BBC_Confessions of a Teenage Fraudster_3of3
Transcript
00:00By age 20, I'd spent four years scamming well over a million pounds of other people's money
00:07and spending it all over the world.
00:13Once you've had a taste of something nice, it's very hard to go back to it.
00:17You don't do all of that without getting banged up now and then.
00:24But no level of guilt or length of sentence had ever persuaded me to stop.
00:31And this one, the worst of the lot, wasn't going to either.
00:35The card was still alive.
00:37But now, with investigators and cops across the world chasing me down...
00:42I can meet the aircraft that he's flown and arrest it.
00:47...and my existence becoming ever lonelier...
00:50I couldn't be at home because I was being hunted.
00:54It must have been absolutely horrific for them.
00:56The globetrotting five-star lifestyle I'd become addicted to was in danger of unravelling.
01:15After 87 of the longest days of my life...
01:20...it was time to leave the Don jail in Toronto.
01:23At that time, I knew that back in the UK...
01:27...I had committed hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of fraud, possibly millions.
01:32And I had no idea exactly what they knew or didn't know.
01:37I was just days from release and deportation back home.
01:41I needed to know what the UK authorities had planned for my return.
01:46The best way to find out?
01:48By pretending to be the UK authorities.
01:54I called the Canadian Immigration Department.
01:57It's such-and-such calling from the British Embassy.
02:00I'm just inquiring about a certain Mr Castro who's in your custody at the moment.
02:05I've had his family on the phone and they're just quite concerned.
02:08They'd like to know when he's coming back.
02:10And he said, oh sure, well he's being deported on Monday.
02:13And we've been asked to contact Detective Ralph Eastgate at Heathrow Airport to let him know.
02:20When I heard those words, the first thing I thought was, oh shit.
02:25And the second thing I thought was, how can we get him not to make that call?
02:31I had no idea who Ralph Eastgate was, but I knew I had just one shot at stopping him from greeting me in arrivals.
02:40And I responded with, that's okay, the Embassy can take care of that for you.
02:44And he said, ah that's great, that's one less thing for me to do.
02:49Would that be enough to throw Detective Eastgate off the scent?
02:54I wouldn't know until I touched down on British soil.
03:05The flight back was the longest seven and a half hours of my life.
03:10Just being completely in the dark about what might be waiting for me.
03:15I just didn't know. I thought I'd covered all bases, or at least as much as I could, but I wasn't certain.
03:22What was I thinking about? Just one thing.
03:26How much did this Ralph Eastgate have on me?
03:29As it turned out, plenty.
03:32He would book flights to Australia, he flew to Spain and Portugal, he flew to Canada and America.
03:38He flew into the airport, he flew out of the airport.
03:41Unfortunately, time and time again we missed him.
03:46Eastgate sent me an email, that by the way I'm working on a case for a fraudster in the UK named Elliot Castro.
03:53I was already intimately involved in the Castro case.
03:56So the assumption was that he would be deported from Canada straight into custody in the UK.
04:05Whenever you got a telephone call to say Mr. Castro was flying to Heathrow,
04:09you sat down and you thought, this is nice, I'm going to arrest Mr. Castro and put myself out of my misery.
04:15As we started our descent, I began picturing just how many officers might be waiting to arrest me.
04:37So I'm walking down the gangway and literally every step was just filled with trepidation.
04:46And I was literally looking at every single person.
04:49And anyone who even slightly made eye contact, I was like, who's that?
04:56I think the best way I could describe my state of mind at that time was I was completely spaced out.
05:04But no one was waiting at the gate.
05:07Up next, border control.
05:11If I was going to be caught anywhere, it would be there.
05:28The official looked at the passport and I think my heart rate must have been going through the roof.
05:35I said, right, OK.
05:39Welcome home, sir.
05:44And I walked through.
05:46Even then, I still wasn't sure.
05:48I thought, I have to get out of here because I couldn't function properly,
05:51just with the thought that someone might just jump out and get me.
05:56But no one did.
05:59But no one did.
06:01I may just have pulled off my best scam yet and not a credit card in sight.
06:18I was long gone.
06:20Off to find my connection home elsewhere.
06:28All my money had been taken off me as proceeds of crime.
06:31I had nothing.
06:33Once I had a minute to sit down, I went through the envelope that had been given.
06:37My plane tickets were in there.
06:39And when I looked at those in fine detail,
06:42I saw the card number that had been used by the immigration department to book my flights
06:48was plainly visible on the tickets, with expiry date and everything.
06:53It was just there for the taking.
06:55Be rude not to.
06:57So I booked a flight to Glasgow using those details.
07:02So you defrauded the Canadian Immigration Service?
07:06No comment.
07:12For the first time in a long time, I could look forward to some home comforts.
07:17Or so I hoped.
07:19When my taxi arrived back at my mum's house, this was like peak paranoia.
07:24I basically got the taxi driver to go in and chap the door.
07:28He didn't seem very happy about it, but he did it.
07:33Since I'd been away, the cops had been round to the house,
07:36basically turned the house upside down,
07:38looking for evidence of whatever they thought I'd been up to.
07:43Obviously I wasn't daft enough to leave anything like that in the house,
07:47but they still looked for it nonetheless.
07:49And obviously that caused a lot of consternation from particularly my dad.
07:55It made me feel really bad because I was just wrapped up in my own world,
08:00not really thinking about the effect it was having on people around me.
08:05I'm not saying that I didn't have a realisation,
08:07but it was something that I think deliberately I just put to the back of my mind
08:11and just tried my best never to think about it.
08:13And now here it was, straight in front of my face.
08:17I wanted to stay and make amends,
08:20but I needed to find out just how risky that would be.
08:25So I was really keen to find out what level of interest there was
08:30from all the different credit card companies
08:33to try and put together a picture of how wanted I was.
08:47Asked to be put through to their fraud departments.
08:50Explained that I was calling from the serious fraud office.
08:57One by one, they all said the same thing.
09:00Yes, Mr Castro is known to us.
09:02Yes, Mr Castro is well known to us.
09:05Yes, his name's been flagged.
09:07Well, good enough.
09:10I had the Irish and UK police after me,
09:13along with one of the world's largest travel retailers.
09:16Now I could add the biggest credit card companies to that list.
09:22And where would they look for me?
09:24Right here in my mum's house.
09:26It was time to move on.
09:29Ideal location, not Glasgow, but not too far away either.
09:33Maybe with a good bit of sea in between.
09:44I ended up going out to clubs, pubs, bars and restaurants in Belfast
09:48and eventually ended up meeting folk.
09:51I think Scottish people and Irish people have got this connection,
09:54the Celtic connection or whatever they call it.
09:57I think we kind of understand each other and how bonkers we both are.
10:02Just sort of randomly met him on a night out and just befriended him
10:06and brought him in to the group.
10:08He was a bit of a lost puppy.
10:10He just seemed to be like he wanted to be friends with everyone.
10:14One way to do that is buy people drinks and just, you know, be big boy.
10:19I was pretty drunk most of the time.
10:23And I'd realised that I actually quite liked it there.
10:25I was starting to feel that I wanted some sort of stability.
10:29Only problem, I was skint.
10:32And for the first time, getting hold of credit cards was not the answer.
10:37I needed to find an untraceable flow of money that would raise little suspicion.
10:43Cash is king, it's traceless.
10:45You could go in somewhere and spend cash and there'd be no record of that having been spent.
10:50Whereas cards would always have a paper trail associated with them.
10:53Exactly how I got hold of cash was another matter.
10:58But I'd learned some things over the years.
11:01Our global assistance programme can provide you with emergency cash
11:05at over 200,000 locations worldwide.
11:10Firstly, I'd phone up unsuspecting five-star hotel guests
11:15and convince them to provide me with sensitive card details.
11:19Just like the old days.
11:21It's Anthony here, the duty manager, and we have an issue with your cards.
11:25But now, instead of requesting a new card be sent out to me,
11:30I would report the card lost,
11:32explain that you've been stranded in a foreign country with no money, no passport, no documents.
11:37Then they would say,
11:38Yes, we've got the ability to send you some cash.
11:41It will come off your card account.
11:43And you can go and pick it up anywhere.
11:45My plan relied on wire transfers sending money electronically across the planet
11:50with little way of tracing it.
11:52Wire transfers are a fraudster's goldmine,
11:54because usually it's gone out of our country,
11:56which means it's gone out of our legal system.
11:58The police don't really have a lot of control over that.
12:01It's incredibly difficult to get that money back.
12:05I needed a scheme that would make lots of money with minimal risk of capture.
12:10After spending months in a prison with notoriously bad conditions,
12:15I definitely wasn't the same person as I had been when I went in.
12:20I think my confidence had taken a knock as well.
12:23I didn't lie awake at night thinking about Declan Farrell and Ralph Waisgate.
12:30But I just had to factor that into my decisions to how best to avoid being captured.
12:40The plan was good.
12:41It was almost impossible to trace anything back to me.
12:45But there was a major issue.
12:47The assistance programmes that these credit card companies had in place,
12:51they would only help you if you were out of the country.
12:55Fortunately, I was in the perfect place.
12:58So my plan was to arrange for money to be sent to locations in and around Dublin.
13:05And then I would get the train down, go round the locations,
13:08pick the cash up and come back to Belfast.
13:11As I discovered when I'd brought the money,
13:13As I discovered when I'd broken bail a year earlier,
13:15you could travel from Dublin to Belfast in a couple of hours.
13:19No checks, no passport.
13:23But let's not forget the Irish police had never caught up with me since I fled their country.
13:28Well, I was looking for him, but I didn't know where he was.
13:31What would you do if you thought a detective was out looking for you?
13:35He rang me up.
13:37What the fuck did I do that for?
13:39He said he was looking for me.
13:41What the fuck did I do that for?
13:43He said he was ringing from Paris.
13:48He wanted to give me the impression he was in France.
13:51He just said out of nowhere, oui monsieur.
13:56I knew he wasn't in Paris.
13:59I suspected he was probably somewhere in Dublin or in Ireland.
14:03But he wanted to find out where I was so he could move freely about.
14:08He wasn't wrong, but that call did nothing to put me off.
14:12Soon enough, I was picking up wire transfers across Dublin.
14:15A cash advance of £300 will be available this afternoon.
14:18One of the best parts of this was that they would ask me to set my own password.
14:23And they would ask for a physical description of me,
14:26so that security could still be maintained as much as possible.
14:30There was always a chance that the Irish police would recognise the tall,
14:34handsome, dark-haired young Scotsman who had just been robbed of all his possessions.
14:39So it was all about being discreet.
14:41There were lots of locations that you could go to pick the money up.
14:45Banks is an obvious one.
14:47But there would also be smaller places like newsagents.
14:51So I would always try and choose somewhere that I was fairly certain
14:55I wouldn't be as many cameras about.
14:58How much cash are you carrying?
15:00I think the maximum is about £35,000 or so.
15:03Where do you carry £35,000 in cash in?
15:06In a rucksack.
15:08Put it this way, you don't take your eyes off the rucksack.
15:13It was as brazen as it was undetectable.
15:16The risk was low.
15:18I mean, the risk really was low.
15:20That was like a set of golden doors that opened up.
15:25Because it was like the sky was the limit.
15:29Never before had I gotten hold of so much money at any one time.
15:39Well, I couldn't just hide it under the bed, could I?
15:44I decided to go to the BMW dealership just to take a car for a test drive.
15:52When I went into the dealership, this salesman came over
15:55and he was asking about what sort of car I was interested in.
15:58And obviously I chose the most expensive one, which I'm pretty sure was a 7 Series.
16:02So the salesman obviously thought he was on to a winner
16:04and then asked me if I wanted to take the car for a test drive.
16:10Bearing in mind at this time, I didn't even know how to drive.
16:12I actually said, can you just drive?
16:15And he was like, oh, it's okay, it's okay.
16:17And I was like, no, honestly, just you drive if you don't mind.
16:20Came back and he said, well, what do you think?
16:22And I said, yeah, it's a lovely car. Let's put a deposit down.
16:25How much did it cost?
16:26I'm sure it was about 50 grand or something.
16:31Let's just say it was all about the image, right?
16:36Because although I didn't drive, I just felt that that was what a wealthy person would do.
16:42They would like look at expensive cars.
16:46I remember a coffee table, a Daft Punk coffee table.
16:50Square glass box that lit up.
16:53And you would set it so that the lights flashed to the beat of the music that was playing.
17:01But this coffee table, man, it was amazing.
17:04It just really, really looked the part, you know?
17:07I mean, it was amazing.
17:09But this coffee table, man, it was amazing.
17:12It just really, really looked the part, you know?
17:22Sometimes Belfast just didn't have enough shops to handle a man on this kind of mission.
17:28Rodale Drive was crazy.
17:30I mean, it was just like New Bond Street on steroids.
17:34It's Louis Vuitton, Prada, all the big names.
17:38It's safe to say I went shopping.
17:40Had a nice time.
17:41Didn't get arrested, which was always a bonus when that happened.
17:47Next up, tax haven of the rich and famous, Monte Carlo.
17:53I remember from being a kid a song about the man who broke the bank in Monte Carlo.
18:00And I thought, you know what?
18:02Let's give it a shot.
18:08Did you break the bank?
18:09No, I think the bank broke me.
18:16That ten grand barely made a dent.
18:18I was collecting way more than that.
18:21My biggest problem was just getting from A to B.
18:24I was still checking in with the airlines.
18:28Hi, I've got a passenger here just now.
18:31And I was wondering if you could just check the booking as our systems are down at the moment.
18:34But more and more, the response was negative.
18:37Yes, there is a flag on Mr Castro's booking.
18:41I wasn't sure what was going on, but I knew that someone was definitely tracking me
18:45or keeping an eye out for my name.
18:47So I had to try and make sure that I was kept out of that spotlight.
18:52But when you're in that sort of situation, worry is a wasted emotion.
18:57You know, if you're going to get caught, you're going to get caught.
18:59But if you think about how not to get caught, then that's a better use of your mind space.
19:05So I had to kind of do zigzag trips, basically,
19:08where I would take one flight to somewhere and then somewhere to somewhere else
19:11and maybe do two or three stops before I would get to my destination.
19:16And of course, avoid Heathrow and Detective Eastgate at all costs.
19:23I tend to see where they have operated as opposed to where they are operating,
19:27because they're just moving on.
19:29The problem with that is you're always one step behind.
19:34It is 100% a lonely lifestyle,
19:37because although you might have the ability to travel anywhere or buy anything,
19:43you don't really have anyone to share it with.
19:47And that's difficult.
19:49But when I was in Belfast, things changed.
19:55I rented a flat pretty much in the city centre.
19:59A nice big balcony overlooking the city.
20:03And I suppose that's when I started partying pretty hard.
20:20It was a pretty cool night. I had the place done up.
20:23Like, pretty swanky.
20:25Was that a good time?
20:26It was a great time.
20:29Most of the guys there in the group were DJs or something in the music industries.
20:35And Elliot sort of latched onto them a bit as well.
20:38He had his decks all in there and his mixers.
20:42And that's when he started to do his own mixes.
20:45I always had ideas of DJing and stuff.
20:49So when I moved to Belfast, I bought a set of decks and a mixer and things
20:53and I had them set up in the living room.
20:55The first ones weren't great.
20:57I'll say that.
20:58Over time, they did get better.
21:00But there was a few ropey, ropey CDs that he let out that he shouldn't have.
21:06We walked to this club, went in and found the guy who was running the night
21:10and just asked him if there was any chance I could get a shot on the decks.
21:14And he said yes.
21:18Soon, I was taking bookings for gigs and earning an honest, if small, living.
21:24Up until that time, for the previous few years,
21:30any cash that I'd had, pretty much, had been stolen.
21:36So when I started being paid for doing some DJ work,
21:41obviously it wasn't a huge amount of money,
21:44but it felt more valuable and it felt real.
21:48Earning money as a local DJ only raised more questions about my spending.
21:53People would ask what I was doing for a living.
21:55Especially when you live in that kind of lifestyle,
21:57people want to know, who is this guy?
21:59How's he got all this money?
22:01I would always try to make it something that
22:03they were very unlikely to have further questions about.
22:07He told us that his grandfather had started a hotel management company
22:13and managed hotels all over the world.
22:15He says, look, I'll be honest, Lee.
22:17I don't really tell anybody this, but actually my dad is a duke.
22:20So there's a lot of wealth in the family.
22:23But I don't like talking about it because I don't want everyone to know.
22:26People just accepted what I said most of the time.
22:29I told it so often that I started to believe it myself.
22:33But peddling so many lies in one place began to wear me down.
22:38Belfast is small. It's really small.
22:40You can't do anything in Belfast without people finding out.
22:43It's like a big community.
22:44We said, listen, we know something's going on.
22:46I mean, but what is it?
22:51And he did come close to saying something, but he just didn't.
22:54He just started crying.
22:56He started crying?
22:57Yeah.
22:58Yeah.
22:59You could say the pressure was there for him, you know.
23:06I think there was definitely a sense of isolation
23:11because having friends is one thing,
23:17but true friendships are hard to come by.
23:22And there were one or two people who at that time I was very close to
23:28and I was happy to have them in my life.
23:31What I wasn't happy about and what I was racked with guilt about
23:35was all the lies that I had to tell.
23:38The lies spiralled out of control
23:42to the point where I don't know how I managed to keep it together for all that time.
23:46This was probably the beginning for me of starting to feel that
23:50I didn't maybe really want to do this anymore.
23:54While I was making true friends, I was also picking up hangers-on.
24:00I spent so long with no friends in my life
24:03and when I realised that money could in a sense buy people to a certain degree,
24:09I ran with that.
24:11And that was the wrong thing to do
24:13because although I met a lot of nice people,
24:15I met other people who I would say were definitely just around
24:19for the drinks I was buying or champagne that was being bought.
24:24Maybe it was no surprise someone eventually sold me out.
24:29We spoke to an individual who got to know Elliot Castro
24:32during his time in Belfast and he informed us about how Elliot
24:36was able to be so cunning and so open and very plausible.
24:41He was very flamboyant, wore designer clothes,
24:44stayed in the best hotels, ate in the best restaurants.
24:47But there was something unusual about him because he was always there
24:51every weekend at different clubs.
24:53He was there with the cash, he was there with the fancy Rolex watch.
24:57We got to hear about him rolling up a five grand bill at the Hilton Hotel
25:01and he'd only stayed there for a few days.
25:06I couldn't live this life without fraudulent money,
25:09but the attention that money was gathering was grinding me down.
25:13I couldn't be bothered with it anymore.
25:16I started not doing some of the things that I always did.
25:20My sort of safety checks, you know, my things that I used to do.
25:25I think I started being sloppy about that.
25:29The mindset wasn't there the way it had been.
25:33Drinking probably four or five nights a week, just going out and partying.
25:41In an effort to release the pressure, I would escape on short bursts abroad.
25:48Dubai, with a stay at the seven-star Burj Al Arab.
25:51Ibiza.
25:53When we were in Ibiza, he turned up and had 500-euro notes.
25:56It was like, what the...?
26:01But the thrill had gone. I was spending and partying on autopilot.
26:07A friend had a birthday and I surprised him
26:11by telling him that I'd booked us a trip to Amsterdam.
26:16So the morning we were travelling,
26:18I called the airline's central reservation number
26:22to see that everything was all right with the booking.
26:26So she went away and came back a second later and said,
26:28oh, I'm afraid there's actually a security potential fraud marker on that reservation.
26:35That obviously was a problem.
26:37I had trouble explaining to my friend why we could no longer go to Amsterdam.
26:42I had trouble explaining to my friend why we could no longer go to Amsterdam.
26:47And not to let him down, I had booked another flight
26:52to the second party capital of Europe, Edinburgh.
26:59It was the only place I could get flights to quickly.
27:07Party capital might have been a stretch,
27:09but I knew one thing we could do here.
27:12Spend a lot of money.
27:15I was a regular customer at Harvey Nicks
27:17and obviously they knew that I spent a bit of money in there as well.
27:20And the manager of the mainswear department knew me
27:24and I couldn't have given over this credit card
27:28because it had a different name on it.
27:30But for certain upmarket places,
27:34if you were paying cash, they'd look at you funny.
27:37The only people who paid cash were drug dealers.
27:43So I went to the customer service desk
27:46and I asked for £2,000 of gift vouchers.
27:52Cashier asked if I had any ID.
27:55And I said, no, no, no, I said I don't get any ID,
27:58but it's fine, if you phone the credit card company,
28:01they'll verify everything, no problem.
28:04So she did and I verified all the information.
28:08The transaction went through, she issued the gift vouchers
28:12and I left the shop.
28:20If I got even recognised by a cop walking down the street
28:25or anything happened at all which brought me to the attention of the authorities,
28:30that it was all over.
28:33I realised at that time that I was on a cliff edge.
28:40I went back to the hotel, I got my friend
28:43and then we went back to Harvey Nichols.
28:48What happened next really was down to
28:52a lack of care for my own procedures.
28:56Previous me would never have bought those vouchers
28:59and went back to the same shop less than an hour later to spend them.
29:04It did not occur to me that something might have happened
29:08in the background that I was unaware of.
29:13There was a plainclothes sergeant in the city centre of Edinburgh.
29:17I remember getting a call on the radio to Harvey Nichols
29:21where a person who was there had used a credit card
29:24and the eagle-eyed shop assistant, she's like,
29:27there's something not right here.
29:30When we went back to Harvey Nichols,
29:32we shone round the menswear department.
29:36I'll try this, I'll try that, I'll try this one.
29:38I had a massive pile of clothes.
29:41My mate was receiving the full personal shopper experience.
29:45I think we were about halfway round the menswear department
29:48and I said I needed to use the loo.
29:57When I opened the cubicle door to exit,
30:00this guy was standing right in front of me.
30:02Was it sloppiness?
30:04Absolutely, yeah.
30:07I remember searching Elliot and we found this watch,
30:10this Rolex watch, and it wasn't your watch you buy on holiday
30:13from Tenerife or whatever, it weighed a blinking tonne,
30:16this thing, it was a real one, a real Rolex watch.
30:19And we just then knew there was something about this guy.
30:22When I came out of the toilet in handcuffs basically,
30:25my friend, he looked over and saw me.
30:30He just shook his head in disappointment.
30:34It's amazing how much that face portrayed
30:37and I'll never forget that
30:39because I knew exactly why he was disappointed.
30:42And that made me feel incredibly sad.
30:46Everything sort of started to click into place.
30:48OK, so it's definitely something to do with credit cards.
30:55He was brought back to Gayfield Square Police Station.
30:59And as soon as we put Elliot's name
31:01on our police national computer,
31:03we started to get that flashing light.
31:05This is somebody who is not just wanted for something small
31:08but for a whole multitude of things.
31:10This was somebody who had been very active,
31:14not just in Edinburgh but across the UK
31:16and even around the world.
31:20I was now the very opposite of active.
31:24Sat in jail, awaiting the inevitable.
31:27I remember that evening or the day after
31:29having a conversation with a detective, Ralph Eastgate,
31:32and it was like all these Christmases had come at once.
31:36Here was the police in Scotland capturing this fugitive
31:39which he'd been chasing up and down the country
31:42and he was finally in custody.
31:45But there was some error with the Crown Office
31:47which actually meant he was released earlier
31:49than he should have been,
31:51which really was, you know, that's Elliot.
31:54You know, he just, you know,
31:56at that time he was really a lucky man.
31:59I literally remember saying to myself,
32:00I can't believe I'm getting out of here
32:02and I'm getting away with this again.
32:04It was unbelievable.
32:05So then I went down to the reception area
32:08to pick up my stuff and collect my stuff.
32:10I was in high spirits, as I'm sure you can imagine.
32:12And then I was told there's two police officers waiting
32:15to take me down to Manchester.
32:18They said to me we've had to release him in Scotland
32:21but fortunately he's wanted in Manchester
32:24so why don't we book the next flight to Manchester?
32:27So I was languishing in some cell
32:30or waiting with bated breath
32:32to find out what's going to happen next.
32:34And then the cell door opened, this guy walks in,
32:38same height as myself, six foot odds,
32:41tan complexion, and he says,
32:43and he says, ah, Mr Castro.
32:46And I looked up and he said, I'm Ralph Weisgate.
33:01When he saw me, he was shocked
33:04because he was expecting some older,
33:07more powerful fraudster, I guess.
33:11And he was just greeted by a 21-year-old.
33:17But at that point I knew that was a game up.
33:24I mean, obviously I can't put words in his mouth,
33:27but I think in a sense he almost took pity on me.
33:32He's not mucking old ladies over the head or rubbing banks
33:35so you don't have a great dislike for the gentleman.
33:39He's not a nasty person.
33:42I think he felt as though I was a young guy
33:46who'd gotten lost somehow.
33:48Was he right? I think so.
33:52Yeah, I think he was right.
33:55And he treated me with kindness.
34:02Instructions from the outset were that he was pleading guilty.
34:08He knew he couldn't challenge this
34:12and he was always accepting that he'd been caught.
34:16He did ask me whether I could try and get his watch back.
34:19It was a Rolex watch.
34:21I did tell him that wasn't going to happen.
34:25So there was a total of 431 charges to be taken into consideration.
34:29So these were individual offences that I had committed.
34:32So when I was sentenced, I was sentenced for everything.
34:36Tell me about the estimation.
34:38People ask that question all the time, how much did you spend?
34:41It's anywhere between one and a half to two and a half million pounds.
34:46My barrister told me that I should expect anywhere up to about four or five years.
34:52This letter from his mother was read in court.
34:56Your Honour, I am writing to you as you hold our son's future in your hands.
35:01May I first state that my husband and I are under no illusions
35:04as to the gravity of the offences our son has committed.
35:07We cannot explain Elliot's actions, although I can say the following.
35:11We are a loving family and have always shown Elliot this.
35:17Elliot has not had an easy life.
35:19He was bullied a lot at school and this caused him to become very introverted
35:23and his self-esteem became very low.
35:27We tried to rectify this by changing school several times,
35:31although I think in retrospect this may have done more harm than good.
35:37Elliot always wanted friends but very rarely had any,
35:40as by his teens he had already started lying to make himself seem to be something he wasn't.
35:47We know Elliot must be punished for his crimes
35:49and we are aware that he will probably receive a custodial sentence.
35:55Your Honour, please help our son.
35:57He is not a bad person. He needs help.
36:00Yours sincerely and respectfully, Jane Castro.
36:05Well, how does reading that feel?
36:11Erm...
36:16Quite emotional.
36:18I'd always had a very, very close relationship with my mum.
36:22I loved her more than anything else.
36:27I think she was always proud of me,
36:33not for being a criminal.
36:36She always felt that I could be so much more in my life.
36:50My mum passed away just over two years ago
36:54and it has been the most difficult thing I've ever went through in my life.
37:13So at court I got a two-year sentence,
37:16so I was over the moon with that.
37:19I mean, as over the moon as someone can be,
37:22as over the moon as someone can be.
37:33I was seeing people who were two or three times my own age
37:37and in the time I was there they'd maybe been in and out once or twice
37:42and I just looked at that and I thought,
37:44is that what I want for me?
37:47It wasn't, but I needed something to convince me
37:50that there was another path to follow when I emerged from prison.
37:54I was living in Edinburgh, trying to become a writer
37:57and one of the few ways I was getting paid was finding odd stories,
38:01particularly Scottish stories,
38:03turning them into something bigger for magazines down in London.
38:06And I saw this local newspaper headline,
38:08Teenage Fraudster Jailed.
38:10It was just the bare bones of the story,
38:12but you could tell there was something far more interesting behind it.
38:17I sent a letter into the ether of the prison system
38:21and a few weeks later I got one back.
38:23I was definitely very cautious, which I understood,
38:26so we kind of went back and forth
38:28and then eventually he said, well, you'd better come down and see me.
38:31I took him to a pub, which I'm not sure was allowed.
38:36And Elliot, you can push that for me.
38:39MUSIC PLAYS
38:55What the fuck's wrong with my accent?
38:57Why do I sound Irish?
39:00The thing is, I could have up to ten of you inside each other.
39:03Ten? Yeah.
39:05So if one thing messed up, I always had something to fall back on.
39:08That is absolutely bonkers listening to that.
39:10It's like...
39:12I don't know.
39:14Sounds like a different person, literally.
39:21What began as a wee article in a men's mag
39:24soon evolved into a 313-page biography.
39:29Everything I'd done laid out in black and white.
39:34It was an opportunity to close that chapter.
39:40Things could have gone one of two ways for me.
39:43But the last time I came out of prison...
39:48..I decided I would never go back.
39:53As my story spread, I became, for a brief moment, a media celebrity.
40:00And then something really weird happened.
40:05Suddenly, people wanted my thoughts on how to stop fraudsters.
40:10If you were to give advice to our one show viewers
40:13about how people could avoid being caught like this, what would it be?
40:17It's your money. It's very important to you.
40:19Be very, very careful.
40:21Yeah, Elliot, knowing what you know,
40:23what would your advice be to government departments then today?
40:27Well, I think government departments certainly need to look at the procedure
40:30and ensure that it's being followed at all times.
40:36In my time at Expedia,
40:38I investigated somewhere around 1,000 total individual cases,
40:45and Elliot is in the top five, if not the top.
40:51He has seen most of the world on credit cards.
40:56It would be nice to have a finalised case.
41:01You've seen the glitz and the glamour.
41:03It's not just about the money.
41:06When I came out of prison, it took about two years
41:09for me not to panic when I heard a police siren.
41:13Even though I knew I'd done nothing wrong at that point,
41:16it puts you into a state where you can't live your life properly
41:22and you're always concerned that things might catch up with you.
41:27He was so invested in the lie.
41:29I think it takes a very high level of emotional intelligence,
41:33you know, like the classic cons and grifters,
41:37an ability to story-tell and act
41:41and get people to believe the story they're peddling.
41:47We often look at fraud or credit card fraud as a victimless crime.
41:52You know, he built trust with people to gain their details,
41:55and he broke that trust.
41:57This occasion here, there were victims.
41:59I think his motivations were greed
42:02and to try and gain some kind of acceptance within society,
42:07to gain a reputation and someone he wanted to be liked.
42:12Obviously, he wasn't able to do that through legitimate means,
42:15so he had to turn to criminal activity.
42:21I didn't really hear from him after that much.
42:23Every year or two, he would get away, sort of,
42:26how you doing, what's the crack, really sorry about that.
42:32He seems a lot happier now. He's a different guy, really.
42:36I'm grateful that I've been able to turn myself around.
42:41Despite everything that I did,
42:43I can say with my hand on my heart
42:46that it wasn't done in order to hurt anyone.
42:49I knew what I was doing was wrong,
42:51but I was of the mind that people got the money back
42:54and it didn't really matter.
42:59And with the benefit of maturity,
43:01you realise that, OK,
43:03that person might not have had to pay the bill,
43:05but it might have still caused them a lot of stress.
43:08I find it difficult to feel sorry for the banks personally,
43:11but I certainly, you know, am regretful
43:14if I ever caused anyone any sort of personal stress with what I did.