The DIY voice changer behind £½m bank con
A SERIAL fraudster who built a voicealtering machine to fleece hundreds of people out of an estimated £500,000 has been jailed for nearly two years.
Tony Muldowney-Colston, 53, built the device to con people into thinking he was their banking provider.
When he was arrested in June, Muldowney-Colston told police he created the device to gain access to customers’ accounts and clean them out.
Officers also seized a hard drive with passport and identity card details, 32 credit cards. He also had a spreadsheet of names, addresses, email contacts and phone numbers relating to a private members’ club in central London.
Police believe Muldowney-Colston obtained more than £500,000 from the accounts he accessed.
The conman, from Brighton, admitted a total of 11 fraud charges and was jailed for 20 months at Southwark Crown Court on Wednesday.
Astonished
The Metropolitan Police began investigating Muldowney-Colston in January after identifying him as a key player in UK-wide cyber crime.
Also known as Tony Colston-Hayter, he was previously jailed in 2014 for five-and-a-half years for his role in plundering £1.25million from British banks.
He led a gang which used a “Trojan horse” device to hijack computers at Barclays and Santander bank branches and siphon off cash.
After his release from prison, the former DJ created a bizarre machine from a card reader and voice-altering equipment, which astonished detectives who discovered it in a raid.
It altered Muldowney-Colston’s voice to match the age and gender of a customer
Behind bars again... Muldowney-Colston
if he called banks and could also play pre-recorded bank messages to unsuspecting victims.
The once-successful businessman, the son of a university lecturer and solicitor, gained notoriety in the 1980s for throwing acid house raves and had even been on the Jonathan Ross TV show.
But his life changed and he started to abuse Class A drugs, police said.
Detective Inspector Philip McInerney of the Met’s cyber crime unit said “audacious criminal” Muldowney Colston, “shows no concern for the welfare of any individual or organisation” and “will use a range of methods to achieve significant financial gain for himself”.
He added: “This should send a clear message [to would-be cyber criminals] that we have the tools and methods to identify you and bring you to justice.”