Elliot Castro I was 16 years old and sold mobile phones in a call center in Glasgow, Scotland, when he first scammed someone to get their banking details. The scammer soon began enjoying a lifestyle that included first-class flights and luxury watches. Castro stole £2.5 million (just over $3 million) in a series of scams before finally being captured in the bathroom of an Edinburgh department store.
He now works as a fraud prevention expert and shared his story in a new documentary by the BBC titled “Confessions of a teenage scammer”. At 42 years old, the former scammer remembers the first time he scammed a customer after answering a call with an order. Instead of completing the transaction, Castro pretended there was a problem with the credit card and then proceeded to trick the customer into believing he had his bank on another phone line. Seconds later he already had the client’s bank details and his first scam was born.
“It was more like something I did once and thought, ‘I wonder if I can do this anymore.’” The expenses were modest at first, but, like his crimes, they increased rapidly. “That was the beginning of five years of absolute madness from when I was 16 until I was 21, 22,” Castro told the radio program Mornings of the BBC in Scotland. “The first time I got card details I spent money on CDs, haircuts and t-shirts. So I had no inkling of the madness I would live in later,” she said.
The scammer was born in Aberdeen in 1982 and attended eight different schools before moving to glasgow with his family in 1998. He describes himself as a dreamer and admitted to lying on the application for his call center job when he said he was 18 instead of 16. “I had it in my head that I would have this incredible lifestyle,” said Castro, who is half Chilean. His criminal career ended with exclusive vacations, five-star hotels, lavish parties and limousines.
During a trip to London In 1999, Castro bought a belt gucci for £300 (about $380), which he claimed was more than what he earned in a week at the call center. Later, the film’s admirer “My poor angel” (also known as “Home Alone”) spent more than £8,000 (approximately $10,000) on a first-class flight to NYwhere he stayed in the Plaza hotelfamous for appearing in this popular movie.
His stay included three days of expenses totaling £11,791 (about $15,000) at the exclusive Fifth Avenue.
Castro admitted: “A typical day for me at that time was to wake up, go shopping, go drinking, return to the hotel I was staying at that night, sleep, wake up the next day and repeat the same thing.” “But all this time I was aware that I was possibly being followed or that someone was trying to catch me.”
In 2001 Castro made trips to Germany, France and Spain. The following year he spent a season in Irelandwhere he stayed in the hotel Clarence of Dublin and according to what he says he rubbed shoulders with stars of the group U2. “It is a hotel owned by Bond and The Edge (U2 guitarist). “We had a conversation one night in the bar, where I told them that he was working for the Ministry of Defense or as a hotel consultant.”
The scammer had several brushes with the law, dating back to 2001, when he spent four months in an institute for young offenders in Lancaster. Months later he was arrested at the hotel Edinburgh Balmoral and transferred to Manchester, where he was sentenced to 18 months in prison. During this time he got a job in the prison library and read about the internet. After those readings he began using Internet cafes when he was released to make anonymous flight reservations with stolen credit cards.
In 2002 Castro was arrested in Toronto and imprisoned for 87 days before being deported in 2003. “I was starting to feel tired, I had started making friends for the first time in my life,” he said. “But I couldn’t tell them who I really was. The situation became unbearable. Now I wonder: Was there a subconscious part of me that wanted to give up that way of life?”
One day Castro He bought £2,000 (about $2,500) in vouchers with a card that was not in his name. The advisor called the card company, which approved the transaction. But, she followed a hunch and called them again. “The company contacted the real cardholder who verified that it was fraud and I stupidly returned to the store less than an hour later and that was the moment it all ended,” she explained. “I went to the bathroom quickly and when I opened the stall door there was a plainclothes police officer and that was the beginning of the end.”
The following year, in a court in Isleworth in Middlesex, England, Castro He admitted fraud offenses worth more than £73,000 (about $93,000) and was sentenced to two years in prison. “Throughout those five years, if there had been better communication [entre agencias de policía y empresas de tarjetas de crédito] “Maybe they would have stopped me sooner,” he reflected.
Today Castro is a different man, full of regret for the misery he caused and keen not to give the wrong idea that stealing is an attractive option. Also is helping to stop sophisticated scams and catch credit card scammers. “When I started doing this, I never thought about people,” he said. “I never met those people I scammed. But that doesn’t mean that what I did was right. “What he understood about credit cards at the time was that if the cardholder had not authorized the transactions – which in my case they did not – then they would not lose anything financially,” he said.
More than 20 years later, Castro feels he is making amends for his youthful actions. “I’m not making excuses, but what I did was a long, long time ago and I like to think I’ve made amends since then,” Castro said. “Fortunately I am now in a position where I work with financial institutions, travel companies and businesses. I’m fortunate to be known as a trusted advisor in the industry, which is fantastic. “It has been an interesting journey,” he concluded.
