[photo credit: Pasadena Senior Center]
Johnathan Walton lost nearly $100,000 to a neighbor he thought was a friend. When he went to the police, they turned him away. So the Hollywood reality television producer — whose credits include Shark Tank and American Ninja Warrior — did what he knew how to do: he built a case. The result was a conviction in Los Angeles, an extradition to Northern Ireland, and a second conviction there in September 2025. Then came the book.
Anatomy of a Con Artist: The 14 Red Flags to Spot Scammers, Grifters, and Thieves, published last August by Penguin Random House, is Walton’s attempt to hand everyone else the manual before they need it. The Pasadena Senior Center is hosting his free multimedia presentation based on that work — “How to Spot the Scammer in Your Life” — at 2 p.m. The event is free and open to the public; reservations are requested.
The timing is not incidental. Adults 60 and older reported losing $2.4 billion to fraud in 2024 — a 300% increase from $600 million in 2020 — according to the Federal Trade Commission’s December 2025 annual report to Congress. Because fraud is chronically underreported, the FTC estimates that actual losses to older adults that year may have reached as high as $81.5 billion. The single costliest category was investment scams, which accounted for $744 million in reported losses by adults 60 and over. Closer to home, a City of Pasadena senior resources page, citing Federal Trade Commission data from 2012, notes that people 60 and older made up 26 percent of all FTC fraud complaints — up from 10 percent in 2008 — and that an estimated 10 percent of frauds are ever reported.
Walton’s own story began in 2013, when a woman calling herself Mair Smyth moved into his downtown Los Angeles apartment building and introduced herself as an Irish heiress. Over four years, she borrowed money he voluntarily extended — loans tied to an elaborate story about a frozen inheritance that never resolved and never came back. When Walton finally understood what had happened and went to the police, the answer was familiar to anyone who has tried to report a con: there was little they could do. “I had to produce my case for the LAPD,” he recalled.
He did. Smyth was convicted in Los Angeles. Walton pushed for extradition to Northern Ireland, where she was convicted again in September 2025.
What he built from that experience is not a cautionary tale but a taxonomy. The 14 red flags in his book are behavioral, not biographical — patterns anyone can learn to recognize before any money moves. They include Red Flag #1, a stranger who is immediately and unusually helpful; Red Flag #3, a pattern of dramatic, recurring emergencies; and Red Flag #8, what Walton calls “beak wetting” — the strategic deployment of small gifts or favors to lower a target’s guard. Retired FBI special agent Joe Navarro, author of Dangerous Personalities, called the book “a master class on how to spot scammers, con artists, grifters, and thieves. . . . A must-read.” Walton has since investigated hundreds of fraud cases and appeared on NBC News, BBC News, Dr. Phil, The Tamron Hall Show, and ABC’s The Con, according to his booking agency, AAE Speakers Bureau.
“Some people play golf on the weekends,” Walton has said. “I hunt con artists.”
If you go: “How to Spot the Scammer in Your Life” takes place Tuesday, April 21, 2026, at 2 p.m. at the Pasadena Senior Center, 85 E. Holly St., Pasadena. The event is free. Reservations are requested at https://www.pasadenaseniorcenter.org/activities-events/special-events/2305-how-to-spot-the-scammer-in-your-life. For information, call 626-795-4331.
The con artist who took nearly $100,000 from Walton spent time in two jails on two continents. It cost him years of his life. Now he shows up in rooms like the one at the Pasadena Senior Center and hands audiences the one thing that might have stopped it all before it started.
HOW TO SPOT THE SCAMMER IN YOUR LIFE Date & Time: Tuesday, April 21, 2026 at 2:00 p.m. | Venue: Pasadena Senior Center, 85 E. Holly St., Pasadena, CA 91103 | Phone Number: 626-795-4331 (Pasadena Senior Center) | Website: https://www.pasadenaseniorcenter.org/activities-events/special-events/2305-how-to-spot-the-scammer-in-your-life
