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The Big Con: How I stole £30 million and got away with it
Fraudster, swindler, conman, chancer, trickster, loveable rogue, the Southerner with more front than Southend - call him what you will.Tony Sales knew how to make money.From emptying fruit machines to cloning credit cards, the man from Greenwich made a mint. And boy did he splash the cash. Fast cars, holidays in sun-kissed millionaires' playgrounds, mixing with the great and the good.Then came the internet - the game-changer. Data became the new currency, and how he exploited it, stealing identities and splurging hundreds of thousands on the latest must-have goods.Sales never fails. Or so he thought.Tony bit off more than he could chew, and ended up having to swallow a twelve-month stretch in 2010 for passport forgery. It would prove to be a life-changing sentence.Now he has done a Frank Abagnale Jr. and gone from poacher to gamekeeper, helping global finance giants stave off prolific cyber crooks like his former self.Only through the eyes of a criminal can you anticipate their next move. This is the incredible true story of King how he stole a fortune, lost it all, and turned his life around.
- GenresTrue CrimeAudiobook
233 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 3, 2020
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December 24, 2025They’ll ask for Code 10 information, which include a your name, date if birth, and where you were born.
419 being the number in Nigerian criminal code for fraud.
a man and a woman have different driving licence numbers. if a woman is born in a zero month, on her driving licence it will be indicated with a 5. That doesn’t happen with men.
Say I was born in month 01. If I was a woman, instead of saying 01, it would say 51. This idiot I was working with hadn’t realised the difference.
Because this guy was not on the front line committing fraud himself, he didn’t understand that the systems and processes of these finance companies were changing. They were starting to get much smarter — or the tech behind them was. And the Nigerian’s tech skills were becoming outdated.
You could even get the electoral roll on a little disc called an “info disc” I had the pro edition. It had everything on it: names, addresses, dates of birth. This was still a long time before GDPR.
I bought the best laser printer on the market to do utility bills. (A laser printer is best because it throws powder at the image — it’s what big corporates use
They must sell something that can help me cut this paper. Then | saw it: a skip blade. It was like a little wheel razor blade that left whatever you rolled it over with a perforated edge.
I was constantly aware of what might happen if they got caught, and the links back to me. The police trying to set me up with Eve had shown me how far they would go to catch criminals who were easy targets. Most people who worked for me after that only ever heard my voice on the phone — a bit like Charlie and his angels.
Let’s meet at Burger King, 10 am? I chose Burger King because they didn’t have CCTV.
he was an international DJ who played to crowds of 20,000 people. In reality, he could barely change a cassette tape in the van, but it didn’t matter.
crew of people with different issues: drink, drugs, debts.
I had consistently delivered; my reliability had almost become a brand.
I used to sell my piss. They do a lot of drug testing in jails, and my piss was valuable for people taking drugs.
Fear of violence or the promise of sex are two things that can make a man do what you want him to do.
Security watch is an alert on the HPI system that tells the police there has been some sort of dodginess going on with that whip. I thought to myself, How do they know I haven’t bought that car out of Auto Trader? If the car was advertised, that was evidence to back up your story. So that’s what did. I put ads for the cars in car magazines. That way, they could have been bought by anybody.
HPI is a credit check on a car that gives you its history. It tells you if it’s on finance, and it costs you £20 to search the database.
I went to court as Tony Sales, but had already changed my name a week after I got nicked. It cost me 50 quid to do it with a solicitor. So I got a new driving licence, rented a house, and opened a bank account in my new identity.
Once I figured out that the DVLA don’t really check your old identity with the new one, I applied for a new driving licence and passport, and fucked off to Lanzarote with TB.
cafe, I covered my mouth as we talked, so there couldn’t be any lip- reading.
They say that money is the root of all evil, but it’s actually the route that money makes us take that’s the root of evil.
419 being the number in Nigerian criminal code for fraud.
a man and a woman have different driving licence numbers. if a woman is born in a zero month, on her driving licence it will be indicated with a 5. That doesn’t happen with men.
Say I was born in month 01. If I was a woman, instead of saying 01, it would say 51. This idiot I was working with hadn’t realised the difference.
Because this guy was not on the front line committing fraud himself, he didn’t understand that the systems and processes of these finance companies were changing. They were starting to get much smarter — or the tech behind them was. And the Nigerian’s tech skills were becoming outdated.
You could even get the electoral roll on a little disc called an “info disc” I had the pro edition. It had everything on it: names, addresses, dates of birth. This was still a long time before GDPR.
I bought the best laser printer on the market to do utility bills. (A laser printer is best because it throws powder at the image — it’s what big corporates use
They must sell something that can help me cut this paper. Then | saw it: a skip blade. It was like a little wheel razor blade that left whatever you rolled it over with a perforated edge.
I was constantly aware of what might happen if they got caught, and the links back to me. The police trying to set me up with Eve had shown me how far they would go to catch criminals who were easy targets. Most people who worked for me after that only ever heard my voice on the phone — a bit like Charlie and his angels.
Let’s meet at Burger King, 10 am? I chose Burger King because they didn’t have CCTV.
he was an international DJ who played to crowds of 20,000 people. In reality, he could barely change a cassette tape in the van, but it didn’t matter.
crew of people with different issues: drink, drugs, debts.
I had consistently delivered; my reliability had almost become a brand.
I used to sell my piss. They do a lot of drug testing in jails, and my piss was valuable for people taking drugs.
Fear of violence or the promise of sex are two things that can make a man do what you want him to do.
Security watch is an alert on the HPI system that tells the police there has been some sort of dodginess going on with that whip. I thought to myself, How do they know I haven’t bought that car out of Auto Trader? If the car was advertised, that was evidence to back up your story. So that’s what did. I put ads for the cars in car magazines. That way, they could have been bought by anybody.
HPI is a credit check on a car that gives you its history. It tells you if it’s on finance, and it costs you £20 to search the database.
I went to court as Tony Sales, but had already changed my name a week after I got nicked. It cost me 50 quid to do it with a solicitor. So I got a new driving licence, rented a house, and opened a bank account in my new identity.
Once I figured out that the DVLA don’t really check your old identity with the new one, I applied for a new driving licence and passport, and fucked off to Lanzarote with TB.
cafe, I covered my mouth as we talked, so there couldn’t be any lip- reading.
They say that money is the root of all evil, but it’s actually the route that money makes us take that’s the root of evil.
December 5, 2024
Listened to this on audio. The narrator is very easy listening (providing you don’t mind a cockney twang) and the story is fascinating. Bravo to Tony for being so honest and open about his colorful past. The understanding of childhood trauma and the connection to crime is an area that needs more social attention and help.
February 7, 2021
Excellent book, which gives an intriguing insight into how high level fraudsters were able to make a very good income, and yet never seem to have any money or stability through their crime.
March 4, 2021
Funny book. But feel sorry for the victims of this fraudster.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews