The fake spy who loved me: The life and crimes of Mark Acklom

0:02Sky News, the full story first.

0:08Coming up, Britain's most notorious con man. For years, Mark Acklem convinced people he was a Swiss banker, sometimes a spy. Hundreds of thousands of pounds disappeared just as quickly as he did, and it took our crime correspondent four years to track him down. Martin Brunt tells the story next. Thumbtack presents Tile Trouble. Every single time I use my sink, I make eye contact with the uneven grout of my kitchen backsplash. The crooked corners eye me and I'm haunted by more tiling questions than I thought possible. What kind of pro can fix a backsplash? Can I replace one cracked tile or should I replace them all?

0:47What? What if I just use Thumbtack? I can hire top-rated pros, read reviews, and compare prices with a tap. All on the app. Thumbtack knows homes. Download the app today. How does a banana trigger a CIA-backed coup? Do AirPods herald the arrival of a new global order? What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway, and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open, and reveal the world-shaping forces hidden inside. This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow.

1:32When you work the crime beat, you quickly learn that some people are exactly who they say they are. And then some people are Mark Acklem. Charming, educated, intelligent, and accused of persuading a woman to part with hundreds of thousands of pounds whilst posing as, amongst other things, a Swiss banker and a spy. A tip from a source led Sky's former crime correspondent Martin Brunt on a four-year tour of Europe, tracking a man who changed names more often than addresses. Finding Aklum led directly to a conviction here in the UK. Now he's back in court for a proceeds of crime hearing as it's decided whether his fictions can end with a refund.

2:12So we thought we'd ask Martin himself to pop back on the podcast and remind us about one of the stories that defined his career as Sky's crime correspondent. Martin, always good to have you with us on the Daily Podcast. This is an incredible story and actually a story that covers a fair old chunk of your career. How did you first get put onto it?

2:31Martin Brunt:I got a call from an old friend who was Stuart Higgins. He was the editor of The Sun and we'd known each other for many years, but he had connections with a woman called Carolyn Woods who came to him and said, look, I need some help. I need some publicity. I've been the victim of a romance scam. I've had all my money stolen. I've been to the police and they're doing virtually nothing to help me. They kind of waved her away and described her as a silly woman and even suggested, she said, that she had in some way been complicit with the man who had ripped her off and had effectively romance scammed her.

3:12Martin Brunt:So Stuart Higgins put me in touch with Carolyn Woods and everything I did over the next few years went from there. How did she strike you in those kind of initial conversations? What was about this story that whetted your appetite? I think it was the scale of it. And also, she convinced me that she was distraught still. I mean, this was a couple of years after he'd disappeared. But she talked in very eloquent terms about the effect it had had on her. She said that in the end, she got very close to suicide. She described in a nutshell how this man, calling himself Mark Conway, had turned up in her boutique she was running in the Cotswolds, had effectively swept her off her feet, had dazzled her with stories of his wealth, how he also worked as an MI6 agent.

4:04Martin Brunt:and she said that she was completely smitten by him. She gave him her phone number and within a day or so, they'd embarked on an affair. And very gradually, over a year, he managed to dupe her into lending him all her money, about£750 ,000. And to this day, Carolyn Woods finds it very difficult to explain how she was so taken in. She was by no means his first victim. In fact, the signs of the criminality when it comes to Acklem were there all the way back when he was a teenager. By the time Carolyn Woods came to talk to me, she'd worked out that the man who called himself Mark Conway was in reality Mark Acklem.

4:49Martin Brunt:And that name rang a bell with me because going back to, what, about 1991, I remembered this teenage fraudster called Mark Acklem. And even then, it was an incredible story as a 16-year-old at a public school in Eastbourne and an unremarkable student, but a whiz kid at business studies. The teenage fraudster Mark Acklem had embarked on a mini crime spree. He had managed to persuade a building society to give him a mortgage of half a million pounds. he stole his father's gold amex card and hired learjets and traveled around europe with his schoolmates treating them to lunch in paris and another hot spots to the extent that he ruined his father's business and he ended up in court and was jailed for four years by that time he was 18 he appeared in court in london his defense said that this was a young man with mental health issues, but the judge would have none of it and just banged him up for four years.

5:54Martin Brunt:So he was dealt with very, very harshly. And presumably that time, in what I must assume would have been a young offenders institution, didn't rehabilitate him and didn't change him? Obviously not. He went to Feltham, which is a notorious young offenders institution. He did eventually manage to get his four-year sentence cut by half, but he still served most of a two-year sentence. He came out, He said afterwards, and he told me when I eventually met up with him, that he tried to go straight. He got married by then to a woman in London. That was a marriage that didn't last very long. But he then disappeared to Europe and was essentially never heard of again until Carolyn Woods came to me so many years later and said, look, this is the man who was a teenage fraudster and he's still at it.

6:41So he spent this time over in Europe and returned to the UK, I think, around about 2012. What was he up to at that point?

6:47Martin Brunt:Well, he turned up in the West Country around the Cotswolds, Bristol Bath area, and he was posing as a millionaire banker based in Switzerland. He told people that he met that he was interested in buying the Cotswold Airport, Kemble Airfield, and was going to use it to restore vintage aircraft and vintage cars. And he gave the impression of being a very well-heeled, very knowledgeable man who was going to go into great business and was looking for investors. And that's where he started scamming people. And it was shortly after that that he walked into Carolyn Wood's boutique fashion shop in Tetbury and wooed her and promised to marry her and then broke her heart and stole all her money.

7:39What was it about this man, who I presume was not calling himself Mark Acklem at that point, of course, that was so alluring to Carolyn that day that he wandered into her boutique?

7:48Martin Brunt:Carolyn Woods shared some CCTV footage of the moment that they met. And you see him quite clearly walking into her shop in the Cotswolds. And by anybody's measure, he was a tall, dark, handsome stranger with the gift of the gab. And he told Carolyn Woods that he was a millionaire banker working in Switzerland. He was flying in and out to do this deal with the airfield nearby. by, he spoke a number of languages. And I know because I've witnessed him in court later speaking fluent Spanish, she said he had a continental air about him. And the moment she set eyes on him, when he walked into her shop, she said the atmosphere was electric.

8:32Martin Brunt:She said he was somebody who could walk into any room and almost sort of set it alight. She was completely smitten. and when he started telling her stories about, you know, he was a wealthy banker and then very soon confided that a lot of that was a cover for what he really did, which was an MI6 agent. She was completely taken in by these extraordinary stories. When a man you've never met before wanders into your boutique, announces he's a businessman, then laterally, do you know what? Actually, I'm a spy for the secret intelligence service. How does someone believe that? You have to, I think, Neil, do what I did, talk to a psychologist.

9:10Martin Brunt:And I did talk to one when I did the documentary about Aklum. And she says that we're all vulnerable to con men. The key is the con man finds which buttons to press. He or she finds where the vulnerability lies. And then they start with a series of lies, but they compound it. once you're hooked, you're kind of drawn in. The psychologist I spoke to said it's like pulling you in on a rope. I should also say that Carolyn Woods is a very bright, articulate, well-educated woman, the sort of woman you would think would not fall for these kind of stories. But even today, she says she finds it very difficult that she was so taken in by him.

9:53It's the layer upon layer of deception that really grabs me. Not just that he was a Swiss banker, he wasn't. Not just that he was an agent for MI6, which he wasn't. But there were also issues around his health that he appeared to leverage as well.

10:10Martin Brunt:Carolyn Wood says that over time, very quickly, he began to isolate her from her family and friends, many of whom were warning her about this guy because not everybody was fooled by him. Those around her saw the warning signs, but she was completely smitten and she became separated from her family and friends and he literally isolated her. He bought or told her he was buying a big mansion in Bath and installed her in there. But then very quickly, she discovered that he wasn't around much. And his cover story of working in Switzerland as a banker flying in regularly gave him the excuse not to be there very often.

10:54Martin Brunt:The reality, she later found out after about a year, he was living not far away with his wife and two children. How much, ultimately, did he extract from Cameron? She said that she handed over£750 ,000, and it was done very cleverly. She said that one day she overheard a conversation he was having, and when he came off the phone, she said, look, it sounds like you've got some money flow problems. And he said, well, yes, okay. I didn't want to bother you with it, but yes, there's a cash flow issue. I'm trying to raise funds to buy another property and to start this business of mine. And she said, well, I've just sold my house, which, of course, he knew.

11:35Martin Brunt:She said, I'll lend you some money. And he said, no, no, no, no. But eventually he said, well, if you insist. And that's how it started. She transferred initially£26 ,000. And gradually, sometimes up to£30 ,000 a day, she was persuaded to lend him all her money. This is the point at which you get stuck in and start burning through the shoe leather. What ultimately turned into four years of a manhunt. Where did it start? I went to the airfield and I was put in touch with another of his victims who pointed me towards Spain. So I went to Spain and I discovered an office that he'd set up with a number of staff.

12:19Martin Brunt:He was trying to raise money for various investments. The woman told me that he then disappeared and turned up in Italy, where the Spanish police eventually found him and arrested him and brought him back to Spain, where he was put on trial for some old scams that he'd been conducting in Spain. The PA woman in the Spanish office told me a very familiar story that even while he was setting up the office, he claimed to have cash flow problems. So the PA woman ended up paying the rent on these offices, about 4 ,000 euros, which he really wasn't in a position to fund herself. But she's just another of his victims who never got her money back.

13:03Martin Brunt:but was cajoled, duped into helping out Mark Ackland. So around about this time, you're quite a pen pal in the form of Mark Ackland. It just shows you how contacts are so important in our business. I'd done a story in Spain with a wonderful police officer and I contacted her out of the blue and I said, look, I'm trying to find out where this guy is in Spain. He's been extradited from Italy. And she, bless her, she came back to me and said, yep, he's in Cartagena near Alicante. and he's going on trial. So we beetled down there and sat in on his one-day trial and he was convicted of trying to sell two Spanish brothers the ownership of three flats in Fulham, some rather luxurious flats overlooking the Thames in London.

13:51Martin Brunt:He'd managed to con a deposit out of these two brothers of£200 ,000. Anyway, he was convicted of that, but that was the first time I'd actually set eyes on him. And I remember what Carolyn Woods told me about how he has this continental air about him. And he looked Spanish. He was fit and tanned, speaking in fluent Spanish in this Spanish courtroom in Cartagena. But he was then jailed for three years. So I wrote to him and we started this exchange of letters. And of course, he was pleading innocence. He said he'd been wrongly convicted. He said that those teenage days crimes were coming back to haunt him.

14:31Martin Brunt:And everybody that he was trying to do business with today began to question his veracity, looked up his past, and then all these business deals failed. That's the story he told me. And eventually, I went to visit him in prison. And I have to say, there were times during our 40-minute exchange behind this Perspex screen in this very noisy prison that I began to feel a slight bit of sympathy for him. Really? It didn't last long, I have to say. Because you are no ingenue. You have been in this game and in the crime correspondence game for decades. You do not strike me as someone with much sympathy for convicted fraudsters.

15:11Martin Brunt:Maybe sympathy is not the right word. I think maybe I began to understand why people would fall for his stories. He spent most of our time talking and talking because he does have the gift of the gab. And I really found it very difficult to ask him anything about Carolyn Woods. I did, but he kind of brushed it aside. But of course, that investigation was still going on here in the United Kingdom. What happened at this point? While I was dealing with Acklem in Spain, the investigation was still going on in the UK, but the police didn't know where he was. So I called them up and said, well, I know where he is.

15:45Martin Brunt:He's just finished a trial. He's just gone to prison in Spain. And by the time they got an extradition warrant for Acklem's extradition to the UK. He'd been released early from prison, which is a bit of a hallmark of his, and had disappeared, had fled Spain. So that was no good. The trail had gone cold. And I picked it up eventually, found him in Switzerland, where he was up to other scams, and again told the police in the UK. And eventually, they did catch up with him. But again, even at that stage, you and he are still carrying on this correspondence relationship, aren't you? Yes, that continued through his time in the Spanish prison and into his time in the Geneva prison.

16:30Martin Brunt:I mean, he wrote me, well, more than a dozen letters. I mean, I was writing back to him. But at one point, he told me that he could get out of prison if he paid a£30 ,000 bail money. and he wrote in one of his letters is there no way that sky can lend me the bail money and he went on they get it back once the appeal ends i will never run away again i should tell you neil we didn't pay the bail money but it just shows you how crazy but at the same time very confident he was that he thought there was a chance that maybe sky in return for you know him giving us the world exclusive interview when he came out that we might stump up his bail money.

17:12Martin Brunt:But in the end, we didn't. And he came out of prison in Spain, disappeared. And then he turned up in Zurich, where I found him and eventually was jailed waiting extradition in Geneva. And he wrote me a very tantalizing letter, a number of letters from Geneva prison. He wrote, whatever happens, the truth will never come out in a courtroom because the government would never allow it to. There are certain things I could never publish in a book either. And then in brackets, he says, my collaborations with SIS, the secret intelligence service, MI6. Now that made me wonder whether there might have been some truth in him working for one or other of the intelligence agencies.

18:00Martin Brunt:And that might have kind of fueled the bigger story that he told Carolyn Woods. I don't think it's impossible that he did. Close the Carolyn Woods chapter for us. Extradited back to the UK, ultimately convicted. What did he get and what for? He was extradited early in 2019. I was there on the plane when he sat at the back with three police officers. He was charged with 20 fraud charges, all involving Carolyn Woods as the victim. In the end, there was no trial. He pleaded guilty to five of those 20 charges. Carolyn Woods felt very cheated by this, but he did a deal and he ended up getting five years and eight months in prison.

18:48Martin Brunt:And because he only pleaded guilty to five charges, the rest were dropped. And effectively, he admitted stealing not the full£750 ,000 that Carolyn Wood said she gave him, but only£300 ,000. What do you make of the guy? I mean, in your mind, is he a narcissist? Is he a sociopath? Is he just a career criminal who happens to be rather good at it? Oh, absolutely a narcissist. And I think without much doubt, a sociopath stroke psychopath, not sure there's a great deal of difference. He's somebody who clearly has no real sense of the impact his actions have on other people. He's continued to defraud people nonstop from the age of 16.

19:37Martin Brunt:And somebody in Spain who knows where he is and what he's doing now tells me that he's trying to sell honey to Japan, which sounds like perhaps a plausible enterprise. But you can't help thinking, given his history, that there'll be some scam involved in that. Where does this story rank? Because you've covered some big ones over the year. I have. The big ones are, I suppose, Fred and Rose West, the murders in Gloucester, the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. But I think my pursuit of Mark Acklem ranks probably with those two other major stories. And I think because he's such an intriguing figure, he's behaved so badly towards many victims.

20:24Martin Brunt:And I got to know Carolyn Woods, his principal victim, very, very well and completely understood the devastating effect that his actions had on her. And I think what spurred me on was Carolyn's distraught nature, the fact that she needed somebody like me to help her, but also the fact that the police were so dismissive of her. I think both those things fuelled my enthusiasm for the story. I did team up with a brilliant private investigator. And between us, we found him, we lost him, and then we found him again and were able to steer the police towards him. And then eventually they managed to get him back and get him jailed.

21:05Martin Brunt:But typical Acklem, he served less than half his sentence, avoided some restrictions on his freedom by agreeing to get extradited back to Spain, where he had another outstanding sentence to complete. and he got out of that early and he's now living openly a free man in Spain with his wife and two children and you just wonder what is he up to now thanks very much for listening the daily is back again tomorrow thumbtack presents uncertainty strikes i was surrounded the aisle and the options were closing in. There were paint rollers, satin and matte finish, angle brushes and natural bristles. There were too many choices.

21:52What if I never got my living room painted? What if I couldn't figure out what type of paint to use? What if I just used Thumbtack? I can hire a top-rated pro that knows everything about interior paint, easily compare prices and read reviews. Thumbtack knows homes. Download the app today. How does a banana trigger a CIA-backed coup? Do AirPods The new gods herald the arrival of a new global order. What do LED lights say about the future of humanity? I'm Ed Conway, and in each episode of my new podcast, Stuff Matters, I take an object, crack it open, and reveal the world-shaping forces hidden inside.

22:30This is economics told through the things we think we understand. Search Stuff Matters on your podcast app to listen and follow.