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The Sun
20 hours ago
- The Sun
I was a professional scammer – terrifying new £10k tech means you can't even trust calls from your kids
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. 8 8 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.' 8 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.' 8 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. 8 8 '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.'
Times
24-07-2025
- Business
- Times
‘I stole £1.2m in a 40-minute call — then blew it all in Harrods'
Fraud accounts for 41 per cent of all reported crime in the UK and as much as £1.17 billion was stolen by scammers last year, according to the trade body UK Finance. This makes it the most common type of crime — and I am one of the world's leading experts on it. Why? Because I used to be a prolific fraudster and spent more than 25 years stealing money and services worth many millions of pounds. Some of my frauds were theatrically audacious. I once spent seven months living free of charge in five-star hotels in central London, posing as the 13th Duke of Marlborough and demanding that invoices were sent to Blenheim Palace. Other frauds were immensely cruel and damaging, fleecing some of my victims of their life savings and causing them to become seriously unwell. The harm I caused still haunts me. • Fake duke jailed for fooling five star hotels with Fawlty Towers con trick I was in prison three times over 17 years — for a total of eight years, each spell longer than the last. When I was finally released in January 2022, I knew I had to change. I started sharing my insights with law enforcement, banks, the government and, perhaps most importantly, with members of the public. I have just started working with BBC Radio 4 on a podcast called Scam Secrets. One of the most highly damaging types of fraud is an authorised push payment (APP) scam. This involves a fraudster contacting a victim, usually by telephone, pretending to be a bank employee or a police officer, convincing the victim that their money is at risk and instructing them to transfer it out of their account into a 'safe' account. This method can net a vast amount of money very quickly and doesn't leave much evidence. Between 2017 and 2018 the police estimate that I stole as much as £50 million by committing APP fraud. I didn't know or care at the time, but I was leaving a trail of absolute chaos in my wake. Once, during the course of a 40-minute phone call, I stole £1.2 million from a family-run construction company. It caused utter devastation. I took all the money they had, leading to scores of redundancies. My gang targeted small-to-medium-sized family-run construction companies because we figured that they could have several million pounds in the bank but wouldn't have sophisticated accounting procedures. And, unlike a law firm, for example, they would not require multiple signatories to authorise online bank transfers. I would be able to focus all my energy on one person and not have to worry that somebody else might smell a rat. The isolation of a victim is key to a successful fraud. I called the company's switchboard and asked the receptionist to put me through to the accounts manager. The number that the receptionist saw on her phone was the correct number for their bank's fraud department — I had 'spoofed' the phone number using a free app which, unbelievably, is still available to download, despite it having no legitimate use. When the accounts manager (let's call her Sally) answered her extension, I explained that I was calling from the bank's fraud team and that we had noticed an unusual transaction which we needed to verify. I gave my name as somebody who genuinely worked for the bank (I had found his name and job title on LinkedIn) and invited Sally to Google the number she could see on her phone display to satisfy herself that I was genuine. Sally tapped away on her computer and, after a few seconds, sounded reassured. 'Phew, you're genuine,' she said, 'you can never be too sure these days'. I asked Sally whether she had attempted to transfer £45,000 to a Mercedes garage in Dundee (several hundred miles away from their office). Naturally, she replied that such a payment was unauthorised so I reassured her I would block the transaction. Her nervousness gave way to relief as I was able to help her. She thanked me over and over again. • Read more money advice and tips on investing from our experts 'Sally,' I said, 'we need to understand why this suspicious transaction has appeared out of the blue. It is possible you have a virus on your system which is causing this to happen. Have you had any suspicious emails recently, or have you noticed your system running slow or buffering from time to time?' This is an example of the Barnum-Forer effect, a psychological phenomenon whereby people are given scenarios that are supposedly tailored to them, but could equally apply to many other people. We all get junk mail in our inboxes, and whose computer doesn't run slow or buffer? I knew that Sally would say yes and panic that there could indeed be dangerous malware on her system. I then told her that we would need to make some test payments to check whether a virus was interfering with the transactions. If we found a virus we would be able to create a patch to keep the company safe. Sally, by now baffled with technical jargon, asked me how long all of this would take because she needed to pick her children up from school. I reassured her that I would be as quick as possible but the priority had to be keeping our valuable customers safe from fraudsters. • The rise of fraud in the UK What I said next is an example of the cruel and sophisticated social engineering that fraudsters use. 'Sally, I am shortly going to ask you to log into your online banking platform and make a series of test payments. Your account will be in a test environment while we make these dummy transactions, but they will look just like genuine payments. This requires you to trust me. So, if you are in any way worried that I might not genuinely be calling from the bank, we can end this call now and I can arrange an appointment for you to visit the branch with your usual desktop computer so we can carry out the tests in person.' Sally paused. 'OK I'm happy to continue with this and I trust you. I've verified the number you're calling from, I've checked your name online … and you can't possibly be a fraudster because what scammer in his right mind would give me the opportunity to end the call. We're always told that fraudsters will rush us and you haven't done that either. So yeah, let's get these tests done but please hurry up as otherwise I'll have to put the kids in after-school club and that's so bloody expensive.' Over the next 20 minutes I instructed Sally to make transfers to what I told her were 'randomly generated test accounts'. Over and over again, until every single penny had left the company bank account. At the end of the call, I told her we had identified and successfully patched the virus. Everything was back under control and she could go and collect the kids while I restored the balances to their pre-test values. Sally thanked me profusely and we ended the call. When I telephoned Sally that day, she did not stand a chance. She was hopelessly duped by an expert career fraudster, despite carrying out reasonable checks as to my identity. My co-conspirator, an expert money launderer, went to work withdrawing the cash from the accounts that Sally had inadvertently funded and we drove to Harrods and blew the lot. I remember the spree with a deep sense of disgust. In court, Sally said that during those 40 minutes she had transferred more from the company account than she was likely to earn through her entire working life. She told the court that every time her phone rings she panics and feels sick to the pit of her stomach. She finds it hard to trust anybody and has lost all her confidence. I have never forgotten her words. I am ashamed, more than words can possibly express, of the man I used to be and I now use all of my energy to help stop people like that man, running fraud awareness courses and advising banks and governments on how to prevent scams. • Fraudsters stole £260k from Colin before he died. We called them up Given the sophistication and ruthlessness of such gangs, it is entirely right that the banks are now obliged to refund customers under the APP reimbursement scheme, up to a limit of £85,000. The scheme is mandatory for all banks and financial institutions in the UK. They must pay back victims, with the liability shared equally with the sending and receiving banks of fraudulent payments. The scheme has incentivised banks to develop far better transaction monitoring technology — for example, banks can tell how we are holding our phones when we are making payments in case it is at a different angle to usual. They can tell if a transaction is taking longer than normal, or if a phone call is taking place at the same time, which would indicate that the customer was being instructed by a third party to make the payment. But despite this, fraudulent payments continue to be made, and victims continue to report staggering losses. Fraudsters won't give up, they will keep coming up with new ways to get their hands on your money. Perhaps it is time to abandon the faster payment systems altogether and revert to a four-day clearance cycle — banks are at a serious time disadvantage when payments clear within seconds.
Vogue
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue
The Lavish Wedding of Consuelo Vanderbilt That Inspired The Gilded Age
At the end of The Gilded Age's latest episode, a deal is struck between the Duke of Buckingham and George Russell. The English aristocrat will receive an enormous sum to marry Gladys, the daughter of the railroad titan. In turn, Gladys will achieve a towering social rank. An upset Gladys confronts him about their arranged marriage, which was largely driven by the Duke's need to preserve his massive estate and his lifestyle. 'I hope that when you come to know me better, you'll agree that what I'm trying to preserve is worth preserving,' he says. Gladys accepts her fate, and a wedding is planned. The Gilded Age plotline of Gladys and the Duke echoes the real-life story of Consuelo Vanderbilt and the Duke of Marlborough, where the Duke received $100,000 yearly (around $3.2 million today) as well as $2.5 million in railroad stock (today, that would be around $81 million). In turn, Vanderbilt became the first American woman to hold the title of Duchess in history. Despite all the orchestration, the marriage was a failed one. They did, however, have an insanely lavish wedding. On November 6, 1895, the 18-year-old Consuelo Vanderbilt married Charles, the ninth Duke of Marlborough at St. Thomas's Church on 53rd Street and 5th Avenue in a morning ceremony. To say it was highly anticipated is an understatement: crowds gathered outside the church, as did the press, eager to see the high ranking British aristocrat wed one of the country's wealthiest women. In their dispatch from the nuptials, The New York Times called the inside of a church a 'fairyland.' 'Even those who are used to the most exquisite decorations were enchanted by the magnificent spectacle. The florist and his assistants worked diligently for days,' they added. The reporter then dedicated seven paragraphs alone to just the flowers: 'There was hardly an inch of stonework or an inch of woodwork that was not concealed by delicate and graceful vines or bunches of varicolored blossoms,' he wrote. From the church's dome hung garlands of flowers, lilies, roses, and chrysanthemums, which stretched all the way to the organ alcove, which was covered in climbing vines. Medallions of maple foliage adorned the galleries, whereas pews were accented by floral torches and feathery palms. Meanwhile, the choir stalls were covered in roses, lilies, and alpine violets. The writer also describes an abundance of pink and white cosmos, as well as holly.
Daily Mail
07-06-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Campaigners call on King Charles to help them stop Britain's biggest solar farm as £800m 3,500-acre project is set to spread across Winston Churchill's Blenheim birthplace
Campaigners have called on King Charles to help them stop Britain's biggest solar farm set to spread across the Blenheim Estate where Sir Winston Churchill was born. The £800million Botley West project is expected to cover almost 3,500 acres of land in Oxfordshire with solar panels. This includes 2,000 acres of the Blenheim Estate, which the Duke of Marlborough's half-brother Lord Edward Spencer-Churchill, who runs the property, has agreed to lease. Locals branded the plans an outrage and Tim Summer has written a letter to the King citing an act from the early 18th century to explain that he must intervene. He claimed that the Blenheim Estate does not officially own the land, explaining that it is leased by the Crown to the Duke of Marlborough. He supports this claim using the 1705 Queen Anne Act of Parliament, which gave the Blenheim Estate to John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough. Mr Summer said: 'Leasing and giving ownership of Blenheim land to a third party who will directly enjoy financial benefits is against the 1705 Queen Anne Act. 'I therefore humbly ask that the Crown steps in to enforce its ownership of the Blenheim Estate as Queen Anne intended and refuses the Blenheim Estate land to be handed over to any third party.' Since May, the Planning Inspectorate has been examining the scheme and will eventually send a recommendation to Energy and Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband. The King, a lifelong environmental campaigner has not commented on the Botley West project. But the argument was presented at a hearing in Oxford and the Planning Inspectorate has asked for further clarification from Blenheim. A spokesperson for the estate said: 'We are aware of the comments made during the public examination which are not correct in relation to this project.' The King, has installed solar panels at Windsor Castle and a solar farm on a former horse grazing paddock at Sandringham. If the Blenheim Palace plan goes ahead, protesters said children being born now will be middle-aged before they see the green fields surrounding their homes. Meanwhile, Blenheim Estate is set to make £128million from leasing their land to German company Photovolt Development Partners (PVDP), which has created UK company SolarFive Ltd specially for the project. At the moment Blenheim are said to make £150 per acre per year from its land. PVDP said the going rate for leasing land for solar panels is £1,000 per acre, a 567 per cent increase. Mark Owen-Lloyd the director of PVDP said: 'Should the project be granted consent, Photovolt will become one of many tenants of the Blenheim Estate, who have leased their land for centuries. 'The restrictions apply only to the World Heritage Site that is Blenheim Palace, which will of course have no solar panels installed on it.' More than 11,000 homes across 15 villages within a mile of the panels will be affected, with the panels visible from most of the land in the 60 square miles surrounding the massive solar farm.
Times
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Snobbery and sex appeal: the remarkable lives of Sargent's ‘dollar princesses'
By the time the 9th Duke of Marlborough decided to have his young family painted by John Singer Sargent in 1905, the artist had, according to Marlborough's American-born duchess, Consuelo Vanderbilt, 'gained a distinct ascendancy over contemporary artists in England'. Writing in her 1952 autobiography The Glitter and the Gold, Vanderbilt remarks that when the American artist displayed his portraits at the Royal Academy they 'were always the most startling and most discussed pictures, and were usually surrounded by crowds in violent disagreement over their merits'. Now, on the centenary of Sargent's death, a fascinating subsection of his work is going on display at Kenwood House in London. Heiress: Sargent's American Portraits is the first exhibition to focus on his paintings and sketches of
