Conman built his own bank fraud kit
Inspector Gadget device costing £97 used to target vulnerable and celebrities
A FORMER rave promoter built an ‘Inspector Gadget-style’ fraud machine to target hundreds of victims, including celebrity members of a London club.
Tony Colston-Hayter, 53, compiled a target list after obtaining a stolen spreadsheet of bank and personal details belonging to stars such as Noel Gallagher and Sheridan Smith.
details of his intended victims emerged yesterday as the fraudster was jailed for nearly two years for defrauding hundreds of ordinary people using the extraordinary machine he made.
He built it after being released early from a five-and-a-half year sentence for a previous £1.25million banking scam. It allowed Colston-Hayter to modify his voice so he could imitate bank staff, play pre-recorded fake bank messages and disguise his phone number to make it look like he was calling from a bank’s fraud department so he could con the vulnerable into handing over account details.
It is not known exactly how much he stole, but police believe the machine he built for £97 could potentially have given him access to accounts worth £20million.
It is thought he actually managed to access accounts containing at least £500,000 – money which he blew on class A drugs.
described by police as a ‘shrine’ to crime, the machine was decorated with an image of God and Jesus. devout Colston-Hayter was known before crime detective from unit he to sprinkle cold-called Inspector the likened Met holy the Police’s victims. Philip water device McInerney cyber on to it something Inspector had never seen Gadget, from anything 1980s adding: like cartoon it, ‘We we had communications to to send work it out off and what to cyber the it was digital laboratory and establish it actually worked.
hundreds ‘The scam of carried people out across affected the UK. welfare He shows of any no concern individual for the or organisation.’
Colston-Hayter was known in his youth as the Acid House King because of the all-night raves he organised in the Home Counties in 1989 when in his twenties.
The events caused outrage at the time, attracting thousands of children as young as 12 and were rife with drugs. The wealthy son of a university lecturer and a solicitor, he enjoyed a privileged upbringing in the London suburb of Hampstead. At 16, he persuaded the head of the liberal Stantonbury Campus comprehensive to let him set up a clubroom with a coin-operated video game he profited from.
A few months later, he persuaded a bank manager to loan him £500 to set up a video game business which turnover before £108,000. enjoyed crashing by Colston-Hayter the a time with million-pound he debts was then 19 of became gambler, every casino a eventually successful in Britain. banned professional from moved After a back spell to in Britain Hong Kong, to marry he and start a family, but police believe he became an accomplished fraudster. In 2014 he was jailed for five-anda half years for stealing £1.25million from a bank in North London, by taking control of its computers and siphoning off the cash. In June this year he was caught again while on licence after being released automatically at the halfway point in his sentence. Among the vast array of personal data and stolen banking documentation found at his flat in Brighton, spreadsheet of There the were Groucho is no defrauded, police relating evidence Club discovered in to that but Soho. members police members a believe likely to it have was a stolen ‘target or list’ bought he is which addresses, contained e-mail the addresses bank details, and phone numbers of celebrities thought to include Rachel Weisz, Nick Grimshaw and Pixie Geldof. officers also seized a hard drive containing details of passports, identity cards and credit cards relating to other victims. The fraudster, who now uses the name Muldowney-Colston, was jailed at Southwark Crown Court on Wednesday for 20 months after admitting nine counts of possession of an article for use in fraud and two counts of making or supplying an article for use in fraud.