Jonathon Walton is a successful Hollywood producer who has worked on, among other things, Shark Tank. He is also the past victim of another kind of shark, a career con artist who bilked him out of nearly $100,000. Well, he got the last laugh by putting his scammer behind bars; and not only that, but he has gone on to provide a valuable service to the rest of us by becoming an expert on con artists, and informing the world about being on the alert for them — as an author, a podcaster, and a public speaker.

Walton never recovered the money he lost to the woman who called herself Mair Smyth (a pseudonym variant of her real name, which had a lengthy rap sheet stuck to its heels). But he did recoup that much and more from a book deal about his experiences, a best-seller called Anatomy Of a Con Artist that lays out 14 red flags to spot someone who is scheming to take you to the cleaners.

His signposts align with similar lists offered from other sources; and although they generally are intended to help you safeguard against hoodlums who are targeting you on an individual basis, it’s interesting to note that many of the same techniques apply in some way to manipulators of the masses.

Let’s take a look at some of them.

Sudden Savior

The con artist has a way of miraculously arriving on the scene out of nowhere to help you solve a crisis. In Walton’s case, she “just happened” to move in next door to him when his apartment complex lost the swimming pool that its residents loved, and she was suddenly gung ho to lead them in their activist revolt to get it restored. After that, she began exhibiting behavior toward him in particular that he characterizes as “too kind too soon”. There are indeed some generous and selfless souls out there, but whenever anyone begins taking great pains to do you favors before they even know you very well, it’s a good idea to watch your back. (And also keep in mind that professional scammers might literally spend years setting you up — while working on other victims simultaneously. Smyth was Walton’s “best friend” for four years while bleeding him dry.)

Dale Carnegie Tactics

How to Win Friends and Influence People is a classic self-help volume that has helped generations of individuals do just what the title stipulates. Unfortunately they have not always done so for constructive ends. In fact, Charles Manson reportedly studied the book and applied it in manipulating his followers. As Walton notes, con artists seem to have adopted it as a textbook, applying Carnegie’s advice to nefarious purposes — e.g., making the other person feel important, making an idea seem like the victim’s, and (especially in the case of Mair Smyth) using the name of the mark with inordinate frequency when addressing him. Be on your toes around someone who overuses your name in conversation with you.

Egomania

Con artists are usually eager to boast about their (often imaginary) accomplishments — about the businesses they’ve run, the awards they’ve won, the fortunes they’ve made, the people they’ve impressed, the records they’ve broken, the milestones they’ve gained. (Does this remind you of anyone on the public stage?) As Walton puts it, they strive to give the impression that “I’m better than you”. This frequently includes their exploits in faraway, exotic places.

Drama

They love to create it around themselves. It makes them the center of attention, it garners sympathy for them, and it gives them the appearance of being able to put out fires (that they set themselves). Again, this should remind you of someone we all know and love.

TMI

When a con artist “befriends” you, they’ll often unload personal details about themselves (most of which probably won’t be genuine), to encourage you to divulge personal information that they can exploit against you.

Separation/ Division

In order to make you dependent on them, con artists may try to isolate you from your friends and relatives by spreading lies about you to them –while at the same time spreading similar lies about them to you. On a mass level, this division entails forming a solid coalition of the people you want to exploit, in part by spreading lies about other sectors of the population (liberals, gays, immigrants, scientists, the educated, etc.)

Urgency and Emergency

Walton points out that savvy scammers know how to manufacture an artificial scarcity of some resource or other that goads you into taking the action they want you to take. As often as not, the commodity supposedly in short supply is time: “If you invest now, I guarantee you’ll make a killing, but next week will be too late to cash in.” In the public sphere, this scarcity is often manufactured by conjuring up a dire threat. (“Our borders are being invaded”; “Men are taking over women’s sports”; “College students are being indoctrinated, and before long they’ll all be communist”; “They’re coming to take your guns”.)

Token Generosity

Another tactic is what Walton labels as “beak wetting”, though that idiom normally means the opposite of his usage — i.e. to take a small cut of ill-gotten gain. Walton uses it to mean the act of a crook giving someone something in expectation of getting something much greater in return. Wily criminals may be willing to give you a small sum of money — or display some other form of modest largesse — to loosen up your own purse strings. With politicians or other public manipulators, this often comes in the form of a tax cut or other such seemingly bountiful blessings. Or it may be in the form of the con artist passing up some benefit or reward, such as… oh, for example declining a salary for public office.

Technological Confirmation

This should be regarded as a red flag only if other red flags are present. Everybody uses technology to convey information these days. But if someone is eager to show you an email or text or website to back up a claim they’ve made, it should be taken with a healthy serving of sodium chloride. There are probably very few legitimate instances when someone would say, “Oh look at this message Bill Gates sent me about the company I’m founding.” It’s all too easy these days to convincingly forge messages, phone calls, websites and just about anything else.

While it may not qualify as a red flag as such, one surprising thing Walton mentions is that con artists tend to be gullible themselves. You’d think that since they spend a great deal of time mastering the deception of others, they would be bulletproof against such duplicity themselves. But nope; evidently their egomania results in overconfidence, carelessness and naivete. (If you told one of them that immigrants were eating cats, they very well might believe you.) And one more of his red flags worth mentioning is that they tend to move around a great deal; but this is another one that should be construed as a red flag only if it’s accompanied by others, since many individuals (the present writer included) have legitimate cause to be on the move frequently.

Jonathon Walton is of the opinion that con artists are born, not made: that they are innate narcissistic sociopaths and pathological liars incapable of feeling empathy for their victims or remorse for wrecking their lives. They are beyond rehabilitation, he believes, and all we can do is be on our guard against them, and keep them locked up once we find them.

He very well may be right. What’s even more disturbing, though, than the presence of these sharks in the waters targeting individual victims, is the presence of the Sea Serpent luring entire armadas of the public into its maw. One of the most apt comments I’ve heard recently about the present state of America came from someone on social media who responded to someone else’s observation that the situation now is like being locked in the basement with a deranged serial killer, by saying that this analogy doesn’t really do it justice. Because many of the other people locked in the basement with you are praising the serial killer for playing 4-D chess, and gushing about what an honor it is to be murdered by him.

With due perspicacity, you can thwart the schemes of a con artist who is zeroing in on you specifically. But when you are part of an entire society, many of whom have Stockholm Syndrome, it’s very hard to prevent the large scale con.