Man dubbed 'Britain's greatest fraudster' shares insight into how to avoid scammers

A man who was once dubbed the "Britain's greatest fraudster" has shared some insight into how to avoid scammers after turning away from a life of crime to help protect others.

Convicted fraudster Tony Sales, who now works with police forces across the UK with his organisation We Fight Fraud, has shared insight into the risks people face everyday from scammers and how they can manipulate people through fear, panic, and using your own personal data against you.

Tony used to spend his life coming up with different ways to steal people's identities and defraud high street banks and shops which eventually landed him in prison after spending six years on the run.

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While he was locked up he realised that he had "done a lot of bad stuff" and hurt a lot of people and did not want his children to grow up to live a similar life and became determined to turn his life around and help others.

He came to the conclusion that "data was cash" to criminals, before many organisations had put protections in place, and set off on a campaign to raise awareness about how valuable data can be and how people can protect themselves from being defrauded.

Speaking to Belfast Live at an event for Scamwise NI, Tony said: "When I came out of prison I wanted to change my ways, I realised I had done a lot of bad and getting a title like Britain's Greatest Fraudster is not something to be proud of.

"When I was involved in fraud, I understood the landscape, I knew if I get the right information I can go online, I can use a phone, and I can do multiple things to try and create a fraud around information that I've got. As time went on I started to learn how to target potential victims to extract more information, missing pieces of information that you might be missing from your initial bit to build up.

"I guess that they're the early days of what we now see as real social engineering where people lose hundreds of thousands of pounds to criminals claiming to be a bank, putting them in fear. If you can create fear and panic within something, it's very easy to then manipulate them to steal their money."

Tony said that websites across the world are hacked every day and that information makes its way onto the dark web where scammers are able to access it. This could be an email address, phone number, or bank account details and this gives fraudsters a "direct line" to customers to scam them.

He said criminals will pretend to act like a normal company they have worked with, and will develop scripts in order to scam people and make them think they are legitimate. He also warned that the technology is now available to record people's voices on phones which can be used to make phone calls to family members or friends in order to scam them.

He warned that while technology is available to protect people from fraud, this only catches 1% of them, and while it is still very important for people there is still a "gaping hole" for fraudsters to exploit.

Tony continued: "The best defense is a knowledgeable one of where you understand the attack vectors that may play out and you counteract them with stuff that you would do, just like in a football match, right, so if you're playing football, your team's set up in the wrong way in the beginning, you change your tactics to counteract how the other team are playing.

"We're not agile enough, government's not agile enough, like if you think about how a government reacts to fraud, it's all knee jerk reactions or throw money at it, throw money, throw money, and in actual fact they need to stop and think about how fraudsters are getting around all of those processes and procedures that we're putting in place.

"We need to start training people on fraud protection younger, we have to get this stuff in the national curriculum with kids."

Tony also shareed some advice for people worried about potential frauds and highlighted useful software such as password managers, that can keep people safe.

He said: "If your bank is calling you, don't answer and ring them back. If it is important someone will be more than happy to speak with you about what is going on. This does not mean banks won't ever ring you, but just to be safe it is always better to ring them back.

"Password managers are also a very useful tool as many people will often use the same one for a variety of different accounts that they have which makes things very easy for fraudsters. So using a password manager is really good because no longer do you have to use the same password across multiple sites, you can just go onto the site, type in your email address and automatically, the password manager will give you a prompt to say use this password, it will generate a password for you.

"You also need to be careful about what you share publicly with people you do not know online because you never know who is watching. I never share what my real birthday is online, it is always April 1, because you should restrict what you are putting out there as much as possible. People also don't need to join every Whatsapp or Telegram group that they think might be interesting because these, along with social media, are all places where criminals exist and harvest your information.

"There are also very useful websites like Have I Been Pwned which will be able to tell you if your email address or accounts have been compromised and when they were. A lot of what can keep you safe is basic cyber hygiene where you take five or ten minutes a month to ensure your devices and accounts are still protected because it can make a difference and it is much better than suddenly finding out all of the money has been emptied from your account."

If you would like more information regarding Tony Sales and the anti-fraud work he does, please visit the We Fight Fraud website.

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