Hello and welcome to a special episode of USA Today's The Excerp. Tom Taylor Wilson.

Con artists are lurking all over. It might be your neighbor or coworker or just a stranger that steps in when you're desperate for help. They pray on vulnerabilities and can be deceptively charming, but how do you spot them? A new book explores just that and gives some tips from someone who found himself at the heart of a con artist manipulation. Here to tell me about his story and some of his tips is author Jonathan Walton, whose new book,

Anatomy of a con artist, is out now. Thanks for joining me, Jonathan. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to meet you. A pleasure to be here. Pleasure to have you on. So let's just start with the origins of your experience with a con artist, if you don't mind. You know, I know it all seems to have started around this swimming pool drama at your apartment complex, correct?

Yes.

You know, we had this, started around this swimming pool drama at your apartment complex, correct?

Yes.

You know, we had this, we have this beautiful club med style swimming pool, and we lost it through no fault of our own.

The building was in an uproar, 444 units, so probably 8 or 900 residents, angry, wanted the pool back. I take it upon myself. And this is the kind of

person I am, and this is what my con artist weaponized against me. I discovered years later. I take it

upon myself to post flyers up, galvanize all the residents, get them together. I want to write this

wrong. You know, I'm kind of a do-gooder. I

have been my whole life. So little did I know that that flyer that I posted up simply read,

hey, miss the pool, want to get it back? Let's band together and do something about it. That was all

the information my con artist needed to get into my life, to get into my heart, and to

scam me out of close to $100,000 over the course of four years?

I mean, what happened next? You don't have to give away the entire book here, but how did

things unravel and just kind of progress from there? Well, yeah, the book is so much more than

my case. You know, I've investigated hundreds of con artists over the past eight years because after I put mine in jail, even after police turned me away. And I show people how to do that in the book.

My case kind of blew up in the press and I started getting contacted by hundreds and hundreds of victims of other con artists telling me, I inspired them, asking,

begging for my help. So without knowing any better, I started helping. Some people play golf

on the weekends. I hunt con artists. So I started investigating all these cases. But with regard to

my case, that's how she got into my life, my con artist,

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