I was a professional scammer – terrifying new £10k tech means you can't even trust calls from your kids

The Sun

16 hours ago

IN a criminal career that lasted 20 years, fraudster Alex Wood conned millions of pounds out of innocent people.
Now the reformed scammer is on a crusade to protect anyone from falling victim to the type of manipulator he once was.
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The master conman, 44, embarked on his crime spree with what he calls a crude, unsophisticated fraud, setting up a worthless shell company and selling shares in it to friends of friends.
'When they didn't get their money back, they reported it to the police and that led to the first custodial sentence,' he says. 'I got three years for that in 2008.'
When he was released, he pretended to be various members of aristocracy, such as the Duke of Marlborough, booking into top London hotels such as The Ritz, The Dorchester and The Savoy, dining lavishly without it costing him a thing.
'I got away with it because the hotel felt privileged to have me there and so I was never asked for a swipe of a credit card because, you know, they mustn't trouble 'His Grace.''
After seven months of the high life, he was caught and given a three and a half year prison sentence. But it was behind bars that he was to learn the most lucrative con by far – internet fraud – that earned him what he describes as 'Eye-watering amounts.'
He admits he considered the 'push payment' scams, where he convinced targets he was from the bank and got them to transfer 'massive sums of money', a victimless crime until his final arrest, in 2018, led to an epiphany that changed his life.
'I discovered that the offending had really taken a massive toll on victims in many different ways that I hadn't really contemplated before,' he says.
'It was the first time I had fully understood that fraud is not a victimless crime. Fraudsters say, 'Well, I'm not leaving anyone bleeding in the street.'
'And we used to convince ourselves that a bank would just refund the victims and therefore we are hitting the banks and not the actual victims. This, for me, was a turning point when I discovered, 'Well, actually, this has profound consequences' and I decided not to just completely stop fraud but to actually try to protect people from people like I used to be.'
Alex, who features in the BBC Radio 4 series, Scam Secrets, now uses his insider knowledge to work with police and banks to prevent fraud.
'The whole aim of what I do is to disrupt fraudsters and I hope that by listening to what I have to say, the expertise I can share, that people will feel protected by that, to some extent,' he says.
Here, Alex reveals the tricks behind the most popular and successful scams and what we can do to protect ourselves from becoming yet another victim.
The child scam
You hear a frightening, panicky message from your child saying they have been kidnapped or your child calls you desperately in need of money.
'Even if you think you know the person on the end of the line, be wary because the advent of AI and deep fake technology has made it very difficult to determine who you know and who you don't.
'There's a deep fake AI model that you can access without even subscribing. With a 30 second sample of anyone's voice it can create a 99 per cent accurate clone. So, it can be used to get a child's voice and once the criminal has your phone number they can ring and say they have kidnapped your child and unless you pay a ransom, you will never see them again.
'They can then play what sounds like your child pleading in the background. There are even cleverer versions of this which are also used in the romance scam.'
Red Flags
'It's difficult not to act fast when you believe your child is in danger but you need to do some checks.
'One mother in the States recently, had a call from a criminal saying they had kidnapped her daughter and $100,000 needed to be dropped off immediately to an address, or she would never see her daughter again.
'They had cloned the girl's voice and the mother could hear what she thought was her daughter pleading in the background, so she paid the ransom. But it turned out that her daughter was safely at school. The default position has to be to say that you are going to make some further inquiries.'
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The romance scam
You have met the love of your life but your online lover needs money.
While you may even be able to chat to your 'lover' on Facetime or video chats, Alex says gangs are now using sophisticated face swap technology to fool victims.
'Romance frauds use AI deep fake and there are some very clever things that can be done these days. One criminal gang put a video on the dark web, advertising that if you pay a subscription, around £10,000 a month, you can access this technology which will help you defraud your victims.
'It creates a live map of your face and then casts that face onto somebody else. The video shows an image of a Nigerian man, part of a criminal gang, and his face has been cast on to that of an elderly Asian man. And as the Nigerian guy is talking, you can see, in real time, that it looks like the Asian guy is saying his words.
'The victim was a woman who was convinced she was in a relationship with a retired Asian dentist who'd recently lost his wife, and had suddenly ran into financial difficulty because his cards were frozen. She thought she was in love with this guy and sent him 100 grand.'
Red Flags
'So much romance fraud is never reported because it's embarrassing for the victim. And if they are lucky and their bank has refunded them what they paid out, they think, 'Well, okay, I've dodged a bullet. I've got my money back. There's no point going to the police. This guy's in Africa. They're not going to get him, so what's the point?'
'There's a huge level of under-reporting but it's immensely harmful.
'Don't be swept up in the moment and take time to think things over. People need to be aware of how convincing deep fake is these days.'
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Bank scam
Your bank calls or emails saying your account is at risk and you need to safeguard your money.
'This is the authorised push payment scam that I used to defraud companies. I had an app that you can get on an iPhone that made it look as though I was calling from the bank.'
Like many scammers, Alex would pose as a member of the bank's fraud team and say they had unusual transactions on their account.
'One way of conning them is by saying the account is under attack and we need to work fast to make sure your money is secure by transferring it into another account, then the fraudster syphons off money in the process.
'But I used to say that we were going to put their account on an 'offline session' to make some dummy payments, to find out how these odd transactions were taking place.
'I would then get them to make a 'dummy' payment and I'd give them what they thought was a randomly generated sort code and account number but it would actually belong to the mule account that I was controlling.
'For the payment value, I would casually say, 'Let's just enter 12345678, so it looks like a payment and just put a dot before the seven.' And that, of course, was £123,456.78 that went into my account.
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'The patter was very well thought out. It used manipulation that is known as social engineering. If anyone was ever worried and needed reassurance, I'd pass the phone over to the 'manager'. That would also be me. I even pretended to be a woman on the phone sometimes.
'I often played a track down the line I got on YouTube called Call Centre Noise, which sounded, in the background, like a busy bank call centre.
'One of the most powerful things I used to do was to make the victim feel like he or she was in control of the call by giving them the opportunity to end it.
"I would say, 'I need you to trust me fully and if you don't then I can arrange an appointment for you to come into the branch and do it.' So then the victim is thinking, 'Well, he can't possibly be a fraudster because he's giving me an opportunity to opt out.'
Red Flags
'No one is ever going to contact you out of the blue and ask you to make a payment or to move your money to a safe account. Don't make payments on the basis of that first call or first email. Do some digging.
'If you are called via WhatsApp then hang up because it has a screen sharing ability with which they can see exactly what you are doing. The bank, police and HMRC are NEVER going to contact you on WhatsApp.
'If you think you have been a victim you can ring 159 to be put through to the fraud department of your bank very quickly. Twenty seven banks in the UK have signed up to this system.'
The knitted cardigan fraud
The item you bought on the internet is nothing like what you expected.
'On Scam Secrets we call this the knitted cardigan fraud. You go on eBay or some other market place and see an advert for a beautiful cardigan. You order it, and then what turns up is a horrible, scratchy, polyester version. It's false advertising. This, again, can be a bit embarrassing for a victim to report.
'You know, if you buy a cardigan for 50 quid, are you going to be bothered to go to the police? Instead, people usually take steps to ensure the seller remedies the situation. They might then be promised a full refund if the item is sent back. But often it will be somewhere far away, like China, which might cost £45 to post.
'So, you decide it's not worth it and just chuck the item in the bin and vow to be more careful about who you buy from in future. And because it's not reported to the police, criminals get away with this, thousands and thousands of times.'
Red Flags
'If you see an advert on a site that says it has a high Trustpilot score of say, 4.9, go to Trustpilot directly to check because a lot of these scores are fake.
'Beware of trusting what you see without doing some research and really digging into what's being offered for sale.'
The bailiff threat
A caller tells you bailiffs are on their way to collect a debt.
'People are made to really panic when they get a call that the bailiffs are on the way to collect a debt. There's no genuine debt there but just by using time driven high pressure, they often pay up. It's just basically criminals extorting money effectively.'
Red flags
'If somebody is rushing you – in this case claiming bailiffs are going to be at your home in half an hour to take all your stuff away – and you haven't had any post about it, take a step back.
'Break that contact with the person on the phone. Hang up, take a deep breath, have a cup of tea and think about it.
"Call somebody else to get their input – a trusted family member or colleague. If it's legitimate, no genuine bailiff will mind if you want to have half an hour to check it out. Fraudsters rely on you being under their spell, so breaking that initial context is very, very important.'