“Anatomy of a Con Artist: The 14 Red Flags to Spot Scammers, Grifters, and Thieves” by Johnathan Walton

c.2025, Rodale, $28, 256 pages

You’re not going to answer that call, are you?

Nope, it’s not from a number you recognize and you know what that means: it’s probably a spammer, robocaller or crook. You’re not answering because you know how to be safe with this sort of thing. Or do you? As you’ll learn in “Anatomy of a Con Artist” by Johnathan Walton, there’s more than one way to be scammed.

In 2013, Walton and his husband were living in a nice apartment building in California that had lost its rights to use a nearby pool, and Walton was angry. He tried to set up a coalition to fight the loss, and that’s when he met Mair Smyth, who was one of his neighbors.

With her charm, wit and generosity, Mair quickly became Walton’s best friend and he grew to love her. She claimed to be an Irish heiress worth millions of dollars and her circle, she said, was wide – she was, in fact, having an affair with a powerful, married politician who, later in the tale, personally repaid money that Walton had loaned her.

Paid it off – which was one of the “red flags” that Wilson eventually understood are hallmarks of a scam. Mair’s quick offers to help, her too-easy familiarity, the “drama, drama, drama” were meant to lay the track for theft. She used technology to fake her lies, she asked him to wire some money, and she used “Dale Carnegie Techniques.” It took years, but she ultimately stole tens of thousands of dollars from Walton.

That made him angry, so he got busy. He went public and flipped the table.

“I can never undo what I did in her name and at her behest…” he said. 

“I can only use what happened to me to help other people avoid getting scammed by the crazy Irish Heiress archetypes in their lives.”

Do you know where your wallet is? Good, you’ll want to have your hand on it when you’re reading “Anatomy of a Con Artist.”

There are a lot of things to like about this book, starting with the help that Walton offers, help that’s not just for you but also for your elders, disabled neighbors, and new adults who need to see his warnings. Step-by-step, he explains how a scam begins, how it progresses, and why police don’t often do much about it.

Then he explains how to stop a scam in its tracks.

If you think you’ve heard all that before, well, you haven’t read Walton’s own experiences, which make up half this book and which read like a spy-novel-caper.

His job as a film-maker shows through here, making the uncovering, the chase, and the capture of a scammer as exciting as a movie, and you don’t want to miss it.

“Con artists don’t outsmart you,” Walton says, “they out-feel you” and you’ll feel pretty confident about your safety after reading this book. If you want to know how to avoid being cheated, “Anatomy of a Con Artist” may be the answer.