[Jonathan Walton]

Long story short, that woman eventually pled guilty. She was charged, arrested, pled guilty, but she cost Eric More than $700,000.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Oh, wow.

[Jonathan Walton]

She would have gotten more if not for the people in Eric's life and stepped up and stepped in and helped him. But it all started. She offered to help. And who doesn't love a helper? So that is red flag number one. Con artists aren't like regular people. When there's a disaster going down, that's when they come out. When everyone's running away from something, a professional con artist is heading towards it because they know there is money to be made in offering to help. You don't actually have to help. People are just blinded and distracted by the shine of the offer.

[Jordan Harbinger]

It reminds me of whenever there's a hurricane in Haiti and stuff like that. You get those texts that are like, donate to the Red Cross. We urgently need blood, but we're you know, your $20 will do also. And then you're like, why is the URL for the donation to the Red Cross ZyxABCW XYZ slash donate. That is not an official Red Cross URL. And then you're like, oh, my God. Millions of people got this text. This text is preying on millions of people who saw a news report about a tsunami, and these people are just stealing this money. Like, I'm always so curious. I'm like, I want to be a fly on the wall in this guy's house and just be like, what is your life like when you are this shitty of a human being?

[Jonathan Walton]

I don't think it's that. I don't think it's that they think they're shitty or something bad happened. I think con artists, psychopaths are different people. They enjoy the scam. They don't think of it as evil at all. They get a sense of a thrill, a godlike sense of, I created this from nothing, and look, I'm getting money now. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. I'm the shit. You. And I keep ascribing regular morals and values and feelings to these people, but. But I don't even think they're people.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, I agree with you.

[Jonathan Walton]

I think they're caricatures of human beings.

[Jordan Harbinger]

This is one reason why I'm like, I have like a. I guess you'd call it a strong sense of justice. When I find somebody who is a scammer or something like that, I will dox them. You know what that is?

[Jonathan Walton]

Yeah.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I will go the extra mile. And I've had FBI agents in my house that are like, why do you want to take this person down so bad? And I'm like, they're like, do you know them? Do they scam someone? You know? And I'm like, no. And they're like, but why? And I'm like, you guys can relate to this. You're FBI agents. I want to see them just crying behind bars and being like, why me? And being like, because you're a piece of shit. Have fun. You're here for 10 years. Saddle up. Buck up, buttercup.

[Jonathan Walton]

Same.

[Jordan Harbinger]

You're going to be here for a minute. I just. I that feeling, I will float out of that prison just on a cloud of air.

[Jonathan Walton]

I mean, it's a public service. Yeah, because you're putting them out of commission and you're saving untold numbers of people from getting scammed. So you're. If you're doing God's work, God knows Absolutely.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah. It's thrilling. Plus also when you can commit a borderline criminal hacker type act against a scam center in Dubai, I'm kind of like, this is a victimless crime. Yes, I'm stealing all of your records. This is a hypothetical, people. Yes, I'm stealing all of your personnel records and handing them over to the FBI. But you know what? Screw you. You're a scam center. I don't really care if it results in a bunch of you getting beaten to death by your Chinese triad bosses. You're scammers. Who cares? It's your problem. You signed up for this. I don't give a crap. You're gonna end up at a Dubai prison getting tortured by the guards. Oh, well, guess you drew a bad hand this time. Should have thought of that. I don't really care.

[Jonathan Walton]

I love it. That's great.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Red flag number two. Kind too quick. Tell me about Mayor, because this was kind of her initial entree into your life, was it not?

[Jonathan Walton]

Absolutely, yes. She was a new neighbor. My con artist was a new neighbor. Someone I knew and met and liked immediately because she stepped out of the fray and offered to help. Our building lost our pool. We had this gigantic tropical paradise kind of pool in the middle of downtown la, shared by three different buildings. And our building didn't want to pay for repair, so they took it to court and they blocked us out. And we were mad. And I put up flyers everywhere. Let's get the pool back. I galvanized our building and got hundreds of people on board in this effort to get the pool back. And as I say that to you now, I realize me putting up that flyer all over and me stuffing that flyer under everyone's door in our building, including the woman who would go on to scam me. I was inadvertently revealing all I needed to about myself to give her the idea of the perfect con just for me. She must have been salivating, licking her lips, reading that flyer and thinking to herself, wow, this guy's a do gooder. I'm going to make him do good for me. Because that's exactly what she went on to do. So she took over the meeting. She offered to help. She said her boyfriend is this married politician who sued our building and can get the pool back and blah, blah, blah. And we all believed it. She was dating a married politician, but he had no idea about the pool situation, nor was he helping. But again, the help doesn't have to be real to get in. Because by then she was in. We loved her. And then red flag Number two came out too kind, too quick. She took my husband and me for dinner, paid the $700 bill. She was wining and dining us frequently. She bought us gifts. She got my sister these 20 designer dresses that she said her client was a costume designer in Hollywood is going to throw them away. They're brand new, like Christian Dior, like big time designers. And my sister trying them on. Crying. She's crying. She's so happy. Con artists are too kind, too quick. They're going to buy you dinner, they're going to walk your dog, they're going to watch your kids. Maire took us on vacations to Palm Springs and paid for everything. Like it was an investment. For her, though she was investing and it worked. Like someone takes you on a vacation, how do you not love them?

[Jordan Harbinger]

Two gay guys from LA going to Palm Springs that name a more iconic trio, I guess. Yeah, that's. She got your number, pal.

[Jonathan Walton]

Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah. No, we. Listen, looking back, she was just laying out the breadcrumbs and I was just eating them up, unknowing.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But I hope your sister kept the dresses after all this.

[Jonathan Walton]

Oh, yeah, she did.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Good. At least she got something out of the deal. So I just. I find some of the details about this person, this mayor, are comical. Right? I mean, they're at your expense. So I'm sorry to say that, but some of them.

[Jonathan Walton]

No, it's okay. They are absolutely.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Like, she comes back and she's got all these bandages on her legs and you're like, oh, my God, what happened? Well, I have lupus. And you find out you just had liposuction and it's like, oh, for God's sake.

[Jonathan Walton]

But listen, lupus. Someone tells you they have lupus, number one, do you question them?

[Jordan Harbinger]

Of course not.

[Jonathan Walton]

No. And then the other, the. She. A lot of these medical scams she was great at, I come to find out she convinced our landlord that she had cancer and was getting chemo. And our landlord let her skate rent free for six months.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Whoa.

[Jonathan Walton]

Like, when someone tells you they have cancer, you just believe them.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Walton]

The reason the landlord believed her, she had evidence. Right. So come to find out, my con artist Mare was £300 years ago and she got gastric bypass surgery and got thin. And part of getting gastric bypass surgery is malnutrition. Right. So she would frequently get low blood iron. She would intentionally let her iron get so low that she'd have to be admitted into a hospital for an iron transfusion, which is not a major thing. They Put you in a hospital bed, they hook you up to an iv, you get the transfusion, you go home. But it was when she was getting these transfusions that she would create because she could keep her iron up if she wanted to, but she wanted that hospital because she would have the nurse take a picture of her in a hospital bed hooked up to tubes and wires, and then she text that picture to the landlord. I'm sorry, I can't pay rent. I'm in the hospital getting chemo. It's so evil, but so geniusly effective.

[Jordan Harbinger]

It's nuts. And when people think I would never get scammed, it's like, okay, think about situations like this. I just did a show the other day that was about cybersecurity, and this is very apt. Because the guy said, whenever I consult for companies or government agencies, they always say, we want 100% security. And the problem with having 100% security, you then have 0% functionality. Basically like, you want a secure phone, smash it and burn the pieces. This actually makes sense here because people go, I would never get scammed. Okay, then just don't have any relationships, don't have any friends, never do any business, and don't communicate with anyone. Okay, you're scam proof, Kind of, I suppose. Now, how's your quality of life? Do you have good relationship? Oh, wait, no. You don't have any friends, you don't have any family that you talk to, you don't have any business relationships. Okay, so you're scam proof. Kind of. Maybe this is another. I think I'd asked this years ago on this very show, why are psychopaths still in society? Why haven't they sort of been bred out over the past, you know, hundreds of thousands of years? The answer is because some psychopaths serve a function, right? They're surgeons, they're CEOs, they're leaders. Whatever it is, we need them. The other thing is, though, society doesn't adapt to them because they're, one, a small portion of society. But two, in order to adapt, to defend everyone against psychopathic behavior, we would have to shut down the level of trust in society that allows things to function. When I go to a restaurant, they don't go, well, you better pay first in cash, pal, because we don't know if you're good for it. And you're like, okay, so you're carrying around a wad of cash to have your dinner and did it? No, you order the food, they bring you everything. You lay the card in there and they just Assume that you're not going to call the bank and say it was fraud and yada yada. And that works. 99.99% of the time, society would grind

[Jonathan Walton]

to a halt without trust.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Right.

[Jonathan Walton]

Nothing would get done. You wouldn't answer your door or your phone or anything.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So, like, we have to go, oh, she's in the hospital getting chemo. That's probably true. Because who in their right mind would lie about this? That is a normal human reaction. I know there's people going, I would never let her do this. And yada, yes, you would. Or you're kind of an asshole. And that's probably. You have other problems if you don't believe somebody who tells you they have lupus and then shows you a photo of them in the hospital getting a blood transfusion. Right. Like, it's just. It would be very weird to not believe that story.

[Jonathan Walton]

Agreed. And con artists know this better than most, and that's why they engineer these situations and these photographs and these lies to text and email you and convince you of anything.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Because the idea that it's all chess moves to gain trust and later abuse it, that's crazy work to even think like that. And in very, very, very, very rare cases, that is what's happening. So you've got to look out for a, I assume a combination of these red flags. So red flag number one.

[Jonathan Walton]

Absolutely.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I'm here to help.

[Jonathan Walton]

And I say this in the book. You know, on their own, each of the red flags is not a. They're, you're being conned or you're in the presence of a professional scammer. But as they start to compound, if you see three or four or more, you are being scammed.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Right?

[Jonathan Walton]

If someone's waving four of these 14 red flags, guarantee they're gonna be waving some others really soon. And this is a game I play with myself all the time now, because I say, if I met my con artist, Mayor Smith, today, knowing what I know now about how con artists operate, having written this book, Anatomy of a con artist, the 14 red flags to spot scammers, grifters, and thieves, would I know she's a con artist? And the answer is absolutely. Looking back, she was waving all the flags almost immediately out of the gate. She was waving all of them very quickly. So it's obvious now, but until somebody catalogs and makes notes and points them out what they are, you don't know. You just think, oh, what a kind, sweet person with a lot of drama who has this great job and she's Always showing me her phone. And, you know, there's an element of scarcity and beak wedding and she's got a great day job and she needs a wire, and she. She's had 46 different addresses. Until someone connects the dots for you, it's like, I liken it to this. Times Square, New York City, right? Thousands of people are just rushing by you. You don't notice anyone. But if I say, look for the guy with the brown bowler hat, all of a sudden you can spot that guy hundreds of feet away coming at you. Like, if I point out what to look for, it's not just a sea of humanity flowing over you. You see that effing bowler hat and, you know, to be on the lookout for it. So these red flags are similar. I point them out. This is what it looks like. How did she come into my life? Oh, that's right. She wanted to help me. That's how they all get in. They want to help you now that you kind too quick. And red flag number three, drama, drama, drama.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Walton]

Once you love a con artist, God forbid, once you like or love a con artist, once they're in your life, the drama starts. They create drama. They create emergency situations to throw you off. And then whatever thing you've told them about your life, they will invent stories around that to freak you out. You'll say, my boyfriend's stalking me. I'm worried. Blah, blah. They'll say, well, I saw him at your house last night, so now you're freaking out. You're being stalked. But none of that's true.

[Jordan Harbinger]

This reminds me of when I lived in Ukraine. This is like 25 years ago. They were cyber cafes then, so you could see what other people were doing on the Internet. And I spent a lot of time in there because I was, like, you know, bored and homesick. And I remember there was a guy sitting with, like, three or four just very bored women, very bored. They would chain smoke and yarn about whatever. And I finally was like, I want to look at what this guy's doing, because what is this guy doing with these women who are bored being here? He's not playing a game. Who. He's emailing people and he's talking in Russian. And I would look at the screen and I'd see, like, a British guy. He's like, hello, love, I'm just looking for my soulmate. And your pictures were amazing. And he's reading the email to her and translating it into Russian so she can, like, remember the details of the storyline with each of the guys. Because she might eventually have to do a call with him or something and recount some of this. And then he would reply like, oh, what's really sad lately is that my mother is very sick and she needs medicine. And it, like, the dumbest but the drama, right? And then I was like, I bet the next email was this guy offering to send her 300 bucks for the medicine that her grandma needs or her mom needs or whatever it is. And it was always that, because I remember. So one time I followed them, which is totally not a thing you should do to scammers, but I did because I was 20 and I didn't give a shit. And I followed them and they went to essentially a Western Union office. And I was like, aha. They're getting money wired to them from the people that they're emailing. When I came home from Ukraine, my friends were at the airport and I thought, oh, they're here for me. And I said, what are you guys doing here? And they said, my uncle is meeting a woman that he's been dating from Ukraine. And I said, I'm the last person off the plane because I got detained by customs and I had to fill out a police report because I got robbed by customs in Ukraine. Typical at that time. Wow. There's no one else. And they're like, yeah, so are you sure she didn't get detained? And I was like, I mean, I can't be sure she didn't get detained, but I am definitely the last one off this flight. Like, I am the last one, last one, last one who came out of that immigration office and customs were. Because I was there for an extra 45 minutes or hour, whatever it was. And they were like, oh. And they stayed there for a while. And I called the next day, and I was like, what happened? Did she ever show up? No. And then weeks later, yeah, she said she got robbed on the way to the airport and her ticket got stolen and she got beat up and she needs money for the hospital and then money for another flight ticket. And I was like, this is a scam. I told them the story I just told you about the guys at the cyber cafe. And basically he said, I can't afford to send you any more money. And she dropped him like a hot stone, right. Because he was juiced out. I said, test this woman. If he says, I can't help you with any money right away, watch her evaporate. And that's exactly what happened. He was heartbroken, obviously, but, yeah.

[Jonathan Walton]

Cause up until that point, he Loved her.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Walton]

And this is what I say again and again. Love is the most powerful force there is in the universe. You know, people will kill for love. People will die for love. And if a con artist can get you to love them, that's what they're trying to do. You're sunk. You'll do anything because you love them. The love blinds you.

[Jordan Harbinger]

It was sad looking at a guy holding a sign that says welcome to America. And, you know, and she's just like a bullshitter who lives in Odessa, Ukraine. It was just really sad.

[Jonathan Walton]

Yeah. And again, con artists don't. They don't outsmart you. They out feel you. Right. Love is a feeling.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Walton]

Fear is a feeling. Sympathy is a feeling. They use your feelings. They get in there and play you like a harp. They play your feelings. So sympathy. She said her mother was sick and needed. You know, like, how could you not believe someone with this story of woe? And how could anyone not want to help? Of course you want to help. This is someone you care about.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And Mayor was doing this to you too, right? Oh, my family tried to. They told me that. What was the story? They told her Tylenol was candy when she was little and she ate the whole bottle or something.

[Jonathan Walton]

Oh, yeah. So she almost died, she said, when she was a little girl, an Irish estate and her cousins would mess with her. These same cousins who had disowned her now over this inheritance money back when they were kids, they terrorized her and they tricked her into believing a bottle of Tylenol was candy and she ate the whole bottle. And. And she said she died for minutes and they brought her back to life. And she said she remembers talking to an angel and saying that her father's praying really hard for really. They snow you with details, right? And this is a red flag further down in the list, but equally as important, a professional con artist will snow you with stories from faraway places. Why faraway places? Why Ireland? Why Australia? Why 20 years ago in Paris? Because stories from faraway places, they're hard to confirm. And human nature being what it is, and these people being experts at engineering human nature, if we can't prove something's false, we just accept it as true.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Help keep me off the streets and out of your bank accounts by supporting the amazing sponsors who support this show. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Drip Drop. Staying hydrated is one of those things that sounds basic, but it really does affect everything. Your energy, your focus, how you feel during the day, all of it. My wife Jen jokes that I've got a walnut sized bladder, which fair enough, I'm constantly getting up to pee. But staying hydrated matters. The problem is I can't just pound plain old water all day long. That's why I like Drip Drop. A doctor developed proven fast hydration that uses science based formulas for rapid hydration so you feel results fast while getting three times the electrolytes of leading sports drinks. There are 16 original flavors and eight zero sugar plus options and my current favorite is the zero sugar lemon lime. It makes staying hydrated a whole lot easier whether I'm traveling, working out, grinding through a long day, or just drinking like a maniac. No, I'm kidding. Or just feeling a little depleted. It's one of those simple things I keep around because I genuinely notice the difference when I use it. And look, Drip Drop is trusted by firefighters, medical professionals and over 90% of top college and pro sports teams. So I guess I'm in pretty good company Right now.

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[Jordan Harbinger]

This episode is also sponsored by Gusto. Running a business means there's work you actually want to do, and then there's all the admin stuff that somehow takes over your day. Payroll, onboarding, benefits, tax paperwork. But it still has to get done. And if you're doing it manually or juggling a bunch of different systems, it can become a real headache real fast. That's one of the reasons I recommend Gusto. Gusto is an online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all in one remote, friendly, incredibly easy to use. You can pay, hire, onboard, and support your team from anywhere. Gusto simplifies everything. Payroll runs are easy. Payroll tax filing is automatic. Things like direct deposit, onboarding documents, health benefits, workers comp, even 401k options are all built in. It saves time, cuts down on mistakes, and makes the whole business feel more organized. I also appreciate that it's built for small businesses, not giant corporations with giant budgets. It's flexible, straightforward. You don't pay a century until you run your first payroll.

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[Jordan Harbinger]

like this episode of the show. I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment, support our amazing sponsors. They really do make this show possible. All of the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the podcast are searchable and clickable over on the [e-mail] deals got a little search thing going there. Featured sponsors, we try to make it easy as possible, but hey, if you can't find a code, email us jordanordanharbinger.com we are happy to surface codes for you. It really is that important that you support those who support the show. Now back to Jonathan Walton. What I noticed con artists are really good at doing, and I would love if you could come up with an example of this, because I don't think I can. They're really good at telling you something where you know the basic facts of that premise, whatever, are true, and then your mind kind of fills in the blanks in a way. The con artist wants you to fill in those blanks. And you think that part is true, too?

[Jonathan Walton]

Oh, I have examples, absolutely. So. And this is a very common, powerful tool con artists use, right? Every con has a kernel of truth to it. My con artist said she was from Ireland. That was a lie. But she did live in Northern Ireland for nine years. You know, she'd moved there in her early 20s for nine years, married a local and scammed up a storm and disappeared under the COVID of night. So the kernel of truth was she'd lived there. So she knew the culture, she knew the words, she knew how to build a fake story on that tiny kernel of truth. And in my experience investigating all these other victims my con artist scammed, she did stuff like that again and again where there's a little crossover. When she met me, I must have confessed early on that I didn't know much about Ireland. And she lit up, ah, I got a live one. He knows Ireland's a country, and that's it.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Walton]

So she could use my familiarity or my vague familiarity with Ireland and start piling on all these other details that I just accepted, as anyone would. She had. She had a framed Irish constitution hanging on her wall, big parchment paper. It looked legit, like in a museum. And she'd point to the bottom and say, that's my great, great grandfather, the signatory, the founder of Ireland. And I'm like, oh, my God. You're like the founder of Ireland. The lineage is right here standing in front of me in Los Angeles. How crazy. And she told that story with variations to A lot of other people. Sometimes it was her great, great uncle to other. But based on my limited knowledge of Ireland, I just accepted all this other crazy shit she would tell me. Like when she was a little girl, her gran, my gran, she'd say in a weird lilt, Gran would take her to the top of bridges and teach her how to hurl Molotov cocktails down on British soldiers.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, right.

[Jonathan Walton]

Very dramatic, very detailed stories in faraway places. But they all rang true to me because I knew the ground floor fact. She was from Ireland. Okay? So then I just accepted and believed everything else she said with an Irish base, but none of it was real. The only real thing about her whole Irish story was she married an Irish guy and lived there for nine years and scammed a bunch of people.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Another thing they do that I think is interesting is that it's almost counterintuitive. They mingle, the victims. Like you would think that a con artist wants to keep victims separate from one another, not the other way around. But they introduce people to one another. And I think one, they probably get a thrill out of that. Like who? All these people are just one second away from being able to compare notes, but they're not going to do it because I'm controlling the whole play. But it works in their favor because then you're like, oh, we met the lawyer that's helping us with the pool thing. And he's like, oh, I met the TV producer who's helping her with her TV show. But it's like, you're not doing that and he's not doing that. But you never say that because why would you do that in front of her? Like, it's just a whole thing. It's a whole very odd thing. I think they. Again, I'm curious what you think about that, why they do that.

[Jonathan Walton]

I got chills hearing you talk. I gotta say, man, I've done hundreds of interviews plugging the hell out of this book, but you are hands down the only one who truly understands what I'm talking about.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Really?

[Jonathan Walton]

Yes. Yes, you're absolutely right. Mine did that. They all do that because. For the two reasons you mentioned. My con artist would have these cocktail parties and invite multiple victims. She's scamming with different stories.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Walton]

Looking back, I realize at any moment one of us could have said, hey, did she tell you about this 25 million inheritance with the Irish family? And hey, did she tell? But we never did because we only ever made polite conversation. We just met and we're mingling and we're drinking. We're not going to, like, compare notes. But she was at the ready. This is what thrills them. They're not regular people. Could she defuse the situation quick enough? If someone said something, how would she misdirect or redirect or cover that story to explain it? So it's twofold. They do it to. Oh, and I didn't know she was doing this. So at the time I met her, I was producing season four of the hit show Shark Tank for abc. I was a producer on that show. That's true. So when she would introduce me and bring up Shark Tank, I just thought, oh, I'm just talking about what I do. People find it interesting. Yeah, it is interesting. It's a great show. I loved working on it. It was a blast. But really, she was trying to scam people by telling them she can get them on Shark Tank. And now she's introducing them to Jonathan Walton, one of the producers. So I was confirming her con, Right. You know, I was giving her con evidence that it wasn't a con, but it was a con.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Right. And no one's gonna go, oh, good, can you get me on Shark Tank? Because it's like, oh, you're blowing it too early. You gotta play it cool. So they're not gonna say anything.

[Jonathan Walton]

Yeah.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Then you're gonna be on. Right. So it's just a little bit of a. All right, they're gonna say that. They would never say that. And if the person said, oh, you're gonna get me on Shark Tank. Mayor said that. She's gonna go, I did not. And also, you're blowing it. And they're gonna be like, oh, sorry. And you're just gonna laugh it off because.

[Jonathan Walton]

Yeah, I would. I would laugh it off because, yeah, everyone and their mother wants to be in Shark. And it's funny. Shark Tank was crucial in my life in getting that cop to take the police report. Because when I went to him, he turned me away. He said, it's not a crime. I start walking out of the door. I put my hands on the glass door to leave, and something screams in my head, no, this cannot be right. I turn back around. I have a satchel with all my evidence that I printed out. I got emails and phone records and text messages and bank records and credit card statements. And I start telling him, how is this not a crime? You say, I gave her the money, so it's not a crime. But every victim gives the perp the money. Like even a stick up at a 711 with a gun you give them money. This is a crime. And all of a sudden, this cop was impressed by my force and my organization and all the evidence I piled in front of him. And he said, what do you do for a living? And I said, I'm a TV producer. And he's like, are there any shows you worked on that I would have heard of? And I'm like, shark Tank. And his eyes light up, right? He's like, I've been trying to pitch something to the sharks for years. And I'm like, listen, I'll help you if you help me. And he agreed, you know, but Shark Tank, to my defense, multiple times. But, yeah, it was a thing she was using. I found this out years, literally years later, she was using to try to scam people by claiming she could get them in Shark Tank. And then introducing me as Shark Tank producer to people.

[Jordan Harbinger]

It sounds like the antidote to this, if there is one, is check everything, even if you think it'll make you look rude or paranoid. And you mention this in the book, you say it's especially important to call people, they tell you to stay away from.

[Jonathan Walton]

And this is the red flag of isolation. And it's the biggest red flag there is, right? If someone tells you, don't talk to so and so, be suspicious. And if someone starts turning you against so and so, be suspicious. It is so remarkably easy to do, to turn people against each other. And this makes con artists happy. And it's just tragic and sad. One of the cases I've investigated for a couple years is the case of Carol Porter and the con artist. Her name is Bina Fink. In South Florida, Carol's husband died. She was a widow, kind of a kept woman her whole life. Her husband did everything for her. And Bina, classic con artist style, enters her life offering to help, becomes her best friend. Her husband left her a million dollars, right? And she starts whispering in Carol's ear, listen, this guy, this family member, this sister, this brother, these people who've loved you your whole life, they're trying to take your money. So Carol cut off communication with everyone because she thought everyone was coming out to get her money, when really that was just a con artist isolating Carol from everyone who would have talked her out of going along with a con. My con artist did that to me. I had a neighbor in my building who also got scammed. And early on, my con artist told me, and I foolishly believed, but how? I didn't know any better. No one knows any better until you do. She told me this Neighbor was on the run from authorities in Canada. Wanted for murder. Very specific. These lies that con artists tell are very detailed and very specific. The neighbor's name was Sherry. I started avoiding Sherry like the plague. I would see Sherry in the parking garage. I'd run the other way. I'd dodge. And I don't want to have any interaction with her. Come to find out she was scamming Sheri, too. And she told Sheri fake stories about me, that I was mentally deranged and violent, and I beat people up, and I've destroyed her apartment, Mayor's apartment. I broke things. And so Sheri, unbeknownst to me, she sees me in the parking lot, and she's running the other way. And then we're never talking. So mayor is scamming both of us with different stories, and we were none the wiser. And even after, God, it took so long for me to convince Sheri that I'm the good guy. She blocked me on social media. She blocked my number. I had to create a Google account and email her and call her. I had to have other victims send her court records and criminal records of mayor. Finally, she came around, but it took a while. That's how powerful this isolation technique is. It's easy to get people not to talk to each other.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, that's crazy. Mayor has some pretty impressive whoppers that she's told and got away with. So she embezzled money from somebody. She ended up going to jail. And what did she say? Like, oh, I'm guil to go through a period of deep mourning, and my phone's going to be off, and I'll be in Ireland for the month. Or like a monastery. I mean, it was so ridiculous, but it's like, okay, sure, yeah, it was

[Jonathan Walton]

the guy she was scamming, Bob, he was an engineer in Newport Beach. He was going to add her name to the titles of his two homes because she was going to buy him this $13 million mansion with her 25 million inheritance. And he had got a realtor. She got a home inspection. She put an offer in on the home. That's how far she got. And she disappears for 30 days. And she tells Bob that, yeah, her uncle, who's in the Catholic church in Rome, died, and the pope's gonna do a funeral, and she's gonna take a vow of silence. So she's turning her phone off. She's not reachable by phone or email. She's just silent in the Vatican in Rome. And, I mean, he bought it. Yeah, because by Then he thought, she's Irish royalty, she's got billions in Ireland, and now her uncle is high placed in the Vatican and the details are stunning. But it was all bs.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Some of this is just extra levels of gymnastics, though. She uses voice changers. There's fake emails and fake texts that she'll show people. It's just a ton of work, man. It is like, imagine you're like, oh, I'm getting a call from somebody and then on the other end is like a recording of you with voice changer. I mean, it's just. I just can't. It's exhausting even thinking about lying this much. You just can't. I can't relate.

[Jonathan Walton]

I know, but they get off on it and that's a major red flag. We all need to be suspicious and on the lookout for red flag number six. Technology. Con artists use digital screens to sell you their story. So, mayor was always showing me, hey, look what my barristers. I didn't even know what a barrister was. I had to Google it. It's what they call lawyers over there.

[Jordan Harbinger]

It's like a lawyer that goes to court instead of just doing transactional work.

[Jonathan Walton]

Yeah, right. Look what my barrister texted me. Look at my barrister emailed me. Look what my cousin Finton and Tristan and Dermot. Look what they text. Look what their email. So she's building up these characters and I believe they are real, but they're not. She creates Google accounts in their names, texts herself as these people and shows people. Look, look, look. One of the cases that broke my heart, that I investigated, write about in the book dealing with technology. Listen to this, Shia. So this woman, an airline executive, super smart, wealthy woman, meets this guy on Bumblebee. He's an oil and gas man and he's always on the go building an oil rig here, repairing an oil thing here in Russia in the Indian Ocean. He's like an international man. And she's video chatted with him a few times and she's fallen in love with him. It's been four months. They're gonna meet every time. But then he has an emergency. He meets with Obama. You know, he sends pictures of him and Obama. Come to find out, the con man found a guy who looked a little like him and stole pictures and used those pictures. And it was a guy who met Obama. But, well, now you can do it with AI. But this was like 10 years ago. So finally he calls her, talk about technology. He says, listen, I'm on an oil rig in the Indian Ocean. I need to log into My bank to pay this thing. It's like a $5 million drill bit I need, but the Internet is so bad. Here, can you log into my bank account and make this payment for me? She's like, of course. But what does that. Have you ever given anyone your bank login credentials?

[Jordan Harbinger]

Right? Like, oh, I really trust you. I'm giving you this.

[Jonathan Walton]

Exactly. So unbeknownst to this victim, and this is how sophisticated the con can be, he had created a fake bank website that she logged into, and she saw he had, like, a hundred million dollars in the bank, and she made the payment of 5 million, whatever, and she did it. So that did two things for the con. Number one, it made her think, wow, this man loves me. Who's giving me their bank login details. This man must really trust me. And number two, he's loaded. I saw you at a hundred, but all that was fake. Technology is easy to fake. You can create a fake bank account. You can create a fake bank statement in a Photoshop or whatever. So if someone's always using a digital screen to sell you their story, be suspicious.

[Jordan Harbinger]

This reminds me of. I have a friend of a friend of a friend that's as close as I'm gonna say, and he's single, he's kind of a player. I don't always approve of his methods. This is one of those methods, but it is kind of comical. So I'll have someone over, and he'll say, oh, I didn't think you were coming over until 8. And she's like, oh, you said 7:30. And he's like, my bad. Let me just finish this, and I'll go take a shower. And he'll leave his laptop open on the kitchen island, and he's got a fake crypto account that has, like, $480 million in Bitcoin in it. And he's like, I'm just gonna jump in the shower. I'm so sorry. And he'll jump in the shower, and he knows, like, eventually she's gonna walk by the thing while she's getting a drink, even if she's not snooping. And she's gonna be like, holy shit. Right? And then he'll just close it casually when he gets back out and just like. And he'll go, you know what? You can tell who's seen it because the ones who haven't seen it, their attitude doesn't change at all. Everything's fine. Because he's picking up girls in, like, clubs in LA or something, right? So these are, you know, it's casual. And then he's like, the ones that have. They're just so nice after that. Like, you guys deserve each other. But it was just kind of a funny method, right? It makes sense. Oh, look how much I trust you. I'm going to give you this bank login. And then when he asks her to do something with her own money, it's like, well, look, this must be legit. He let me log into his bank and wire $5 million. Why would he then, you know, not use his own money? Oh, the bank is down. Or this. Then, you know, this, that, and the other thing. Now drama, drama, drama, drama, drama, drama. Yeah, it's crazy. This is just crazy. Con artists put a lot of time into wanting to seem better than you. You note this in the book. So they are either involved in philanthropy, they're filthy stinking rich, they're religious and pious, like Mare was with her whole Vatican vow of silence thing. They are involved in all kinds of weird charity stuff that. That's obviously not real. Later on, probably it's so calculated that it makes you think, holy crap, how can anybody really be scam proof? It's very difficult, I would agree.

[Jonathan Walton]

And you know, as much as I know about scams and the red flags, I still. I lose sleep at night worrying, when will the next con artist emerge in my life and how soon can I spot them? Because I don't think I'm immune. They're everywhere. If they find a good lure, something I want, the minute anyone makes me an offer or an opportunity, I'm suspicious and I can't not be. But, yeah, the I'm better than you red flag. Your listeners probably already know, but in case some of them don't, con artist is short for confidence artist. Because they're brilliant at engineering your confidence. They need your confidence. They need you to think highly of them. And they go about that in two ways. They'll brag about themselves, and it's so obvious now, but at the time, you don't know. I'm the best at this. I'm the best at that. I got voted the best at this. My con artist told me that she works for this luxury travel agency. She sells the most Pacific islands vacations in the world. And the prime minister of French Polynesia flies her out first class every month to inspect all the hotels. And it made me think, wow, like, I'm lucky to know her. They want you to feel privileged to know them. So they'll be the best at this, the best at that. They'll paint a picture they donate to charity. They do. They're such great people. How fortunate you are to have them in your life.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Right? Yeah.

[Jonathan Walton]

That's the feeling they will weaponize later. But that's the feeling they need to implant to incept into your brain. They want you to think highly of them.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That makes sense. Crypto scams do this. A lot of crypto scams do this. Right? They'll ask you for an investment. You'll sort of hesitantly put in a couple hundred bucks. They'll show you, look, your investment tripled overnight. Isn't that crazy? And you're like, shoot, I should have put in more money. And then if you try and withdraw, then they will often let you do it. Like, you can take your 200 bucks out now, but you should put it back in and let it roll. And you're like, you know what, I'll put a couple grand in there and see what happens. And then it rolls over and it triples and it quadruples and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then when you're like, I want to take out my $300,000, then suddenly the system is down or you need to pay a transaction fee using a different currency and yada, yada, yada. And. But you're like, but wait, I got my money out, out before. So this part is not a scam. And then it's like, well, wait a minute. Actually it is.

[Jonathan Walton]

Yeah, listen, beak wedding. They let you wet your beak. It's very powerful. And my entire family who did not want me writing about them. And I don't name anyone specifically, but in the book I write about this crazy case. My entire family, cousins, uncles, et cetera, lost millions of dollars in this Ponzi Khan. This guy had created a banking investment type website for his con. He was a. A foreign exchange trader by the name of David Smith. And he did it off the island of Jamaica in Florida and other Caribbean islands too. He got hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Wow.

[Jonathan Walton]

And his trick, he was waving so many flags. Technology by creating this fake site, right. So people could log in and look at their investment growing. His return on investment was 120% a year.

[Jordan Harbinger]

First big red flag.

[Jonathan Walton]

Yeah, but the greed, right, Right. Greed is a powerful feeling. And con artists don't outsmart you. They out feel you. So the greed took over. So my family got swept up in it. Probably 11 members of my family in all. And they would withdraw money and he would let them take out money every month. They're making 10% a month. They would take out money But a lot of them would double down. All right, put it back in. Let it roll, Let it roll. Put it back in. And then another classic technique he used red flag number seven. Scarcity. If you think something's going away, you're going to want it more than ever. So all of a sudden, he shuts down. He says, no more new members. It's an investment club. I'm not letting any new members in. So what happened? His investments went up because suddenly the friend of a friend, hey, you're in. Can you invest this million dollars for me? Hey, can you? Aunts, uncles, cousins, hey, you're in. Can you. So suddenly he doubles and triples the money coming in by telling people no more. When you tell someone no, they want it more. So he ended up scamming hundreds of millions of dollars from a couple thousand people. And 11 of those people were my family members. And if you can see some of your money, it's real. This is legit. But it's not. It's a trick.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I know. Now, you run a criminal background check on anyone that comes into your life in a significant way, even insignificant.

[Jonathan Walton]

I'm a freak, man. I'm a. But here's the thing. It's like Reagan said, trust but verify. You know, I'm friendly, I'm not rude. I'm pretending to trust everyone. But I don't trust anyone. I verify. I look for not just criminal records, but has this person been sued? I look at all the addresses they've lived at, and that's another red flag. Most people will live a total of 11 places in our lives. Right. That's a regular person.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Sure.

[Jonathan Walton]

By the time I met my con artist, she had 46 different addresses.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I was going to say, oh, I might have, like, 15, because when I was younger, I traveled a lot and I worked abroad.

[Jonathan Walton]

But not 46.

[Jordan Harbinger]

No, sir.

[Jonathan Walton]

And that is obvious, because when the gig's up, they gotta move on and scam some other people who don't know them. So they're constantly moving around. But, yeah, when you meet a con artist for the first time, if you don't know what the flags are, the beak wedding, the scarcity, the technology, the I'm better than you, the good day job. And it's not a red flag on its own because obviously we all work. But professional con artists, even though their main occupation is conning, that's not what it appears. Right. They have jobs. They work for AT&T. Mine worked for Pacific Islands Travel Agency, a luxury travel agency in Los Angeles. The case I Write about the con artist worked at the mayor's office.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Jeez.

[Jonathan Walton]

So you would never suspect she's a con artist because she's got a good job. And that's the thing. The job is just the COVID They're just doing the job for the COVID The real occupation is scamming everyone, and no one knows.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That's interesting. That the real moneymaker is the scam.

[Jonathan Walton]

Yes.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So they can afford to be, like, overly generous with the pay they get from work, and they can sort of spend extra time because it's like, whatever. They're compensated elsewhere. How do you run the background? What services are you using to run background checks on people? And also, I'm curious what the level of involvement in your life has to be that triggers this. Right. Like, you go to the gym with someone, you're not running a background check on them yet.

[Jonathan Walton]

Oh, I am.

[Jordan Harbinger]

You are. Wow.

[Jonathan Walton]

I am. Yeah. Everyone I meet, and I meet a lot of people, I'm friendly, but I check them out. Where have they lived? Where are they coming from? Because I'm looking for two things. Obviously, a criminal record, if that exists, or I'm looking for inconsistencies. Well, they told me they're from Kentucky, but I don't see any Kentucky addresses coming up. So that's weird. I look back at my con artist. She introduced herself as Mayor Smith, not her real name. So the ME now would have immediately run Mayor Smith and come up with nothing and thought, huh, that's a fake name. Why is she using a fake name? I would have snapped a picture of her license plate. I would have run her plate and got her legal name, Marianne Elizabeth Smith. I would have run that name, and I would have seen charges for felony, for fraud, for grand theft, for passing bad checks in multiple states, and I would have never talked to her again. I use a couple different sites. One's been verified, one's Intellius. They're also great at bringing up an address history. A lot of courts, you can search for civil records for free or for a dollar or two a search, just go to the counties they lived in and see if they've ever been sued. Because if you're meeting a con artist as an adult, chances are they've been busted a few times already, and they just get better. But they leave a trail. If you know their real name and where they lived, you can find that trail. And I do.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And just like that, trust issues installed, updated, and running in the background forever. You're welcome. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Little Sleepies. If you got kids, you already know the truth. Bedtime can turn onto a full on negotiation. But one thing that's been a reliable win in our house is Little Sleepy's pajamas. Where fans of little sleepies for years before they even sponsored the show. Jen fell hard for the adorable prince, grabbed a couple pairs and then it basically spiraled from there. Now you got a whole drawer full of them. The kids have the cutest matching sets. And yes, we've even gone full. Family matching pajamas. Kind of fun, not gonna lie. And the fabric is the real deal. Ridiculously soft, super stretchy. The kids like wearing them, which means fewer complaints when it's time to change. Plus we've had ours for years. And I can say with confidence these things hold up. That matters when you're buying kid clothes that get worn constantly and washed because you know, lots of stuff gets on those clothes. I'll leave it right there. And they also make a great gift. The prints are adorable, the sizing is easy. Parents are always happy to get something cozy that'll actually get used.

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[Jordan Harbinger]

And now for the rest of my conversation with Jonathan Walton. If it's a good con artist, I was just thinking this. Passing bad checks, what an amateur bullshit thing to do. Write a bad check. Oh, this is when she was sort of cutting her teeth on how to do something that makes real money. Like get people to literally just give you $100,000 over a period of time and not question it. Versus like passing a 300,000 dol dollar check for some crap and getting arrested for like, that's amateur hour. That's white belt shit.

[Jonathan Walton]

It is. But yeah. Just like, dude, no one understands us better than you, man. You're exactly right. She was a teenager getting busted.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Walton]

And each time she got busted, she got better. The con she was running in high school, she would date college guys. I heard this from a guy she dated. And she would pretend to be pregnant and that she would shake them all down for abortion money and they would pay her quickly.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That makes perfect sense. I was actually thinking she was going to say, hey, I'm a minor and I'm going to tell somebody we had slept together and you're going to get charges unless you give me a thousand dollars. I'll go away.

[Jonathan Walton]

But that would be too evil, right? That would just make her look like an Evil bitch as opposed to help me. I don't want to have this baby. It's going to ruin my life.

[Jordan Harbinger]

You're right. Now it's even better. One thing that you, you noted in the book that I thought was quite interesting is you said con artists are the easiest to fool because they're narcissists and they always think they're the smartest person in the room. That was a little counterintuitive, right? Because these are people who have this clever scam. They're manipulating everybody and it's like, oh, no, actually, you're also a sucker. It's just that we're not jerks. That's kind of all it is.

[Jonathan Walton]

Yeah. And, you know, the older I get, I'm 50 now. I realize again and again and again, and I keep. These moments keep happening where this is obvious to me. Life is a series of paradoxes, right? And this is a paradox. How crazy that a woman conning all these people would be the same woman that is so trusting. She was so trusting. And they all are. And it has to do with the same reason if you're a victim or you're someone who thinks, I can never get scammed, you will get scammed. Because your guards are down. You think it can happen. So you're not really worried about it. It's only if you're worried about it can you prevent it. So with con artists, they think they're the lions. We're all lambs, we're nothing. We would never dare to scam them, you know, we would never dare to double cross them. So they're trusting my con artist foolishly. And it led to her demise two years into our friendship. You know, she's like my sister, I love you. I love you on the phone. When we hang up, you know we loved each other. Well, I thought she loved me, but it was all a scam. She calls me frantically. One day I was producing 10 things you don't know for the History channel with Henry Rollins. And I'm at my desk and I get a call. She's like, she's stuck in traffic on the 405 in LA. She can't get into her email from her phone. She thinks she was hacked. She asks me, can you log into my email account to see if I'm hacked? She gives me her password. She trusts me with her password. And she was right to. I'm not gonna do anything. I logged in, she was fine. I said, just restart your phone. That'll probably fix it. And it did. And I forgot that whole thing ever happened because it was in the middle of my workday. I'm busy, I forgot it. And then after two years later, I realized she scammed me. And I still don't remember. And then one morning a couple weeks after I went to police, I'm sitting watching CBS Sunday Morning on my sofa, sipping coffee, and I remember. I'm like, oh, my God. She gave me her password. I know her password. I know her password. I run over, you know, Mission Impossible musics in my head. I run to my computer, I bring up her email. I'm like, is it the same password? My hands are shaking. I type it in. Yes.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Oh, my gosh.

[Jonathan Walton]

And I'm in there. I'm in there. And immediately I change it.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Smart.

[Jonathan Walton]

I start snooping around. I find all these other emails, all these characters she created, they're all linked to that account. And for all those fake accounts for her cousins, Tristan and Dermot and Patridge Clark and her barristers. It's the same password for all the accounts.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Oh, yeah, of course.

[Jonathan Walton]

So I lock her out of all the accounts. And I wasn't the only victim she gave her password to. Another victim she scammed was helping her set up her fire stick on her TV and gave her a password for the fire stick. And I'm like, this is a thing. Con artists never suspect you'll use anything against them. They're the scammers, you're the sheep.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Walton]

She was wrong in this case.

[Jordan Harbinger]

It must have felt so good to go in there. And you're like, you know, you can see like, hey, you have three login, failed login attempts, and you're like, I bet I do. Exporting all the email, having it, you know, copied to a Google Drive for the police. Did you go in and start emailing people that looked like victims and tell them that they were being scammed or send them court records or information? Or did you want to fly low a little bit when you got in there?

[Jonathan Walton]

I flew high. So I started cataloging everything, thinking police would care. Who knew they wouldn't. It was a game changer. I did find a lot of victims and tried to convince them to go to police, and all of them refused. I found out she was a sugar baby. She had sugar daddies. So she belonged to this site sugardaddy for me dot com. Okay? She had a profile and she had a dozen married men paying her for sex.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Wow.

[Jonathan Walton]

For listeners who don't know how. Sugar babies, sugar daddies. Work, work. It's sex work, right? You meet a wealthy Guy, they want to buy you gifts and give you money with the understanding that you meet once a week or once a month and have sex. And that's the arrangement. So she had this arrangement. She only chose married guys because every time these guys would try to end the deal, she would threaten to go to their wives, and they would pay her thousands of dollars to go away. Like this was another revenue stream for her. She was a sugar baby. Wow. So I contacted all of these guys and told them my predicament and said she scammed you too. Will you go to police? I'll come with you. I'll help you file a report. No, no. None of them. None of them went to police. But the best email I found was from a friend of hers who was warning her. So this is how I found out. She was on the run from police in Northern Ireland. A friend had tipped her off. Hey, your ex husband in Ireland posted this on Facebook. Be careful. And it was a screen grab of the post. If you know the whereabouts of Marianne Smith, she's done horrible things. Call the police. This number. So I call that number and I left the message. And I got a phone call from a detective in Northern Ireland who told me, we've been looking for her for 10 years. She scammed dozens of people out of hundreds of thousands of pounds. And you know, now that we know where she is, thanks to you, she's in Los Angeles. We're going to start extradition proceedings.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Oh, my God.

[Jonathan Walton]

This is back in 2017. And I thought it was never gonna happen. And as the years go by and as I get her convicted in my case, and she goes to jail and gets out early, cause of COVID she disappears. I'm constantly hearing from other victims, and I'm sending him the victims and sending him the. She's still up. She's still scamming. When is this extradition gonna happen? And he kept telling me, I'm working on it. I'm working on it. I'm working on it. Finally, she got extradited last year, and she was just put on trial last month. And I was there.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Wow.

[Jonathan Walton]

I was there. I flew to Northern Ireland. Cause I could not miss this for the world. Of course, as soon as I entered that courtroom, one of the victims recognized me. Cause, you know, there's been a lot of press about me and this. And one of the victims is like, that's the man. That's the reason we're here. And they kind of surrounded me and thanked me and hugged me and cried. And I sat with Them and watched the trial unfold. And a jury deliberated for 17 minutes. And she was convicted on all counts. And she got sentenced to four years in a Northern Ireland jail.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Maybe trials are different in the United States, but 17 minutes is kind of like by the time you sit in the chair, stretch, crack your knuckles, and you go, so she's guilty as shit. Right? And everyone goes, yeah. And they're like, all right, let's sit in here for another 12 minutes. So it doesn't look like we had any. Had nothing to say.

[Jonathan Walton]

Yeah.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And then they're writing the verdict down in the sheet or whatever. It's like if you're deliberate for 17 minutes, either it's so flimsy that you have to let them go and acquit, or it's guilty without any caveats whatsoever.

[Jonathan Walton]

I know in my trial, in the trial in L. A. They deliberated three hours and found her guilty.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Even that's not that long for a lot of this stuff.

[Jonathan Walton]

True. I mean. Cause, you know, here's the thing. Once you catch a con artist, it's over. No one in the trial in LA for me. And in the Northern Ireland trial last month, she couldn't find a single solitary person to testify on her behalf. Not a family member, not a co worker, not a friend. No one would sit on that stand and say good things about them. That omission is huge. And I think if you're a juror thinking so no one, not. Not her daughter. No one would say good things about her. So she must be a pos yeah, she must be.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Did you not get her own daughter to testify against her as well?

[Jonathan Walton]

I did. I did. That was one of my reach outs. I convinced the daughter, and the daughter was on the fence the whole time. But in the last minute, at the 11th hour, she agreed. She got in a plane, she flew to la, she testified. And you know this, as a lawyer, what I hate about the criminal justice system? No prior bad acts. Right. So in my case that went to trial in Los Angeles, jurors were only allowed to hear evidence for what she did to me, not what she did to all these other people. Right.

[Jordan Harbinger]

The hundreds of other victims in her life. Yeah.

[Jonathan Walton]

The daughter was only brought in to testify to prove that she's not Irish. There is no inheritance. That's it. The daughter was not allowed to testify what a pos her mother is. But she got in some jabs. And this is what. How I advise people to testify, because this is what worked for me when I was on the same as a Testifying witness, you're only allowed to answer the questions that are asked. But I would just make my answers so long and weave in everything and I'd get an objection. But by the time you get an objection by the defense and the judge sustains it, the jury heard it. Yeah, cat's out of the bag, right? Pretend you didn't hear that. Okay.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Walton]

And it's so funny. Full circle moment. During the trial in la, I would work into my answers and she's wanted. The police want her in Northern Ireland for crimes over there. Objection. All right, stricken jury, you didn't hear that. But they did hear that. And her lawyer tried to make me look like I'm crazy, like I'm making up this whole Northern Ireland thing. Cut to. She was extradited last year and convicted last month and she's got a four year sentence. So I didn't make anything up.

[Jordan Harbinger]

It's also a kind of a dangerous road because if he says you're lying about that, it's like, well, now I get to prove that I'm not. So you might want to tone it down a little bit and just have your little bitty objection, which is too late anyway, pal. Sorry.

[Jonathan Walton]

Exactly.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I've only been on the stand a couple of times, but I love doing that. It's like you say, well, well, I met. How did you meet this person? Well, I actually met him because he had sc. She had scammed this other. Oh, sorry. Allegedly done something with that other person. I don't know how to handle this, your honor. Just keep talking. And then the council's like, objection. And you're like, I didn't actually say the thing, but everybody knows I'm dancing around it because I'm not allowed to. And so it's like, this person is screwed up so much that it's like, why are there so many holes? Well, we're not allowed to talk about prior bad acts. So I kind of had to strike nine out of the 10 pages of things I was going to say. And they're like, okay, that's not good. Right? Like they're. The jury's mind is now filling in the blanks of, like, what are they leaving out? Because it's obviously a lot and it's probably all really bad because this person already seems like a piece of shit. You know, it's tough. I would love to, in that little bit of time that we have left, just con artists, they try to make the scams as complex as possible. It's harder to explain to the police. It's harder to explain to a jury. It's easier to frame things as some kind of weird mistake or something like that. They try and get written contracts because then they could say it's a civil matter. I had a contract to steal all his money through deception. How do we follow up with the police? Right. If we're not a shark tank producer and they kind of don't really give a crap about our case, what do we do?

[Jonathan Walton]

So before you even go to police, you need to write a detailed timeline up. Use a Word document on a computer. When did you meet this person? What did they tell you? When did the money change hands? Write up the story and make it make sense and make it compelling. Share it with your friends and family and neighbors. Get input. Does this make sense? Read this over for me. Do you understand? And they'll give you input. Get it to a one page narrative of on this day, this happened and this and this, and she stole this money. Then you need to zero in on the crime. Taking money based on a lie is a crime. If it's over $900,000, depending on the state, it's grand theft or grand larceny punishable by years in prison. Regardless of what a cop will say, it's not a crime, it is a crime. So focus in on the lie that was told and the money that was given based on believing that lie. That's the crime. And then get witness statements. Did anyone witness this? Have them write a statement, get it notarized. Get everything notarized. That's impressive. Have notary seals, right? And then have your evidence. Have bank records, phone records, texts. Print everything out, put it in files, organize and then rehearse. It's going to be a 10 or 15 minute presentation. Pretend you're doing a college speech class. You're presenting. Present it to your family, your father, your brother. Make sure everyone can see you perform this. And then when you're ready, go to the police station, 5am on a Sunday and present it to the cop. I guarantee you they will be impressed. You're not just going, I got scammed and you're crying. They don't want tears, they want facts. They want an easy case. Give them an easy case, do the work for them. That's the trick. And then the other thing most people don't understand, if there are documents involved, save them. If they made you sign a contract, if they showed you, save that until it gets assigned to an investigator. Because documents turn police off immediately. They think business deal gone wrong and they say it's a civil matter. It's not a crime. So hold those back. Don't share everything. Only show the compelling things and the obvious evidence that a crime has happened. They took money based on a lie. Oh, and then even after you get the police report, call them every day. Call them at 6am call them at 7pm call them at noon. Call them every day at a different time. Because every time you call about your case, it gets taken from the bottom of the pile and put at the top of the pile, and there is some discussion. Hey, Jonathan Walton's calling again. Where are we on this Marianne Smith case? You know, and they talk about it. Call every day. And I did. And I got my case assigned in three weeks. Cause I called every day. I became such a pain in their ass. They wanted to get rid of me. And the only way to do that would be to just move it on to the next level, give it to an investigator. I don't want to hear from Jonathan Walt. Never again.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Right? Yeah. Now it's an investigator's problem getting called every day. And I feel bad. We're sorry, cops. We're creating annoyance for you. But, you know, if that's what it takes to get you to handle this problem, then here we are, man. I think it's just fascinating. Did you mention doing a background check on the con artist when you report to the police as well, do we hand them they, hey, she has 46 addresses. Is that normal to you?

[Jonathan Walton]

Absolutely. Do a background check, find out locations they've lived at, and do a civil record check to see if they've been sued. Because a lot of times those civil suits point to crimes. And a lot of times those victims who are suing are only too happy to help you with your case because they want that person going down. You can say, hey, can you write a statement for the police to testify or even just show the cop, I found this. She did this to this person, this to this person, this to this person. Show a pattern.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I like this. And everybody should freeze their credit. Oh, yeah, because you don't want people opening accounts in your name. That's just a miscellaneous tip. But I feel like everybody should do that. And it's free to do that. You don't have to pay anybody for that.

[Jonathan Walton]

And it works great. I was leasing a car the other day, and I forgot to unfreeze, so I froze my credit with the three bureaus. I forgot to unfreeze it, and I couldn't get the car. It came up as they said, you don't have Any credit? We're not sharing a credit history. I'm like, oh, crap. Wait, hang on. And I took my phone and I logged into the three bureaus. Unfreeze, unfreeze, unfreeze. Got the car. Freeze, freeze, freeze. So, yeah, everyone listening, it's only a matter of time before someone takes out a loan or a credit card in your name because our information's already out there. Those data breaches from bank of America or the Social Security administration or AT&T your name, your social. It's already out there. And scammers are buying and selling it in groups and it's only a matter of time. The reason it hasn't happened yet is because there are like close to 400 million people in America. Thank God they're not 400 million scammers. So there are a few thousand scammers working feverishly to get credit in your name. So freeze your credit.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Jonathan Walton. Thank you so much. Hell of a story. It's so satisfying that she got extradited and is now sitting in a Northern Irish prison. That's great. Love it.

[Jonathan Walton]

And she's scamming over there. I heard from the mother of an inmate. She's telling people her name is Maxine and she's in jail because she wronged the IRA or something. Something. So she's still scamming.

[Jordan Harbinger]

What is it? Tigers can't change their stripes. Or leopards won't change their spots. One of those things.

[Jonathan Walton]

Exactly. Exactly. Thank you so much for having me on.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, this is a lot of fun. What if the person charming your lonely aunt isn't after love but her home, her will, and her life savings? In this preview, Javier Leyva reveals how modern romance scams have evolved into full blown identity takeovers. Hiding in plain sight.

[Javier Leyva]

A lot of con artists, they are very generous at first. They're the types of people that are going to pick up the tab. You go to dinner, they're buying you stuff. They're very generous and they're doing that. It's almost like they're fattening you up for when they need that favor. When they need that favor, when they need that loan. You wouldn't question it because this guy is so generous, why wouldn't I trust him with money? From a distance, we're thinking about these romance scams, like, how could anybody fall for these things, right? But the closer you look into it and put yourself in the shoes of the victim, you realize that when you're in the center of the cyclone, it all makes a lot more sense. Another thing is when somebody smothers you and just consumes all of your time. That's a warning sign too, because what they're doing is that they're cutting you off from your surroundings. They create the urgency so that you could make stupid decisions and you kind of bypass your reasoning. Don't forget your friends and don't forget your family. Their opinion counts and you should take it honestly. When you start seeing all these signs, you recognize that maybe this is a situation where you gotta create personal space. You have to create boundaries. Most victims of any con artist, they feel so ashamed that they don't want to tell their story because they've been violated their trust and they're no longer trusting people.

[Jordan Harbinger]

To hear how predators turn affection into control, listen to episode 1195 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. Thanks so much to Jonathan for joining us today and walking us through the wild, twisted, borderline cinematic world of real con artistry. Not over the top movie stuff, but the everyday manipulation, the I just want to help, the too kind, too fast charm offensive, the fake texts, the isolation, the pity stories, the urgency, the oversharing. All of it designed to hijack emotions before logic has ever had a chance to show up to the table. We covered how con artists build elaborate narratives, how they recruit victims to vouch for each other, how police departments often don't have the bandwidth to help unless you force the issue, and why you should always, always check everything, even if it makes you look a little bit paranoid. Remember, don't be ashamed. Shame is the con artist's greatest weapon. Sunlight is your revenge. All things Jonathan Walton will be on the website in the show notes, advertisers, deals, discount codes, ways to support the show, [e-mail] deals Please consider supporting those who support the show. Also, our newsletter is a lot of fun. I really love writing this. I love seeing your responses to it. It's something practical, something that'll have an immediate impact on your decisions, your psychology, your relationships. In under two minutes every Wednesday. If you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out. I'd love to hear what you think. It's a great companion to the show. Jordanharbinger.com News is where you can find him. And don't forget about six minute networking over at sixminutenetworking.com you can use it for networking or at the very least know what's in there so that you can spot some of the social engineering stuff for yourself if it's being used against you in a way that is unfair or unethical. Again, sixminutenetworking.com I'm ordanharbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn and this show. It's created in association with podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tata Sidlowskis, Ian Baird and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who's been scammed, might be getting scammed, or is definitely getting scammed, share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn and we'll see you next time. If you like this show, there's another podcast you should check out if you want to stay informed about what's happening around the world without drowning in noise, check out the President's Daily Brief. It's built for people who want the big stories fast and clear. Think 20 minutes in the morning, then a quick 10 minute update in the afternoon. Just focused coverage of the developments shaping the world right now, from the Middle east and Venezuela to China, Russia and beyond, with an emphasis on what actually has real world consequences for the United States. The show's hosted by Mike Baker, a veteran of the CIA with decades of first hand experience. So you're getting smart analysis from somebody who's been inside the system. You get straightforward context to help you understand what's happening and why it matters. Follow the President's Daily Brief wherever you get your podcasts and stay ahead of the curve. If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H VAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock so your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-granger. Visit grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.