Thomas John Flanagan

Thomas John Flanagan, known professionally as Thomas John, is a former Chicago drag queen, who claims to be a psychic medium with paranormal abilities. He has been called the "Manhattan Medium" and stars in the reality TV show, Seatbelt Psychic. In January 2020, John began a live show at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. An investigation by Susan Gerbic determined that the riders in Seatbelt Psychic were hired actors, and in 2019 it was revealed by a New York Times report that a sting operation found John was using information acquired from audience Facebook accounts during group readings.

On January 16, 2020, opening day of John's live show at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Skeptical Inquirer published an article analyzing John's appearance two years earlier on the TV show, Windy City Live on ABC7 in Chicago. Susan Gerbic reported that this appearance "was suggested by one of TJ’s biggest YouTube fans (as proof of John's mediumship abilities). In the article, Gerbic dissected the recording and demonstrated with screenshots that the information John portrayed as coming from spirits was easily available on social media, making the performance at least in part, a hot reading. Gerbic also reported on John's predictions for 2018 played by ABC7, which she characterized as the station giving John "a 6-minute free commercial plug." This video included predictions that 2018 would be the "down-fall" of Kim Jong-Un, President Trump would NOT be impeached, O.J. Simpson would get remarried, and that Oprah will run for President in 2020. Gerbic concluded her analysis saying:

A concise recounting of Operation Pizza Roll is given by John Katsilometes of the Las Vegas Review-Journal as part of his criticism of John's shows at Caesars Palace in 2020.

John is an official promoter of the 2019 Miss Gay New York America pageant, which uses the slogan "Where Boys Are Boys and Female Impersonation is an Art", and was scheduled to be held on March 19, 2019.

Despite the scientific skeptic consensus that mediumship is a con, several media organizations have credulously promoted John, claiming he has paranormal powers, including Vogue magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, SF Weekly, WJBK, and WPIX. In a 2019 television segment on Last Week Tonight, John Oliver criticized the media for promoting TV psychics such as John, because this exposure convinces viewers that psychic powers are real, and so enable neighborhood psychics to prey on grieving families. Oliver said "...when psychic abilities are presented as authentic, it emboldens a vast underworld of unscrupulous vultures, more than happy to make money by offering an open line to the afterlife, as well as many other bullshit services."

In a June 2019 Skeptical Inquirer article titled I'm Speechless! Thomas John Reads KJBK Fox2 Derek Kevrea, Susan Gerbic reported on an appearance by John on a daytime TV show where he gave a reading to staff meteorologist, Derek Kevrea, and claimed to deliver messages from his dead relative. Kevrea's feedback was that what John told him was accurate. In a Facebook video, Kevrea later said "I'm speechless … Thomas John communicated with my grandpa … He said he is proud of you … it's a miracle I held it together." In her article, Gerbic reported that with a little research she discovered the information provided was available from social media and other sources available to John. Regarding Kevrea's proclamation, Gerbic says:

It isn't the sitter’s fault when this kind of thing happens... Caught up in the moment, especially when your coworkers are sitting right there saying that this is real, it’s easy to see how someone might believe all this. Plus, this is live morning TV, everything needs to be happy and fun. He needs to play along.

John's show at Caesars Palace is advertised as "World-renowned psychic medium Thomas John Will bring his uncanny abilities to the Las Vegas Strip in THOMAS JOHN: CELEBRITY PSYCHIC MEDIUM, a unique, one-of-a-kind evening at Cleopatra’s Barge inside Caesars Palace"

John Katsilometes of the Las Vegas Review-Journal criticized the show before it even opened, saying "Even before he opens at Caesars Palace, it’s clear not everyone buys Thomas John’s claims of summoning the deceased in his live performances." He goes on to briefly describe Operation Pizza Roll in which John was caught doing a hot reading. He concludes with statements from John's co-producer, Alan Gist, and mentions Julianne Moore, Jennifer Lopez, Stevie Nicks, Goldie Hawn and Courteney Cox as some of the celebrities who have praised John's performances.

Gerbic recounts the following as an example, "TJ was concentrating on a specific area of the room in the back ... TJ was saying that this was a very strong connection. No one responded until finally a woman located on the completely opposite of the room raised her hand and said, 'I have a Joe from NYC' and then she said that she had been sitting in the area that TJ was looking for her, but she moved to the other side of the room. TJ made a face and said, 'Well your dead people didn’t know you moved!'"

"Over the course of the reading, John comfortably laid down the specifics of Susanna Wilson’s life — he named “Andy” and amazingly knew him to be her twin. He knew that she and her brother grew up in Michigan and that his girlfriend was Maria. He knew about Susanna’s father-in-law and how he died."

When Hitt reached out to John for comment, John insisted that he did not use Facebook, saying "I do remember her [Gerbic] coming to an event... I recognized her because she was there with that other guy who wrote that book." He also told Hitt that "I have my eyes closed for an hour and a half when I'm doing readings. If she spoke up during that period of time, I don't remember that." John also argued that the entire experiment wasn’t really scientific enough, saying "For Susan to come to a reading and get a two-minute reading and say, well, 'I made a fake post about my dog, Buddy, and my father who died,' it’s really not any sort of scientific testing of psychic powers." He added, "First off, someone will have to be a scientist to do a scientific experiment, not someone who used to be a photographer at Sears."

In a June 2019 Skeptical Inquirer article titled Thomas John Revisited, Gerbic reported on the aftermath of the sting. This including a report of a "Facebook Live" stream, where John attempted to prove his paranormal powers to fans following the sting revelation by doing what was claimed to be a "scientifically controlled reading" of a supposed stranger. Gerbic dissected the performance, giving details as to why it was the opposite of scientifically controlled, and described how once again Facebook information could easily have been accessed, despite assurances otherwise. "One of my team members gave me a list of all the hits that Thomas John got during the reading... and then my team member gave me screenshots of [the sitter's] Facebook page where she posts things that are the same as what Thomas John told her." Also, despite John's claims that "NO I do not Google people. NO I do not research people. NO I do not go onto people’s obituaries. I do not go onto Ancestry.com." Gerbic's article includes screenshots of John's monitor captured during the live steam. These pictures contain saved reading lists from past Google searches, including searches for specific individuals as well as for intelius.com, a website which states that it is "a confidential way to find people so you can reconnect or just get more info on a person. People Search reports can include phone numbers, address history, age & date of birth, relatives, and more. Find a person you’re curious about — search today!"

In an August 2019, Gerbic followed-up Thomas John Revisited with another article, Three Parents Reveal The Truth About Psychic Thomas John, which covered the aftermath of her sting operation. The article investigates a video uploaded by John on March 24, shortly after The New York Times sting article was published, in which John reads "three grieving women", and claims the results validate his paranormal powers. In her article, Gerbic does a point-by-point analysis of these readings, and offers evidence that the items claimed to have been "impossible" for John to know without supernatural help, were easily available online. Gerbic's conclusion included:

Lifetime produced a reality TV show starring John called Seatbelt Psychic. This show began its run on July 11, 2018, and stars John as a ride-share driver who surprises “unsuspecting” passengers when he delivers messages from their deceased relatives. It is produced by Zeb Newman, Ryan Simpkins, Sarah Happel, Emma Conway, Brie Miranda Bryant, and Ben Winston.

In March 2017, John was caught doing a hot reading in a sting operation named "Operation Pizza Roll" which was planned and implemented by Susan Gerbic and mentalist Mark Edward. The unmarried couple Gerbic and Edward attended John's show using aliases, and John "read" them as a married couple, Susanna and Mark Wilson. During the entire reading, John failed to determine the actual identities of Gerbic and Edward, or that they were being deceptive during his reading. All personal information he gave them matched what was on their falsified Facebook accounts, rather than being about their actual lives, and John pretended he was getting this information from Gerbic and Edward's supposedly dead—but actually nonexistent—relatives.

...when you make testable claims—as these grieving mothers did—that the information that TJ gave them is not located anywhere on the internet, then I hope you will think twice. This "unfindable" information was found and presented here, and it can be found by anyone in just a few minutes of online searching. It’s even quicker if you have an account on a website such as intellius.com—something we know TJ has because it was bookmarked on his computer.

In 2009, John was arrested and pleaded guilty to felony fraud for posting fake apartment ads on Craigslist and stealing the security deposits from renters.

On June 30, 2009 John was arrested and charged with two offences, of theft and theft by deception. It was alleged that he advertised and collected rent on properties that he did not own. He was found guilty on both counts, and sentenced to probation on July 2, 2009.