Alex Wood (Image: (image courtesy of Alex Wood))
A gifted musical prodigy, violinist Alex Wood once graced the world’s most prestigious stages, performing at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle as well as renowned international concert halls. Yet it was an altogether different kind of talent that would come to define his life as an adult.
Alex’s promising music career was brought to a sudden standstill at the age of 24. “I developed a bit of strain injury in my early twenties in my right wrist, ” he told us, “and it led to a very sudden sort of stop in my career.”
From his mid-twenties onwards, Alex developed a remarkable talent for fraud, occasionally pocketing as much as a million pounds from a single 40-minute telephone scam. “I certainly had a capacity for committing fraud, and I was very good at it,” he said. “I committed every sort of fraud you could possibly imagine for about 25 years.”
Now, following a lengthy criminal career that resulted in three prison sentences, Alex has turned gamekeeper, warning the public about how to protect themselves from being conned. He forms part of the BBC‘s Scam Secrets team and has penned a new book, Facing the Music: From Her Majesty’s Palaces to Her Majesty’s Prisons, which lifts th elid the highly profitable world of scams.
He offers several straightforward tips for anyone who receives a call from somebody claiming to represent a bank or other financial institution.
Alex says he learned many of his methods while inside (Image: (image courtesy of Alex Wood))
How the scam worked
Alex’s most ambitious and – as it transpired – final criminal venture resulted in a seven-year prison sentence. While Alex has since left his criminal past firmly behind him, remarkably similar scams continue to be carried out on a smaller scale virtually every single day, with countless calls being made to unsuspecting members of the public.
Detailing how the scheme operated, Alex told us: “The last case was a multi-million pound, cyber-authorised push payment fraud, which involved me phoning up companies pretending to be the bank and getting them to transfer tens of thousands of pounds.”
Alongside an accomplice he had met while serving time, Alex successfully defrauded 12 companies across the UK. Losses against three companies totalled nearly £1.8 million, with one company alone losing nearly £1.3 million.
For Alex, it was as straightforward as picking up the phone. He explained: “We were targeting medium-sized businesses, and I knew that in the UK, a medium-sized business either banks with Barclays or NatWest – they have about 85% of the market.
“So I phone up as Barclays and if somebody said ‘No idea what you’re talking about, mate, we don’t bank with Barclays.’ I’d just remember that number and phone back the week later and say I’m from NatWest.”
Alex says you should always think twice before sharing any financial data – even with relatives [stock image] (Image: Getty Images/Cultura RF)
Alex deployed a highly persuasive script that led his victims into making what they genuinely believed were “test” transactions, while in reality they were transferring vast sums of money directly into accounts controlled by his accomplice.
How to avoid being the next victim
Alex highlights that fraud represents approximately 45% of all reported crime, yet receives merely between one and two per cent of police funding. Numerous cases go unreported entirely for various reasons, he notes.
Consequently, Alex advises: “You can’t never trust anyone ever. Apply zero-trust principles to any unexpected request for a payment – even if it’s your kids phoning you up and saying, ‘Hi Dad, I need your help.’
“If it’s at work and you’re expecting to pay an invoice at the end of the month and they’re rushing you to pay it early or whatever, anything like that has a smell about it.”
Remain vigilant if you encounter an unexpected payment request, or sense someone attempting to rush you. Alex added: “Fraudsters would always try to rush their victims into making a mistake.”
Alex now advises the public on how to avoid being taken in by fraudsters (Image: (image courtesy of Alex Wood))
Alex’s primary recommendation is that when somebody pressures you to transfer money swiftly, “that’s when it’s important to step back, take five, and just check”.
Should your bank contact you, they won’t object if you disconnect and ring back using an alternative number. They prioritise your security. Therefore, you needn’t worry about ending the call and causing offence.
He added: “If you think something’s up, then you can flag it with Report Fraud, which recently replaced Action Fraud as the National Reporting Service.”
A life of crime
Alex had already dabbled in criminal behaviour prior to his injury, while still attending the prestigious Purcell School for Young Musicians: “I was 16 and I got a summer job in Burton’s menswear. And I used to steal the gift vouchers because there were these old books of gift vouchers back in the days before vouchers were digitally recorded on the till system.”
These gift vouchers, he explains, were printed in books that could amount to roughly £5,000 in total value. The teenage Alex would simply spend a small portion of each voucher in high street stores such as Top Shop or Top Man, pocketing the remainder as cash.
Alex warns readers to question every request for money [stock image] (Image: Getty)
However, following the collapse of his musical career, Alex’s crimes “sort of graduated in seriousness,” he says. He was subsequently arrested for his involvement in a fraudulent share scheme and handed a custodial sentence. Yet that first spell behind bars became, in effect, an apprenticeship in crime, he says.
For the opening week or so, prison is “terrifying,” though inmates are swiftly divided into categories. He continued: “The officers very quickly vet you, and if you’re in for a low-level white-collar offence, you know, where you’re not interested in gang culture, you’re not smoking drugs all day, you’re not trying to attack prison officers, you’re seen as low risk and you’re literally shipped out to the countryside and so I ended up in Hollesley Bay, which is an open prison.”
There, Alex says, he learnt from more seasoned criminals how to carry out increasingly sophisticated frauds. He continued: “When in prison, I met people who were much better at crime than me … I formed a much deeper and darker conspiracy in prison.”
It was following his release that Alex perpetrated some of his most infamous crimes. Masquerading as the 13th Duke of Marlborough, he booked himself into top London hotels, directing staff to forward the frequently enormous bills to Blenheim Palace. During one visit to Claridges in Mayfair, he accumulated almost £1,800 in merely three days.
Even after being detained in connection with a fraudulent booking at London’s Great Northern Hotel, Alex couldn’t resist the temptation to live the extravagant lifestyle of an aristocrat and amassed further bills of nearly £8,000 at hotels in Mayfair, Canary Wharf and South Kensington while he was on bail.
He was imprisoned for a second time in 2015. But his biggest crime – the push payment fraud – was still to come.