Reformed fraudster Alex Wood was a musical prodigy, but a wrist injury ended his violin-playing career and he turned to crime – now he shares his phone fraud warning signs to help you avoid being scammed
As a gifted musical talent, violinist Alex Wood travelled the globe, performing at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle alongside prestigious international concert venues. However, it was an entirely different type of fiddle that would come to define Alex’s life as an adult.
Alex’s musical journey ground to an unexpected halt 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, he transformed into a prolific fraudster, occasionally pocketing as much as a million pounds through 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.”
Today, following an extensive criminal history that resulted in three prison sentences, Alex has turned from poacher to gamekeeper, educating the public on protecting themselves from fraudsters. He is part of the BBC’s Scam Secrets team and has written a new book, Facing the Music: From Her Majesty’s Palaces to Her Majesty’s Prisons, which reveals the profitable realm of fraud.
He offers several straightforward tips for anyone receiving a call from someone purporting to represent a bank or other financial organisation.
How the scam worked
Alex’s most ambitious and – ultimately – final criminal venture resulted in a seven-year prison sentence. While Alex has since left his unlawful activities behind, similar scams continue to be perpetrated on a smaller scale virtually daily, with innumerable calls targeting ordinary consumers.
Describing how the operation functioned, Alex revealed: “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’d encountered while incarcerated, Alex successfully swindled 12 businesses throughout the UK. Losses across three firms totalled nearly £1.8 million, with a single company losing close to £1.3 million.
For Alex, the process was as straightforward as placing a telephone call. He said: “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 deployed a persuasive approach that convinced victims to authorise what they believed were “test” transactions, while actually transferring substantial sums to accounts controlled by his accomplice.
How to avoid becoming the next victim
Alex highlights that fraud represents roughly 45% of all reported crime, yet receives merely one to 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 whenever you receive an unanticipated payment request, or sense someone attempting to rush you. Alex added: “Fraudsters would always try to rush their victims into making a mistake.”
Alex’s principal recommendation is that when somebody attempts to pressure you into transferring money rapidly, “that’s when it’s important to step back, take five, and just check”.
Should the bank contact you, they won’t object if you disconnect and ring back using a different number. They want you to remain secure, so there’s no need to fret 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 elaborates, were printed in books potentially worth around £5,000 in total. The teenage Alex would simply spend a small portion of each voucher’s value in high street retailers such as Top Shop or Top Man, pocketing the remaining change in cash.
However, following the loss of his musical career, Alex’s crimes “sort of graduated in seriousness,” he reveals. When he was implicated in a fraudulent share scheme, he was subsequently arrested and imprisoned. Yet his initial spell behind bars became, in essence, a masterclass in criminality, he admits.
During the opening week or so, prison proved “terrifying,” though inmates are swiftly divided into categories. He went on: “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 explains that he learned from more seasoned offenders how to execute 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.”
Following his release, Alex carried out some of his most notorious offences. Masquerading as the 13th Duke of Marlborough, he reserved rooms at prestigious London hotels, directing staff to forward the frequently substantial bills to Blenheim Palace. During one visit to Claridge’s in Mayfair, he ran up costs of nearly £1,800 across just three days.
Even after being arrested in relation to a fraudulent reservation at London’s Great Northern Hotel, Alex couldn’t resist the lure of living the extravagant lifestyle of an aristocrat and accumulated additional bills approaching £8,000 at hotels in Mayfair, Canary Wharf and South Kensington while on bail.
He received a second prison sentence in 2015. However, his most significant crime – the push payment fraud – was still to come.
Alex Wood is appearing at The Hunter and the Hunted event at Cheltenham Science Festival on Tuesday June 2. www.cheltenhamfestivals.org
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