Johnathan Walton got conned out of $100,000 by a very experienced con-woman. When most people get conned or scammed, they're embarrassed and never tell anyone about the experience. Johnathan is different. He tells everyone about it, including law enforcement and multiple court judges. Johnathan got his con artist imprisoned twice. He also assists others who have been conned.

While reviewing his experience and that of others, he noticed recurring themes. He calls these themes "red flags" that many con artists exhibit. In his book "Anatomy of a Con Artist" he details 14 of these red flags and how to spot them. Johnathan has also created the Queen of the Con podcast where he tells his story, as well as during television and public speaking engagements, which can be found on his site at https://johnathanwalton.com/

Want to get into the OSINT field and are unsure where to start? Then this is the episode for you. Dennis Keefe started out in law enforcement, became a web developer and then changed into the OSINT field through his own determination and hard work. Through this episode, Dennis will talk about his path to OSINT and how others can follow in his footsteps.

Dennis' web site where he posts all of his learning and advice can be found at https://denniskeefe.me

This episode is sponsored by Compass Cyber Guard.

Have you thought much about physical security and whether someone could breach a building's guards, alarms and cameras? On this episode, we talk with Chris Cowling, the founder of RedTeamers.eu and their training company, RedTeamers.academy. We talk about setting expectations about scope and how Chris goes about bypassing the features of a secure facility.

You can listen to Chris talk about how he does it and you can also watch him in this short video where he demonstrates some of his company's skills in covert entry: https://redteamers.eu/redteamers_video.mp4 If you take a course with Red Teamers, they are offering a discount to Layer 8 Podcast listeners, just use "Layer826" as the discount code.

This episode and the Layer 8 Conference are sponsored by Compass Cyber Guard.

Kirby Plessas is an OSINT pioneer, US military veteran, business owner, board member, is OSC certified and podcast host. Kirby was an Arabic linguist in the military who started sharing what she knew with team members in a newsletter and it grew from there.

She is the founder of the Plessas Experts Network which offers training, classes and webinars in OSINT investigations. She also co-hosts the OSINT Cocktail podcast where they talk about investigations and techniques seen in movies and television shows.

Craig Taylor is the founder and CEO of CyberHoot a security awareness company that focuses on positive reinforcement and gamification. Craig studied psychology and used that knowledge when creating CyberHoot, which he offers for free.

Craig also set up a challenge specifically for listeners of the Layer 8 Podcast, if you'd like to test your ability to identify a phish and the parts of a phish quickly. It's even free! You can try that out here: https://cps.cyberhoot.com/hootphish-challenge/?hash=65199056c6edbc93f2755078a5b15743

There will be a leaderboard, and you can check your status on the leaderboard here: https://cps.cyberhoot.com/hootphish-challenge/shared-results/?hash=8b7f346b97c7dd027215d741f0ae36fb

This free challenge will end on May 31, 2025.

Tim Farmer is the OSINT Training Lead for Dark Blue at CACI. He performs investigations along with teaching OSINT classes with a focus on the deep and dark web. (Don't know the difference? We discuss that in this episode.) Tim has his own podcast with Chris, titled The OSINT Output. Tim has achieved the OSC certification from Osmosis Academy and will be presenting at the Layer 8 Conference this year with a talk titled "Deanonymizing Dark Web Hidden Services: Capitalizing on User Mistakes and Querying Internet of Things Databases"

Dorota Kozlowska is a social engineer and penetration tester for Black Hills Information Security. She has her own podcast which can be found on Twitch and YouTube and recently presented at the Disobey conference in Finland.

On this episode, she talks about how to get into social engineering as a job, some techniques for elicitation, what skills one needs to be a social engineer and the all-important sympathy vs. empathy.

Sho Luv, aka Leon Johnson is a ninja, a hacker, a penetration tester and a computer security expert. Leon has performed all types of testing engagements and has mentored many other aspiring pentesters. On this episode, Leon talks about what it takes to be a tester along with some of his own stories of social engineering engagements and his thoughts on being a Black man while doing covert entry engagements.

If you want to try your hand at the hacker box Leon created, titled Mr. Robot, have at it: https://sholuv.net/