Jono, Ben & Megan - The Podcast - Former fraudster Tony Sales who stole $32M on how to avoid scams - Part 2

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

This is part two of our chat with the former UK fraudster who scammed over 32 Million pounds during his crime career and is now helping people!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

And it seems that every day there's another scam in New Zealand. It was one to do with the Transport Association last week. This week it seems like an IRD one and a police one are going around as well, so be careful out there. Yeah, no, we tracked down Tony Sales is his name. Great name for the sales game, isn't it, Tony Sales? Britain's biggest fraudster. We spoke to him yesterday.

You can catch the first part of the chat on iHeartRadio, the John andien podcast there. And this is part two where you can avoid being scammed. Whilst I was in custody, the police officer came down to the cell. She said to me, I hope you're proud of yourself. And I said, why would I be proud of myself? What are you talking about? And she said, well, I've got a young lady upstairs

whose father passed away and you stole his identity and that was the first part of changing my life yeah that's the first little bit that goes in my head of the first realization that there's actually victims to that because up until that point right I'm only ever seeing a name that appears on a computer screen or in a library book i don't care about anyone else i just think about what's wrong with me like oh poor me poor me poor me that's how i was feeling at that time so i'm not going to be able to even think like that yeah and then that when she said that to me that triggered it and then i actually jumped bow and became a fugitive for six years I spent six years of my life on the run which absolutely changes who you are as a person right you want to hide you become

half agoraphobic you know we don't want to go out anywhere just in case you know and there's so many mental issues that he then gives you and then eventually when I was caught and sent to prison, my wife and my children didn't know that they'd been fugitives for all that time. Oh my, how do you keep that a secret? Well, you know, the skill of being a fraudster allows you to manipulate everyone, doesn't it? Yeah, and that's the horrible part of it. You know, even the people that are close to you become victims of what you're doing. I know all this stuff now

because I've been honest with myself about the real things that I did, yeah? But most people are never going to be that brutally honest with themselves unless you really want to understand hold on a minute, why am I doing this? You pulled out your own teeth? Six of your own teeth so you couldn't be tracked by the police with dental

records? It wasn't sex, I pulled out one tooth. Oh, I jazzed it up. I sexed it up a bit, Tony. Yeah, sorry. You can juice it up, mate. Yeah, I'm a very honest person because it's juicy enough.

You're pulling out a tooth. It's a bloody excruciating thing. Oh, I can imagine. Turned everything around. You're now reformed and you're using what your knowledge, I guess, you gained through those years for helping people out helping out businesses and a fraud expert companies are doing enough these days to not be duped I mean we always look to put the blame on companies right what's happened is right look the internet happened yeah and because we've all got email

addresses we've all got social media we've all got all of these outputs of data which is all we are really online these outputs of data yeah zeros and ones that appear as images or us or what we say yeah as a criminal i always understood the value of data so the internet the explosion of it allows data to be everywhere so now i can go on facebook and find out about now I can go on Facebook and find out about someone. I can go on Instagram and find out about someone. I can go on LinkedIn and find out about someone, Twitter. Whatever I want to do, there's information out there. You know, someone's put a picture up.

Someone's on Pinterest. Someone's doing this on that site. Someone's doing that on that site. There's tools that you can buy now as criminals that will allow you to just point them at someone and go, tell me everything on the internet about that person. And it'll just drag the file and bring it back. Yeah. Yeah, like... Yeah.

But the reality of this is that's not on the companies. That's on us. Yes. Yeah. So that's your big one piece of advice to everyone is just be very careful with what information you're sharing online. Yeah, I always say to people, yeah, your identity is like your virginity.

You shouldn't just give it to anyone. Oh, well, I've handed out my identity. Oh, jeez, I've been sharing it all over. I've been spreading it everywhere, Tony. Something I found interesting as well, reading about you, Tony, is you said when it comes to frauds, there's no new ones, really.

It's the same things over and over again. So once you kind of know, you can kind of look out for them. Yeah, there are no no new scams everything is an old scam with a new spin there used to be something called spanish letters which people used to put messages in the bottle of promises of gold and send them out in their thousands that's just a modern day phishing email campaign yeah yeah fraudsters phoning people up. Well, they used to knock at your door, didn't they, and try and con you at the door. Yes. But because people got wise to that, we now got a device in our hand that they can get

to us and we have to believe them, even though we can't see them. Yeah. Yeah. So they're all old scams and all the words that have ever been said have been said. You're right. You can't make new ones up. Yeah. Tony, well, listen, congratulations on turning your life around.

Jeez, one extreme to the other, and this has just been really interesting, mate, so we appreciate your time. Can I just give a shout-out to a New Zealand company called Apply ID, yeah? These guys are fantastic, yeah? They're a young company from New Zealand who have an amazing bit of kit for biometrics, yeah? Totally support what they're doing. I love them. I love the guy that owns it.

He's a guy from New Zealand. He's a great guy. So, you know, any companies out there that need any biometric stuff, please go to them. And that'll be one of the companies that I definitely work with all the time. Oh, Tony, good on you, mate. Lovely meeting you. And you have a great day. All right. Thanks, guys. Have a great day. That's Tony Sales, Britain's most notorious fraudster, with some great advice on stopping us from getting scammed.