The first thing worth doing when reading a book like this is to check the credentials of the author.

Jonathan Walton hosts a podcast called The Queen of the Con: The Irish Heiress”, he’s also a con artist vigilante, who has taken down con artists and he’s also a regional Emmy award winner in the US (source Wikipedia).

This book neatly summarises the things to look out for if someone is trying to con you. These, Walton calls RED FLAGS:

For example:

RED FLAG #1: “I just want to help”.
RED FLAG #4: “Isolation”
RED FLAG #5: “I’m better than you”.

I’ve only listed three of the RED FLAGS – there are fourteen. Each RED FLAG has its own chapter, nicely explained by the author and with several real-life stories to illustrate each one. It’s amazing the gall of some of these con-artists, I don’t know how they do it. They leave a trail of destruction, broken people, and families. It’s horrible.

This is an fascinating read and if you’re interested in this topic you will find this worthwhile.

An excellent read for any and all readers! Author comes at you with both barrels and knocks you out of your shoes! Great job fleshing out all the characters. I give this book FIVE stars! Definitely recommend!

This book is amazing. The author, Johnathan Walton, co-created and hosted the Queen of the Con podcast, where he described how he was conned by a woman he believed was his friend. In Anatomy of a Con Artist, he recaps the Queen of the Con story along with several other stories about people conned out of their life savings by grifters (some of these were very sad and hard to read). An important point he makes, over and over: the system is not set up to protect you from con artists. You have to be careful, and if you do get conned you have to be persuasive and persistent to even get someone in law enforcement to listen to you.

He also provides a list of 14 red flags to watch out for in hopes that people who read the book will be able to protect themselves. Many of them are similar to the warnings you hear about other predators. We want to believe that con artists are "out there" somewhere, sketchy people ten thousand miles away sending spam emails. The reality is, they're often people we went to high school with, neighbors, friends of friends. They know how to love bomb people to win their affection, ply them with secrets to earn their trust, and they rarely ask for money right away. Some of them will woo you for years before they start to cash in. Most importantly, according to Walton, they don't out-think you, they out-feel you. They will identify your triggers and play on your emotions to earn your trust.

This type of thing comes up with criminals of all kinds. Ted Bundy was able to lure women to their doom because he played on their sympathies with fake injuries and relied on the fact that people tend to be polite and nice when interacting with strangers. Child predators often hold positions of trust and manipulate parents in addition to their victims. While creeps in white vans do exist, most people who are abused are abused by someone they know and trusted.

It is clear that the author of Anatomy of a Con Artist knows how to tell a story; I was not at all surprised to learn he was a reality TV producer before he started podcasting. Filled with jaw dropping stories and helpful advice, this book is much more than the "slightly more in-depth version of my podcast" that I expected to find when I picked it up. Read this, especially if you hear about scam stories and think it could never happen to you.