Police: Find the wife who’s hiding ‘Britain’s most wanted’ conman
DETECTIVES hunting one of Britain’s most wanted fugitives said yesterday his Spanish wife could be playing an active role in helping him evade capture.
Serial fraudster Mark Acklom, 44, fled the UK after posing as an MI6 agent to swindle a British divorcee out of her £850,000 life savings.
The convicted conman was last sighted outside a cafe in Geneva in May, but managed to escape before police closed in. Acklom, a smooth-talking former public schoolboy, has been the subject of a European Arrest Warrant since June last year.
In an effort to track him down, police have now highlighted his wife Maria Yolanda Ros Rodriguez, a 47-year- old yoga teacher.
They believe she might be harbouring Acklom as an ordinary family man, probably among wealthy expats living close to a private international school.
The couple have two daughters, aged six and eight, who were until last year enrolled at El Limonar International School in Murcia, south east Spain.
The family left the area without trace when their location was made public in a police appeal. Detectives have asked expats to be on alert for new arrivals to their communities, though they admit the family could be anywhere.
They said Rodriguez is likely to attend yoga classes close to where she lives and may go by the aliases Yolianda Ross, Maria Long or Mary Moss. She is not the subject of a European Arrest Warrant, however.
Acklom first struck at the age of 16 when he was jailed for posing as a City stockbroker to secure a mortgage on a London mansion, go shopping at Harrods, and swindle a private jet firm out of £34,000.
In 2012, he began a relationship with Carolyn Woods, 56, a single mother- of-two from Bath. At first he told her he was a Swiss banker visiting the UK to buy an airfield in the Cotswolds. However, he later claimed it was all a cover and he actually worked for MI6.
During their relationship, he flew her to London by helicopter, and paid for hair salon appointments and Botox injections.
At the time Acklom pretended to be commuting daily from Zurich, but was apparently living nearby with Maria Rodriguez and their daughters. Miss Woods, who worked in a boutique in Tetbury, Gloucestershire, eventually agreed to marry him. One day she heard him saying he was struggling with money and offered to lend him some cash. She said last year: ‘In the end I lent him everything I had.’ Her life savings amounted to about £850,000.
Miss Woods reported Acklom for fraud in 2013. It was then that she learned he had already been jailed three times in Spain for a variety of fraud offences.
In 1998 he was jailed for two years for a fraud involving unpaid hotel rooms.
In 2004 he was arrested in Benidorm after passing himself off as the head of a retail consortium, even though he did not own the land he claimed he would build on. In 2008 he convinced two Spanish brothers to pay him £200,000 as a deposit on three apartments in Chelsea which he didn’t own. Acklom is described as 5ft 10in, of medium build, with dark brown hair and green eyes. He is now on the Crimestoppers and National Crime Agency’s most wanted lists. Detective Inspector Adam Bunting, of Avon and Somerset Police, said: ‘ Mark Acklom is a convincing fraudster and we’re working hard to locate him. ‘ We believe he’ll be with his wife Maria Rodriguez and their two young daughters.’
‘Convincing fraudster’