Prolific conman wooed divorcee by posing as MI6 spy to swindle her out of nearly £300k
A CONMAN who swindled his ex-girlfriend out of nearly £300,000 while posing as an MI6 agent has been jailed Mark Acklom, 45, duped Carolyn Woods into lending him her life savings by pretending they were in a “committed relationship” and promised to marry her despite still living with his wife. But the “cruel and cynical” […]
A CONMAN who swindled his ex-girlfriend out of nearly £300,000 while posing as an MI6 agent has been jailed
Mark Acklom, 45, duped Carolyn Woods into lending him her life savings by pretending they were in a “committed relationship” and promised to marry her despite still living with his wife.
But the “cruel and cynical” conman skipped the country and left her penniless, having used her money to fund a lavish lifestyle.
Ms Woods, 61, told Bristol Crown Court that she met “flirtatious, charming and very entertaining” private school educated Acklom in 2012.
He came into her boutique to buy a jacket, chatted her up and said he was a Swiss banker visiting the UK to buy a Cotswold airfield.
Acklom then convinced her it was all a cover and that he was actually an MI6 agent.
“We were in London and he said he’d been called in by his boss, so he drove me to the MI6 building and I watched him walk down into a car park past two armed policemen,” she said.
“There are no photographs of us together because he said his handlers would not allow it because of his security.”
She began lending him large amounts of money over the course of the following four months including £300,000 to renovate properties in Bath.
He moved her into a large Georgian property in Bath, which she believed was owned by him but he was in fact renting it, using the money she gave him.
But his visits became more infrequent and he began to make excuses for not being able to see her, including saying he was on a secret mission in Syria.
He later left the country and was named as one of the UK’s most wanted fugitives.
The divorced mother of two said she has lost her home, is hounded by debt collection agencies and suffers from post-traumatic stress.
“Mark Acklom acted deliberately, and in the most calculated, pre-meditated way, to defraud me of all my money and nearly all my personal possessions, and to deprive me of my home and my job,” said Ms Woods.
An arrest warrant was issued in June 2016 and he was believed to be at large in Spain, after being released from prison there over a £200,000 property fraud.
Acklom was arrested in Zurich in 2017 after being found at a luxury apartment, where he had been living under a false name with his wife Maria Yolanda Ros Rodriguez and their two young daughters.
He was deported and on Wednesday he pleaded guilty to five counts of fraud by false representation before he was to face a trial.
Gudrun Young, defending, likened Acklom to the main character of the Leonardo DiCaprio film Catch Me If You Can.
She said Acklom had no idea of Ms Woods’s wealth at the start of their relationship, and said the “infatuated” woman had handed her savings voluntarily.
Ms Young said though their relationship had been “genuinely romantic” it had not been “sexually consummated”.
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Sentencing Acklom to five years and eight months, Judge Martin Picton told him “you took advantage of your victim in a cruel and cynical manner”.
In 1991, Acklom, was jailed for four years for a £466,000 mortgage fraud after he posed as a City stockbroker.
He also spent £11,000 after stealing his father’s credit card, swindled a former teacher out of £13,000 and ran up a £34,000 bill with a private charter jet company.
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