Conman: The life and crimes of Mark Acklom

mark aklan is Britain's most notorious conmen I was left destitute I did wish that he had actually killed me in a thirty-year criminal career he's defrauded not only his own family I actually had to go to the police because he in effect closed down my husband's business but also countless complete strangers because we lost money I've ended up losing my family and ended up losing my house my name is Martin brunt and for four years I've been tracking a Clem around the UK he told me that he was in the wrong name and he also told me that he'd served undercover in Northern Ireland I've uncovered his extensive criminal network across Europe I think of Mark Hackel in this cycle but and now I want to know how were so many people taken in by a club for so long anybody is open to be conned if it's the right Khan for you at the right time in your life I wonder what would it take to stop him he knows how good he is at conning people and tricking them he is a ripe Roman [Music] he literally just walked into my life late to an afternoon when I was at work I was working in a very nice boutique in temporary the Bell pinged on the door I looked up and there he was and I think the thing to say about him when you first meet him is he is someone with great presence and charisma and so those are my initial thoughts as I looked up and saw him standing in the shop I was completely swept off my feet I felt as though I had fallen in love that this was the real thing and of course you know it when it's the real thing and how could I ever have even considered any other previous relationships as being the real thing Carolyn woods had no idea she had fallen into the hands of Britain's most notorious con man mark Ackland a man of many aliases who had duped victims across Europe and fleeced them of several million pounds I've been covering crime stories for more than 30 years and I've investigated some of the world's most notorious villains but mark Ackland story has gripped me like no other his extraordinary cunning his ability to convict um's is matched by his lack of remorse for the suffering he inflicts and it's become personal over the years we've exchanged many letters he told one detective I was obsessed with him perhaps I am but for very good reasons since the age of three mark a claim has been pretending to be somebody he's not he was born into a respectable middle-class family in 1973 the eldest of four children but there were problems right from the start he had a very difficult birth it was a forceps and a suction birth and when he was born you know he was bruised battered and whatever but I'd never at the time thought about it but afterwards when I had so much difficulty with his behavior right from the word go I did begin to wonder whether there was something in it in the late 1980s a claw was sent away to board at public school a t-spawn college he was an average student but he came top of one class in Business Studies he could always pick the winners one of his teachers were so impressed that he encouraged the schoolboy Akram to speculate on the real stock market and gave him 15,000 pounds money that he never saw again there will be a series of events no doubt that would have led to market them at some points around the age of 15 and 16 retreating into a fantasy world that was better than the life that he felt he was living at that time well this might be a clue to that when he was a teenager at school one of his teachers gave him 15,000 pounds to play the real stock market I mean 15,000 pounds for a boy at that age is an awful lot of money and what does it tell you it tells you that actually you've got a great brain that you can exploit and use but his teacher wasn't the only victim of the teenage conman his own father insurance consultant Brian Ackland was also a target [Music] his son stole his gold MX card and spent thousands of pounds in London that Stringfellow's nightclub The Savoy Hotel and Harrods department store a club also used the stolen card to hire private jets and fly his school pals around Europe to Switzerland Paris and Tenerife the school boy even managed to buy this mansion in South London by conning a building society into giving him a mortgage of half a million pounds I actually had to go to the police in the first instance to let them know that what he'd done because he'd in effect closed um my husband's business etc so we had no alternative he was completely out of control and let me see anything we could do it led in 1991 to the first of many court appearances in the dock acclimated a hundred and twenty four charges of theft and deception the judge branded him a wicked conman and jailed him for four years he refused to accept evidence from the defense that a club needed psychiatric help there's a common saying among scientists which is that genetics will load the gun but its environment that pulls the trigger so it seems quite clear that market Klem has dark triad psychopathic narcissistic and Makaveli and personality traits but so do a lot of people a lot of people in business media politics so what is it that has pulled the trigger on that particular predisposition if we look at what he did he ruined his father and mother's life forced them to sell their house lose their business and his other siblings stop them from getting the education they might have otherwise got he basically cleaned his family out what does that say about him that he was prepared at that young age to do that to his family well some people might say shows he's a sociopath but I'd say it shows he was a heartless wicked scoundrel who just didn't care about anyone else apart from his own self-gratification Oakland was locked up in Felton the notorious young offenders institution I just felt that going to Felton would either finish in one way or the other you know he'd either kill himself and I did get letters saying that he thought he would kill himself I didn't know what to do none of us did really really just very shocked and felt that it wasn't gonna help his cause at all which subsequently has been proved to be right but he was given valium and he was on valium for a long time and you know got over it in that way he really I suppose for him to go in there as a well-spoken white youth from these born college would have been an issue but because he's clever he's very good at manipulating and influencing people combined with the fact he went in on a fold which enabled him to get hold of private jets I suspect some of the gang leaders would have held him in probably some sort of respect and though he'd being shrewd enough to keep himself out of trouble but he would have built the contacts and learned the way to work within the criminal justice system the story of the schoolboy con artist was front-page news years later the adult a column complained in a blog that the adverse publicity had blighted his life using the name Marc Ross Rodriguez and writing about his earliest crimes he says this I was a child not even 17 years old at the time and paid for my crime the case was notorious because Britain was suffering from a financial crisis and most English people thought it funny that a 16 year old schoolboy was able to make a mockery of the city as a result I was severely punished for my crime I have paid my time and it is absurd to be paying for that again again and again unfortunately it's set in place a domino effect that has affected the rest of my life in 1993 Marc a clam won an appeal his jail sentence was cut in half to two years and he was released he went back to his South London roots in Croydon he was 20 a convicted fraudster he tried to settle down he'd been notorious he'd gone to prison for four years he'd been all over the newspapers what chances did he have when he came out what were the options for him but he could quite possibly in those days of combat to have continuing his education because he was well-spoken from a well-to-do family who were still networked I suspect and he probably could have tried to get himself into some reasonable gainful employment on the face of it that's what a climate got married in 1994 and had two children but on his marriage certificate an intriguing clue that he was already up to his old tricks he was working as an administrator but he listed his occupation as barrister for five years following his release from prison there's no record of mark Akram committing any crimes but I now know that he left the country in 1997 and spent the next 15 years fitting between Britain and the continent leaving a trail of duped investors wrecked businesses and more than one broken heart [Music] in 2012 Oakland resurfaced in England in the West country since his notorious teenage crime days it seemed he'd vanished completely from the public eye but now he reappeared he told people he was a businessman and a banker and he was using a variety of names he was traveling around the Cotswolds telling potential investors he was buying Kimball airfield with a plan to restore vintage aircraft and during this time he entered the life of the manageress of a boutique he was posing as a wealthy banker based in Switzerland his name mark only he was immaculately dressed in a designer suit designer glasses and he had a continental air about him and he absolutely exude confidence the air was electric that is the kind of presence that he has he knows he's got a presence he told me that himself that he can walk into a room and he gets noticed and I think he very much likes being sent as a center stage he did try on a number of jackets and he was in the shop for about 25 minutes chatting to me quite floatacious very entertaining and just before he left I gave him my telephone number which was actually quite unusual for me the next day the couple had their first date at a local pub when I met him I could see there's a glass of champagne on the table for him and he got me one and he told me he'd flown in from Geneva he was very entertaining that evening everything he said was you know a little bit out of my realm but he he was you know extremely articulate and told a very good story within days Oakland was bombarding Carolyn with text messages soon they started a relationship I was completely swept off my feet I felt as though I had fallen in love that this was the real thing and he gave you the impression that he wanted to be with you and it was a long-lasting relationship relationship he certainly did I mean it was all a Sharad but yes he said he'd never felt like this about anybody what is it about him that women taped him oh I suppose they'd like to be spoiled and you know showered with flowers and gifts and this what woman wouldn't but some is obviously more than that on it he obviously has some sort of charm and things that I I mean I don't see because I'm his mother but it's bent over and over again women have said exactly the same thing so it's obviously quite a common trait in us women Ackland took Carolyn to Kimble airfield he told her he planned to buy it and restore vintage planes she was already dazzled by his Jet Set lifestyle then he revealed an even more remarkable story the most extraordinary thing he did say to me was that actually all this was a bit of a cover and that he was an mi6 agent that did sound very far-fetched but he drove me to the mi6 building apparently when he'd been called in one day and I was with him and obviously disorientated me but convinced me that he was going in to see his boss and I saw him walk into an underground carpark past two armed guards and I was convinced that he was going into the mi6 building I think the mi6 cover story gave him carte blanche to disappear for days on end to reappear at any time of the day or night and he did this in quite dramatic fashion on a number of occasions so he appeared one day with his arm in a sling and he told me that he was working undercover in Syria and that he'd been shot and so he appeared with his arm all bandaged up later Akram convinced Carolyn he was suffering from a brain tumor I know you can imagine I was completely distraught about that he said that mi6 were worried that he would start spilling state secrets and he was under guard in the hospital but he did manage to come out and see me in the car and his head was expertly bandaged with what appeared to be a little drain coming out of his head so I was convinced like I saw him in the hospital at least twice it's a natural inclination not to question anything until we see something immediately out of kilter immediately wrong the man telling you eat an mi6 agent doesn't sound normal well there's a technique that come then use and it's called roping it's how you literally pull somebody in and there are lots of different stages to that so the very first stage is the first impression that you make on that individual mark haplin's got a lot going for him certainly he's not a bad-looking man he's a good-looking man he scrubs up well we think that somebody who's physically attractive will also be attractive in other ways as well and have attractive personality traits Ackland told Carolyn that he was now buying and developing luxury properties around bath one of these was Whitcomb manner a grade 1 listed Georgian home it was on the market for 3 million pounds he said that he was having restoration work done on the house and one day when we were together he apparently took a phone call so I only heard one side of the conversation I gathered that you know there was a cash flow problem and he talked to me afterwards I said what was all that about and he said oh you know it's a bit of nothing to worry about that you know are sorted out and of course I said well I've got some money because I had sold my house so I had all the proceeds of the sale of my house in the bank and I offered to lend him I think initially it was twenty-six thousand pounds and over months that Seager became much bigger in the end I lent him everything that I had Carolyn drew up several loan agreements for the cash she handed over this one for the total 750,000 pounds she wanted to believe that this man was in love with her was as exciting as he said he was and that they were going to get married and live happily ever after so she would have pushed her doubts to one side to the extent of giving him all her money that is extraordinary I think that you can say that Carolyn Wordsworth was brainwashed to a degree she says brainwashed absolutely she was fed a series of more and more outrageous lies it's harder to accept the reality that somebody is playing you they're lying to you and the life that you think that you're living it's a sham in the time we were together a column kept Carolyn under his control isolating her from her family and friends then slowly he began to distance himself he stopped taking her calls he didn't answer her emails eventually it dawned on Carolyn that she'd been swindled Ackland I'd stolen her heart and then her money I wanted to kill myself I was suicidal I did say at the time to the police of my injuries had been physical I would have looked as though I'd been beaten to a pulp Carolyn didn't know that a club had been living in splendor nearby through the many months of their romance he was renting the old rectory with money he'd stolen from her what's more he was living there with his second wife Maria and the couple's young children Carolyn woods went to a police station but she was sent away and told to fill in a standard online fraud form and she waited weeks to hear from a detective when she did hear she felt as if she was being treated as a suspect after months of police in action she turned to me for help it was the start of a 4-year manhunt one that would take me from the west country to the secretive banking world of Zurich and Geneva to the playgrounds of the super-rich along the Spanish coasters and finally to the streets of the Portuguese capital Lisbon where time began to run out for Britain's most wanted con men you [Music] in January 2012 carolyn woods met and fell in love with conman mark a Clem he then fleeced her of hundreds of thousands of pounds I couldn't get anyone to listen to me I went to the police station I was sent away told to report it to Action Fraud online and it then took about six weeks to get the case assigned to a police force and I don't think he believed my story when I told him and in fact I felt as though I was treated as a criminal not as a victim of a horrible crime my involvement in the hunt for Mark Ackland began with a text message from an old acquaintance Martin do you have sometime in the next few weeks to talk to a woman who has an astonishing crime story carolyn woods asked me to help track down mark Ackland because the police couldn't she was desperate I discovered that mark Oakland had been living in the West Country for more than two years before he walked into the life of Carolyn woods I soon found out she wasn't his only victim Carolyn had given me one clear lead mark acklin's involvement with Kemble airfield in the Cotswolds and it was there that I got my first breakthrough in 2012 a spectacular classic car and aircraft show was held there vehicles worth millions of pounds were on display one of the guests invited was an internet entrepreneur he told me that a man called Zach Moss showed interest in his idea to promote rock concerts at Formula One race meetings Zach Moss talked about raising finance working with us how he knew Bernie Ecclestone and how he'd worked with him in the past and he sounded what he was saying basically quite Florida portable mr. Frampton believed Zach Moss had organized and paid for the displays but Zach Moss didn't exist he was none other than mark Eklund unaware of the deception mr. Frampton was soon lured into joining a clubs company it took two months before I realized that there was an absolute con and that he was a complete fraud stuff and what were you paid nothing but I basically got angry the first month because there was no no salary turned up and obviously my wife was going ballistic over that and then when the second month came and went I was already realized that he was a complete nutter robber and and I started pursuing him for the money you were awarded what nearly 20,000 pounds how much of it did you get didn't see a penny of him and I don't think I ever will I've struggled quite badly with with with ill health and it's cost me my marriage I discovered there were more of a clumsy victims in the West Country he managed to ingratiate himself with staff at the prestigious Clifton College in Bristol it was the run-up to the school's a hundred and fiftieth anniversary celebrations once again a column used the classic car scam to promote himself with the help of a video shot at the airfield using the vintage vehicles as an attraction he persuaded the school to give him a major role in fundraising he also arranged the attendance of celebrities including television presenter Carol Vorderman it was through the classic car event that a club met and began to befriend the regional head of one of Britain's biggest charities he told me that he was in the Royal Navy and he also told me that he'd served undercover in Northern Ireland and he started to lift his trouser leg - show me some scars that were there from when he was captured and tortured by the IRA I couldn't see anything on his leg at all and he then went into a sort of monologue about his experience and relationship with Hillary Clinton which again I you know what even when I repeat anything how could you how could anyone ever believe this but the way this fella put it was it was intriguing at the time now all of this just you know I can imagine anyone listening to this thing well how could anyone be taken in by all this once again Ackland was posing as a swiss-based banker he boasted he could raise 8 million pounds for the Prince's Trust donations from his wealthiest clients it seemed likely a club was preparing the groundwork for another big scam he's a prized never ever seen him or heard from him until you phoned me a couple of months ago to say do I know Chuck would mark a column and I said never heard of him and then you said you might know him as Zack Moss and then right you took my breath away he asked if I could design an airport and I said curiously enough that was my degree projects Bristol Airport redesigning it neither though I think he knew that yeah I mean that's that and that's a long time ago that 76 you know but he'd gone back and he said I've just bought Kimball airfield he said what I'd like to do is take you up there and you can have a look at it and then I want you to visit Farnborough Airport and he said it's absolutely amazing I want to do that in the West Country you know a clam also commissioned mr. Hadfield to draw up plans to extend a luxury house so he could buy it for five million pounds he said in fact I'll get the papers drawn up and we can get it all signed over and I and I said get it all signed over when does the money arrived and he said well when the job's done I said that need the money to do the job you know instead of buying the house at Clem rented it but one night he and his family vanished leaving unpaid rent of five thousand pounds so mr. Hadfield hired a private detective to investigate this is the private detectives report it concluded that mark Ackland or mark Moss as he was calling himself at the time was a classic con man who played on his victims natural greed with the promise of substantial financial gain at some time in the future the report said that the police should be alerted and they were but nothing came of it [Music] I knew that a club had close ties to Spain he spoke the language fluently and his second wife Maria was Spanish after several weeks my discovered that a column had rented this office in Alicante on the southeast coast of Spain the rent for the office was paid by a woman who'd hired as his PA how much did you give him four thousand years yeah it sounds crazy and he said he'd pay you back yes sure and did he pay you back no he didn't the plush office were soon buzzing with hired staff supposedly drumming up business in real estate and shipping and attracting investors one day police arrived and you know they knocked the door and they asked for mark and I said okay but who you are and he just didn't push me you know like no no we can inside and they get inside and both of us a couple they get around mark I said you have to come with us Oakland was freed on bail that night he collected his family and did a midnight flit to Italy it took the Spanish authorities for months to extradite angklung he was wanted for a property fraud linked to the UK Akram had been selling luxury London flats to Spanish Nationals for vast amounts of money flats that he didn't own he was put on trial in Carter henna after tracking Ackland for so long finally I'd caught up with him he looked and sounded Spanish and he held everyone's attention even in that setting even in handcuffs he had charisma in fluent Spanish Ackland tried to persuade the judges that he was completely innocent at the time of the crime he explained he'd just come out of prison and was trying to build a new life he said he was asked to help sell the London flats purely because he spoke English listening intently were at clubs victims the Cervantes brothers Francisco and Domingo album Dion it is it is roosters apartamentos they all regard atomization lumber is a million Taiwan today I want to fund ASEAN Hispaniola yah yah see that Evy to just be she was not about Tennessee and then similar what do you think of market economy I think of mark a column this psychopath and today even a chromosome Spanish lawyer agrees and says he's a brilliant con man Morocco is we had Rivera a Theological pas de Cicco pada been the Lord a woman in can tell early seventies Oakland was convicted of the London property fraud and sentenced to three years he was taken to Mercy as Central Prison number one I wrote to him and he invited me to come and visit him our meeting was followed by a long correspondence Oakland's letters very in tone there's anger defiant denial but he also offers to cooperate with me in telling his story he says we might even become friends at one stage he writes I just want to thank you for the exquisite way you are treating me later on he tells me that he's got an appeal coming up and he can get out of jail if he can raise bail money of thirty thousand euros and then he writes this to me it's in no way that sky can then the bail money they get it back once the appeal ends I will never run away again I only have one last chance I had been intrigued by Oakland's admission in court that he had just got out of prison it suggested that the scale of his crimes in Spain was far greater than anyone had suspected to help me explore Oakland's Spanish criminal career a former top detective from Scotland Yard and the City of London police it's difficult to get a clearer picture of his crimes in Spain there's confusion one of the reasons is I've got a a rap sheet from Spain and a rap sheet from the crown prosecutors in England and there are discrepancies they don't match but what they both do agree on is a first crime in 1999 what what have you got there well we've got him in 1999 getting three and a half years for a fraud he claims it was defrauding a hotel but you don't get three and a half years for defrauding a hotel there's nothing that shows the detail isn't no but what we have on the English rap sheet 2004 two more offences what do they tell us well we've got him again committing a burglary an offense of dishonesty that's in Benidorm yeah and another fraud Benidorm caught in the same month may conviction another six months inside now what's interesting is that the English sheet doesn't have the next crime that appears on the Spanish sheet of 2006 he's again convicted of fraud and he gets a sentence of 21 months in prison yeah I mean what this is showing us if you now put all these together is that as soon as he's out of prison he's back reoffending he simply doesn't stop he's probably plotting whilst he's in prison the guy is a serial offender and a dishonest person it's still difficult to get any real detail of what he was up to in Spain in terms of his crimes but there's one tiny newspaper cutting that refers to the crime in Benidorm in 2006 what does that tell ya this tells us that he had attempted to convince people he young the hotel barley just down the road from here working with a single poor partner he came unstuck of course because the hotel owners knew nothing about it but interestingly this was only within a few months of him being released from prison from the burglary and fraud offenses which he was convicted no for Kevin and I worked out that over the years Oakland had been jailed in Spain five times on his last sentence in 2015 he applied for a pardon and was freed temporarily he surrendered his passport and was ordered to stay in Spain but again he went on the run [Music] for a long time I had been on the trail of mark Ackland Britain's most notorious con man I'd finally caught up with him when he was convicted of fraud in a Spanish Court in 2015 but on temporary release from jail awaiting an appeal he had vanished again in 2016 UK police finally put a claim on their most-wanted list they urged Spanish communities British expats and holidaymakers to look out for him the realities for the day-to-day police officer they are so busy just getting through what goes on in their day-to-day work they don't get time to look at these kind of lists and indices and so you come to notice because you've been in a road accident you get arrested for drink-driving or you end up in hospital as Spanish police searched for Oakland I continued my own investigation for months I've been working with a foreign private detective who also had a claim in her sights she tracks con artists through online chat rooms she uses the alias Charlie's Angel because Charlie had received death threats for her pursuit of fraudsters she asked not to be identified mark Eckland was just one of many later on he became like a challenge to my intelligence loads of times I felt that I was behind one of his aliases was one step ahead police had been hunting Akram in Spain for six months when Charlie rang me she'd been sent a photograph of a Clem sitting at a cafe not in Spain but in Switzerland together we managed to locate the cafe in the middle of Geneva [Music] Akram clearly wasn't a regular there in what your as falsies no one knew him Aston Martin [Music] I was back to square one as Charlie had predicted a club always seemed to be one move ahead my hopes of finding him in Geneva were dashed but again I got some unexpected help there were people once close to a club who were beginning to turn against him just when I think I've hit a brick wall I get an email from a mystery man who offers me new clues to acklin's whereabouts he helps me kickstart my investigation he thinks that Ackland isn't still here in Geneva but somewhere else in Switzerland the mysterious caller suggested that I look for a Clemens Erick and it was here I discovered that a claim had managed to get a new passport and create another identity he had changed his name legally by deed poll he was traveling under false identities making use of Depot to change his name all the time so he can be the most wanted person in the world on the name of mark Acton if he's travelling on a different Passport no one will pick it up I spent weeks investigating acklin's activities in Switzerland and I learned that even on the run he was still preying on new victims I spoke to the wife of one of Acland Swiss contacts she was scared to talk but said at claire mode her husband a lot of money the debt was making her husband unstable she was terrified because he owned a gun I found that an extraordinary moving phone call the poor woman could hardly speak she was crying so much another country and another victim mark a compromising huge profits but delivering nothing but misery and ruining lives up to his old tricks again later in a series of text messages and phone calls the woman revealed that a clone was running a company making black box recorders for driverless cars also he claimed I found a new company in Switzerland called Swiss disk and the first thing that caught my eye was the website of the Swiss disk had exactly the same layout exert the same letters used as former marketing websites Akram claimed he was working with Elon Musk the American car technology pioneer Ackland was telling would-be investors that musk had put five billion Swiss francs into his new company he promised us billions one of the wealthy important companies will become Swiss disk in the next year and it makes sense and you invested yes I invested how much 400 thousand roundabout and are you going to get that back no never what happened when you met Marc Oakland I've never met Marc Ecko in my life Harold herb ins contact with at Klum was only ever by phone never face-to-face he thought he was dealing with a Spaniard called Manuel escolar I found out and that all was based on a big fake and on lies but that the the fake let's say mano a con sis Cola is finally a man called Mark Eklund I couldn't believe in it because I've never heard something about market loan how were you taken in he is let's say brilliant in operating this persons he tells you a story and after few minutes you believe in it on the run a clam used his many identities and the lack of European border controls to travel freely [Music] one day fraud investigator Charlie's angel contacted me with good news Oakland had been spotted in Lisbon I'd been sent secret photographs of acklin's disheveled new look but for a man who changed his appearance so often it was hard to know how much use they would be Lisbon though provided the most important lead yet another mysterious source confirmed that a claim had been doing business here and it wasn't just me who was interested in the Portugal connection a team of British detectives flew to Lisbon in great secrecy they rented an apartment close to the British Embassy they came to speak to the man who'd been feeding me information about acklin's activities detectives from Avon and Somerset Police and the National Crime Agency came here to question the informant they clearly believed he could lead them to their fugitive they told him that much work was being done to find Akram police and other agencies in various countries were now joined in the hunt the net was closing but a claw wasn't to be found in Lisbon the hunt for Britain's most wanted fraudster ended back in Switzerland in the small town of Aiden's Ville Oakland was at home in a luxury rented apartment with stunning views over the water swiss armed police had been watching him for days before they approached when his wife let them in Oakland was sitting on the toilet I think what led to his arrest was the publicity that Caroline woods had maintained and Skye had assisted with to the point where we received information from Switzerland that came to Haven and somerset suggested where he might be Oakland was taken to Geneva's Chantal imprison his extradition to the UK was put on hold a Swiss prosecutors considered their own charges against him during that time Oakland was convicted of more crimes Swiss check and credit card fraud and jailed for a hundred and twenty days it sounds as icy for a lot of companies as well as persons went lastly to the police or to the prosecution in order to say hey I'm also a victim of Mark Eklund back in the UK at clubs victim Caroline woods welcomed news of his arrest I've been waiting for five years for this day and at some times I thought it would never come so I'm just now hoping that he can be extradited it brought to trial and I can put him firmly out of my mind forever one of the first things that Klimt did after his arrest was to write his wife Maria a letter in it he declared his love for her and their daughters he also instructed her to change certain papers to her name then he wrote more letters to me at one stage he complains to me that because of his past he can't get a fair trial in the UK and he writes to me rather mysteriously I believe my life could be in danger there for several reasons I will explain in person and in his final letter he's pleading with me please visit me here or in the UK you are my friend the UK can't prevent a friend visiting helped me Martin I can't cope anymore he was very keen to get you to understand that you were friends he uses the word friend a lot doesn't he in his letters so you're my friend and that must mean something to you therefore you owe me I'm gonna offer you this great sensationalist story you won't believe how big it is but you've got to do things for me Martin after eight months a column lost his fight against extradition a team of detectives brought him back to the UK on arrival he was charged with 20 counts of duping Caroline woods into giving him all her money a date was set for his trial in the end there was no trial at Clem did a remarkable deal with prosecutors he pleaded guilty to five of the 20 charges the rest were dropped he was jailed for five years and eight months time already served in custody meant his sentence would be much reduced but if he's made a lot of money I am sure he has made millions of pounds throughout his life that extravagant lifestyle has been based on destroying the lives of others Caroline woods went to court to see him jailed and got some satisfaction from that at least I feel that I've stood up to him and I think he probably wasn't banking on that and at the end of the day although I would like him incarcerated forever I have inconvenienced him somewhat so and hopefully raised his profile after looking for Marc a column across Europe for more than four years I was pleased my long pursuit was over what is it about Marc Oakland that has so captured your attention because he's clever because a woman came to me who was distraught and wasn't getting the help that I felt she was entitled to but is this really the end of the story of Mark Oakland the conman he's wanted again in Spain he didn't complete his last jail sentence there but eventually he will be free again he'll be back on the streets somewhere and it's likely he'll return to the only life he knows he doesn't seem to have any remorse for what he's done to other people and the devastating effect that he's had on their life but his regret is that he got caught and the ramifications of being caught for him frankly he he knows how good he is at conning people and tricking them he's gonna carry straight on back out there the moment he's released so beware of a con man called Mark a clone or whatever name he decides to give himself next

Channel: Sky News

Views: 2,084,284

Rating: 4.6001201 out of 5

Keywords: Sky News, Martin Brunt, Mark Acklom, Crime, Fraud, Conman, Justice, Scam, Sky One, Documentary, UK, Police, Manhunt, Financial crime

Id: BBwKmH3QLt0

Length: 49min 2sec (2942 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 18 2019