Conman has hurt everyone says mother
THE MOTHER of a man dubbed Britain’s most prolific fraudster yesterday told of the devastation her son’s behaviour has caused over the past 30 years.
Mark Acklom, 46, was last week sentenced to five years in prison for taking more than £300,000 from Carolyn Woods, 62.
The former public schoolboy posed as a Swiss banker and an MI6 spy to seduce divorcee Ms Woods, before swindling her out of her life savings. He subsequently went on the run in Europe for several years.
Ms Woods admitted she was driven to the brink of suicide by the silver-tongued fraudster.
Last night Diana Acklom, the fraudster’s mother, spoke of her regret that her son has “wasted his life”.
Diana, 74, said: “I feel very sorry for everyone involved in this. Not just his latest victim. Everyone that comes into contact with him suffers in some way.
“It’s very sad. I noticed in one of the reports he tried to say his childhood was unhappy and his parents were emotionally unavailable. Nothing could be further from the truth.
“I have always said that I think he has some kind of mental problem. He has a personality disorder. It has never, ever been properly diagnosed.
“He has hurt everybody. I think he will keep doing this. I think he is unable to stop.
“That is why I say he has a personality disorder. Nobody in his right mind would act the way he does.
“It is depressing, soul destroying and upsetting to know that I have given birth to someone who has wasted his life, completely and utterly.”
Acklom, originally from south London, began his career as a serial conman while still at boarding school, defrauding £13,000 from a teacher in a bogus investment scheme. Aged 16, he then posed as a stockbroker to convince a building society to loan him £466,000 for a fivebedroom house.
He served time behind bars for using his father’s American Express gold card to embark on a three-month spending spree.
Since then, he has been mixing spells of luxurious living with stretches in prison in Britain and Spain.
The audacity of his scams led his own defence barrister to compare Acklom to Frank Abagnale, the legendary US fraudster portrayed by Leonardo Dicaprio in hit movie Catch Me If You Can.