Anatomy of a Con Artist by Johnathan Walton

Author:Johnathan Walton [Walton, Johnathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harmony/Rodale/Convergent
Published: 2025-08-19T00:00:00+00:00

9.

Red Flag #8: Beak Wetting

Beak wetting is a term of art in the world of confidence tricks that encompasses a powerful manipulation technique professional con artists use frequently. They will let you “wet your beak,” meaning, they will give you money. And that money will dazzle you and distract you and convince you that what they’re saying is true. And it will motivate you to give them money.

That’s the whole point.

You’ll mostly see beak wetting in investment scams. But it’s also present in love scams and even inheritance scams like the one I fell for. My con artist skillfully used beak wetting to trick me—as I’ll explain in the next chapter.

But tragically, the most powerful example of beak wetting I can share with you happened to my own family. They do not want to talk about it, and they certainly don’t want me talking about it, or worse, writing about it. So out of respect I won’t name names. But I will say that more than a dozen members of my family lost millions of dollars to a truly monstrous con artist by the name of David Smith—who managed to trick a total of six thousand other victims out of $220 million. The sickening irony here is that this scammer shares a last name with Mair Smyth, and though they are spelled differently, they are pronounced the same: Smith.

David Smith was a renowned foreign exchange trader on the Caribbean island of Jamaica back in the early 2000s.

It might surprise you to learn that I am actually Jamaican. I was born there and lived there for twelve years of my childhood—from ages five to seventeen.

Whenever I tell people I’m Jamaican, they immediately do a double take and say suspiciously, “You don’t look Jamaican.” I mean, ethnically, I’m a white Middle Eastern–looking guy. That’s because back in the early 1900s my great-grandparents, who were in Lebanon, along with hundreds of other Lebanese families, all hopped on boats and set sail for a better life. By some accounts, they were heading for America. But it was a perilous six-month journey, and my grandfather’s mother actually died giving birth on that voyage. So when they got to dry land in Jamaica—which was one of the ports they stopped at on the way—my great-grandparents were thrilled. And they decided to stay. That’s how my Lebanese family got started in Jamaica.

Cut to 2001 and con artist David Smith, the ambitious middle-class son of two high school science teachers. He was twenty-four years old when he landed a job at a well-known Jamaican investment firm. While working there he earned a BS in business from Nova Southeastern University’s Jamaica campus.

I know. I wasn’t aware they had a campus in Jamaica either. And I grew up there.

Anyway, David Smith worked for that investment firm for two years. Then he was suddenly let go in 2003. Fired. The reason for his termination was not clear, but a high-placed source at the company told a news reporter from Bloomberg that Smith had violated the firm’s core values.

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