Mark Acklom: Carolyn Woods, victim of serial fraudster, will not receive back from bank any of stolen £750,000
A woman fleeced by conman Mark Acklom has lost a battle for compensation from the High Street bank he used to steal all her money.
Carolyn Woods had argued that because a Barclays staff member and a former employee were arrested during the police investigation on suspicion of conspiracy, though they were not charged, the bank had failed in its duty of care to her as its customer.
The bank has told her, after a six-month internal investigation, it won’t pay her a penny of the £750,000 she lost.
The crimes of conman Mark Acklom
Ms Woods was duped in a romance scam by serial fraudster Acklom, who wooed her and promised to marry her, telling her he was a wealthy Swiss banker called Mark Conway and a secret MI6 agent. He was jailed four years ago and is now free.
Acklom had persuaded Ms Woods to move her money into a Barclays account and then got her, under his coercive control, to transfer it all in a series of ‘loans’ into the account of an associate who was a former Barclays employee.
Ms Woods transferred up to £30,000 a day into the associate’s account, money Acklom told her he needed during a temporary cash flow crisis. Some of the cash passed through the account of a Barclays account executive.
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From September: Carolyn Woods demands £750k back
The female account executive and the male former employee worked in the same department at Barclays. They were questioned by detectives and freed on bail for many weeks.
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Police told Ms Woods that the Crown Prosecution Service was considering charging both of them, but they were eventually released without charge and the former Barclays employee became a potential prosecution witness after claiming he, too, had been under Acklom’s coercive control.
A Barclays investigator has told Ms Woods: “In terms of your concern that the fraud was committed with assistance of the Barclays Account Executive, our investigation has found no evidence to support this concern, nor any evidence that suggests there were any efforts by any member of Barclays staff to prevent any suspicious transactions from being flagged either to you or the bank.”
It added: “Whilst we can empathise with your situation and how hard this must be for you, and notwithstanding the fact that the fraudster was later convicted, our original decision remains the same and we will not be considering any reimbursement.”
Pic: Avon and Somerset Police
Ms Woods, said she was disappointed by the Barclays response and was considering her options.
She said before asking for Barclays’ help: “I put my faith in the criminal justice system, but it has failed me. It just works in favour of the criminal and really doesn’t give much consideration to the victim at all.”
Acklom, who is now 50, is living in Spain with his wife and family, and is the subject of a UK police Proceeds of Crime Act investigation to discover the value of his assets. A final court hearing is set for next week.
A nine-year-old girl found dead in Weston-super-Mare has been named on the day police revealed a teenager had been charged with her murder.
Emergency services were called to Lime Close in the Somerset town at 6.09pm on Monday but Aria Thorpe was pronounced dead at the scene.
Police said a 15-year-old boy had been charged with her murder and that a preliminary post-mortem found she died from a single stab wound.
The teenage boy – who can’t be named due to his age – will appear at Bristol Magistrates’ Court later today.
A police cordon remains in place as forensics officers continue their work.
Flowers and tributes have been left at the scene. Pic: PA
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Superintendent Jen Appleford, from Avon and Somerset Police, said the community was in shock and Aria’s family were being supported by police.
“It is impossible to adequately describe how traumatic the past 36 hours have been for them and we’d like to reiterate in the strongest possible terms their request for privacy,” she said.
Supt Appleford said police were working with local schools and other agencies to make sure support is available.
Britain loves chocolate.
We’re estimated to consume 8.2kg each every year, a good chunk of it at Christmas, but the cost of that everyday luxury habit has been rising fast.
Whitakers have been making chocolate in Skipton in North Yorkshire for 135 years, but they have never experienced price pressures as extreme as those in the last five.
“We buy liquid chocolate and since 2023, the price of our chocolate has doubled,” explains William Whitaker, the real-life Willy Wonka and the fourth generation of the family to run the business.
William Whitaker, managing director of the company
“It could have been worse. If we hadn’t been contracted [with a supplier], it would have trebled.
“That represents a £5,000 per-tonne increase, and we use a thousand tonnes a year. And we only sell £12-£13m of product, so it’s a massive effect.”
Whitakers makes 10 million pieces of chocolate a week in a factory on the much-expanded site of the original bakery where the business began.
Automated production lines snake through the site moulding, cutting, cooling, coating and wrapping a relentless procession of fondants, cremes, crisps and pure chocolate products for customers, including own-brand retail, supermarkets, and the catering trade.
Steepest inflation in the business
All of them have faced price increases as Whitakers has grappled with some of the steepest inflation in the food business.
Cocoa prices have soared in the last two years, largely because of a succession of poor cocoa harvests in West Africa, where Ghana and the Ivory Coast produce around two-thirds of global supply.
A combination of drought and crop disease cut global output by around 14% last year, pushing consumer prices in the other direction, with chocolate inflation passing 17% in the UK in October.
Skimpflation and shrinkflation
Some major brands have responded by cutting the chocolate content of products – “skimpflation” – or charging more for less – “shrinkflation”.
Household-name brands including Penguin and Club have cut the cocoa and milk solid content so far they can no longer be classified as chocolate, and are marketed instead as “chocolate-flavour”.
Whitakers have stuck to their recipes and product sizes, choosing to pass price increases on to customers while adapting products to the new market conditions.
“Not only are major brands putting up prices over 20%, sometimes 40%, they’ve also reduced the size of their pieces and sometimes the ingredients,” says William Whitaker.
“We haven’t done any of that. We knew that long-term, the market will fall again, and that happier days will return.
“We’ve introduced new products where we’ve used chocolate as a coating rather than a solid chocolate because the centre, which is sugar-based, is cheaper than the chocolate.
“We’ve got a big product range of fondant creams, and others like gingers and Brazil nuts, where we’re using that chocolate as a coating.”
The costs are adding up
A deluge of price rises
Brazil nuts have enjoyed their own spike in price, more than doubling to £15,000 a tonne at one stage.
On top of commodity prices determined by markets beyond their control, Whitakers face the same inflationary pressures as other UK businesses.
“We’ve had the minimum wage increasing every year, we had the national insurance rise last year, and sort of hidden a little bit in this budget is a business rate increase.
“This is a small business, we turn over £12m, but our rates will go up nearly £100,000 next year before any other costs.
“If you add up all the cocoa and all the other cost increases in 2024 and 2025, it’s nearly £3m of cost increases we’ve had to bear. Some of that is returning to a little normality. It does test the relevance of what you do.”
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