Many faces of Mark Acklom, the heartless MI6 conman who swindled divorcee out of £850k and whose first victim was his mum
Mark Acklom's heartless scams wrecked his loving family and lives of devastated victims after years of duplicity
HE’S the conman who has stolen millions of pounds, leaving a trail of broken hearts and empty bank accounts in his wake.
Mark Acklom’s duplicity began in childhood when he stole his mum Diana’s mink coat so he could sell it — and his later scams devastated her, leading to the break-up of her marriage.
This week divorcee Carolyn Woods told how the fraudster convinced her he was an MI6 agent before swindling her out of £850,000.
The 55-year-old said: “He told me he had never felt this way about anyone and we must get married.”
Carolyn, who met the suave crook in the boutique where she worked in Tetbury, Gloucs, believed he had money problems and initially lent him £26,000. She says: “In the end, I lent him everything.”
But Carolyn is just one of many marks to fall victim to Acklom over the last 25 years — or to aliases Marc Ros Rodriguez, Zac Moss, George Kennedy and Marco Rossi.
Now one of Britain’s most wanted men, the 43-year-old has spent more than a decade inside.
Here, for the first time, The Sun gives the inside track through the stories of his devastated victims, close family friends — and in his own words.
Growing up in Bromley, Kent, the eldest of five children, Mark went to private Eastbourne College, East Sussex, where fees today are £33,000 a year.
Yet despite the gilded existence, paid for by his father Bryan, an insurance broker, a close family pal claims that the lad’s problems were always clear.
He told The Sun: “His mum has always thought that he has some sort of psychological problem. She believes something happened when he was born that wasn’t picked up.
“Mark would claim he wasn’t loved to get sympathy and play people off against each other.
“She doesn’t know where it came from. He knew right from wrong.”
Aged just 16, Acklom spent £11,000 on his father’s stolen American Express card before posing as a stockbroker in a £1million fraud — wearing handmade suits, buying a £500,000 mansion, and taking girlfriends to the Canary Islands on a private jet.
Jillian McIntyre, then 22, believed he was a multi-millionaire in his mid-thirties. The pretty student was picked up for dates with Acklom in a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce.
He romped with her at Brighton’s Grand Hotel, paid the £1,200 bill in cash, sent a skip full of red roses to Jillian’s home and plied her with champagne at a lapdancing club.
The pair dated for five months after they met at a 1990 New Year’s Eve party. After he was convicted of fraud, she told The Sun: “He threw £50 notes around like confetti.”
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His parents turned him over to the cops and had to sell their house to cover his debts after he was convicted in 1991 and given four years in a young offenders’ institution. He served just under two.
A source said: “During his first spell in prison he was beaten over the head. It damaged his eyesight.
“Diana is convinced it left him unable to empathise with other people. He never received treatment.”
After his release he met first wife Sirpa in a nightclub, going on to have children Holly and Henry — now 21 and 20. After the two split he moved to Spain.
In 1998 he served two years of a four-year jail term there for a fraud involving unpaid hotel rooms.
Then in 2004 he was arrested in Benidorm for a con in which he posed as the head of a real estate consortium. Police found he had just 1,000 euros to his name and did not own the land he claimed he would build on. After his release, it wasn’t long before he was behind bars again. In 2007 he was jailed for 27 months by a Benidorm court for a £13million property scam.
He appeared again in Geneva, Switzerland, now calling himself Marc Ros Rodriguez and claiming to be married to a Maria Yolanda Ros Rodriguez, who was pregnant with his child. From here on he was helped in his plots by a team of con artists he met in Spanish jails.
One Swiss victim told The Sun: “Marc and his associates asked me to start an investment fund but then disappeared, leaving me with a £37,000 bill and ruined my reputation.”
A former pal revealed: “He’s never lost his taste for expensive homes, hotel rooms and handmade suits.
“But cars are his real obsession.
"Over the years he’s driven a Porsche, BMWs and a series of Range Rovers. Most of them are leased — and he disappears without paying the bill.”
The swindler returned to Britain and between 2009 and 2010 became the director of ten UK companies, almost all of which have now been closed down. One still has an outstanding £11,000 bill.
Cleaning firm boss Budd Mott told The Sun that in 2011 he pursued Acklom and associates for a £600 bill relating to a Bristol property — but they disappeared.
Acklom fled one property in London’s posh Mayfair owing more than £400,000 in unpaid rent to the Middle Eastern owner.
He threw £50 notes around like confetti
An ex-employee of Acklom’s from this time told The Sun: “He stole information from my credit card and racked up a huge bill. He also used my work documents to steal my identity. He told two other guys that he worked part-time for British secret intelligence, as well as being an investment banker.”
Acklom has had many fallings-out. In a 2010 email to a former business partner, seen by The Sun, Mark moans: “We were like brothers, I miss that. If you ever felt the way I did about you then advise me of the sums and we can end this in an amicable way.”
There are some old pals Acklom will be keen to keep on side.
One said: “Mark bought gold bars as a form of insurance. They’re buried under a friend’s garden in Spain — so if he loses everything, he can dig them up.” In 2010 Maria fell pregnant again, and recent online pictures show Mark with a young girl.
Despite the suggestion of a family life for the dad-of-four, former associates claim Acklom can’t stop himself romancing women as part of the con. As well as ex-lover Carolyn, one female London lawyer is said to have signed off on a deal only after Acklom bedded her.
And a family source says he has now iced second wife Maria for new girlfriend “Mary”.
One former associate of Acklom said: “He loves making women fall in love with him. He gets a kick out of having them buy wedding dresses for a ceremony he knows will never take place because he’ll have vanished. In the decade I knew him, he fooled more than 50 women.”
After Carolyn went to police in 2013, Acklom fled back to Spain, where he was jailed for three years for conning two brothers into paying him £200,000 on the sale of two buildings he didn’t own.
In March this year he was released from jail then vanished again. British cops have now issued a European arrest warrant and believe he is back hiding in Spain.
In ranting blogs, Acklom denies many of his crimes and moans about harassment from the law.
He bleats: “I have paid my time and it is absurd to be paying for that again and again.”
Insisting he has “a life-threatening illness” and lives a quiet life working on his autobiography, Acklom claims he is being followed by people who pretend to be cops.
Unbelievably, his father Bryan, 82, is said to have stood by him and is thought to have moved to Murcia, Spain, to be near him. A family pal told The Sun yesterday: “Mark’s mum hasn’t had anything to do with him for ages. Her marriage ended because Bryan refused to give up on Mark and stayed in touch behind her back.
“Mark sent his grandfather to an early grave after he turned to smoking with all the worry.”
Speaking at her home in Croydon, South London, this week, first wife Sirpa said: “I haven’t spoken to Mark for 20 years and I’m sick of hearing about him.” Acklom’s mother Diana, now 75, refused to comment.
It seems the two women who were closest to Acklom would be pleased if they never have to see him again.
And as long as the swindler stays in hiding, they probably never will.