John Walsh, host of television's "America's Most Wanted" since 1988, is changing his crime-fighting emphasis.
"When I first started doing 'America's Most Wanted' I tried one show on white-collar crime … and I got so many responses from our viewers who said forget about white-collar crime. White-collar crime – that's just real sophisticated rich guys ripping off other rich guys. It’s a victimless crime, etc."
Many of his viewers told him to keep pursuing the rapists and serial killers, he said. "And I thought, maybe they're right. Fraud can't touch people the way crimes against their persons can. But I looped back to it in the most dramatic way."
In 1998, somebody hacked Padres baseball player Tony Gwynn and destroyed his life. Walsh said they stole his credit cards, they transferred his Major League Baseball pension to their accounts and took out second mortgages in his name, among other crimes, all in two days. "So I did that piece and people were touched … They said if it can happen to Tony, it can happen to me."
Walsh then told attendees about an experienced con man who killed one of Walsh’s close friends and then stole his assets. And it was not the first time he had done it. Now Walsh was flaming mad. So he started profiling international con men and began catching the worst of the worst.
Walsh is a partner with TLO, a technology company, dedicated to creating systems and tools that protect individuals, companies and countries from abuse, risk, fraud and theft.
"Now I'm going on in the next phase of my life. I'm going to focus on the real threat to this country. … The guys I went after had guns. Now the [bad] guys sit in dark corners with computers. … There are people around the world with no rules and no boundaries who are out to destroy our way of life."
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