The Con

“Sharks are constantly moving through the ocean, looking for food, looking for food, looking for food. They don’t care if it’s a seal or a human. Even though they don’t eat humans, they’ll bite to see if it’s something they want. Con artists are always looking for food.” -Johnathan Walton

When Johnathan Walton hosted a wine and cheese night in his Los Angeles apartment in 2013, he couldn’t have known that the event would invite a shark into his inner circle. Flyers he hung up around the building gave off the scent of a helper, a do-gooder, a warrior against injustice. It was like blood in the water.

Johnathan Walton’s story unfolds thousands of miles away from New England, but the woman he knew as Mair Smith began her long career of conning and scamming in her home state of Maine. 

He told me, “98% of victims of con artists never tell a soul. And that silence gives the con artist power to scam everyone in the circle because no one’s talking about it.”

Not one to be silenced, Johnathan Walton is talking about it. Online, in the press, and with his podcast, Queen of the Con. Now he’s on Dark Downeast to share his story, because the con artist he’s been fighting so hard to expose? She’s back in the wild. Right here in Maine. 

This is Part 1: The Con.