Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He's a FAKE Secret Agent - The Mark Acklom Story

Episode Date: October 13, 2025

Mark Acklom is an English conman and fraudster who for decades used false identities and elaborate scams to swindle large sums from victims, often posing as a wealthy Swiss banker or even an MI6 agent.

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Gig speeds available via hot spots to Comcast Business and mobile customers only. Actual Wi-Fi speeds vary, not guaranteed. Disney Plus wants to know, are you ready? Yes! For Marvel Studios, Thunderbolts, the New Avengers. Now streaming on Disney Plus. Let's do this. One of the best Marvel movies of all time is now streaming on Disney Plus.

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And bro, he's always been a con artist. He's always taken on different identities and ripping people off. And because of that, he's been in and out of prison. But Mark, he doesn't seem to care. He just wants to make a lot of money any way he can. And so one day in 2012, he meets a target who's eventually going to take him down. He walks into a clothing store to buy some clothes one day, and there he meets this woman, Carolyn. And Carolyn is the manager of the store.

And Carolyn thinks he's kind of fine. And so they start talking and they hit it off and they start flirting and soon they're dating. Here's the thing, though. Mark, he doesn't tell her that he's a turd who's been in and out of prison for scamming people. Instead, he tells her that he's a wealthy Swiss banker. And he's always bragging about how rich and successful he is and that he's friends with all these celebrities like Chris Evans and Nikki Clark. He even claims that he's spoken with Hillary Clinton

and that he knows fashion designer Carl Lagerfeld. And I guess Carolyn hears all this and she believes that he's this rich important guy and she's all impressed. And Mark, he takes her on shopping sprees and he's always talking about how he wants to buy an airfield to restore vintage planes. Okay, but the reality is, Mark, he's obviously not rich. He's not friends with any celebrities. In fact, he's a liar.

And to make it worse, he's actually married to another woman, and they have two kids, and his real wife and kids live not that far away from Carolyn. So sometimes he disappears, and Carolyn won't see him for a couple of days at a time, because, you know, he's with his first family because he's living a double life. Now eventually, after seeing him vanish all the time

without explanation, she starts getting suspicious. Like, where the hell's he going for days at a time? And Mark, he can probably sense that she's starting to get suspicious. So in order to cover his tracks, he starts telling her that he has to leave so often because he's an undercover secret agent. He says he's actually working for MI6, the UK's secret intelligence service.

That's literally the agency that employs James Bond. That's who he says he works for. Like he's fucking James Bond. Anyway, he tells her that the Swiss banker stories and the airfield stories, all of that is just cover for his MI6 missions and that whenever he disappears for days at a time, it's because he's away on his super top secret assignments.

And to try and prove it to her, one day Mark is with Carolyn and he tells her that his boss wants to see him. And then he drives her over to the MI6 building. When they get there, Carolyn watches him walk past two armed guards and into an underground parking lot somehow. I guess he's trying to make it look like he works there. Now, I guess Carolyn's never met a real undercover agent before.

So in her mind, this all checks out. So she believes him. Once she believes him, Mark now has a free pass to keep up his bullshit. and disappear for days at a time without question. And each time, he'll then show back up at her place with some new excuse as to why he was gone. Like one time he shows up with his arm in a sling, and he tells her he was working undercover in Syria and he got shot.

Another time, he shows up with his head all bandaged, with a drain dripping from it. And he tells her he's got a brain tumor and that the MI6 is so worried that he's going to spill state secrets that they got him under hospital guard, but that he somehow snuck out just to see her. I mean, he says all kind. of crazy shit. And poor Carolyn, she seems to buy into every word he says. And if that isn't bad enough,

this is when he starts conning her out of money. Now, at some point, Mark tells Carolyn that he's tired of being an undercover agent. This MI6 life, it's no longer for him. He doesn't want to be James Bond anymore. Instead, he now wants to focus on real estate, like buying luxury properties. And Carolyn, you know, she's supportive of this career change. I mean, Anything that gets him out of danger sounds good to her. But then he starts asking her for loans. He tells her, Dear, I'm having some cash flow problems and I need to renovate one of my properties. Could you help me?

And of course Carolyn is like, don't worry, babe. I've got you. Now Carolyn recently sold her house, so she has a bit of money in her savings. So she lends him 26,000 pounds. And over the next few months, she lends him more and more money, eventually in total, giving him around 750,000 pounds, or about a million US dollars. And of course, Mark, he doesn't use any of this money to renovate any real estate. He spends it on himself on like nice cars and expensive rental properties. And he even uses some of it to pay for his kids' private school tuition.

Meanwhile, he's still stringing poor Carolyn along. He tells her he's going to marry her. He even buys her a wedding dress to prove it, probably using the money that she's. lent him. Then he convinces her to move into a luxury apartment she thinks that he owns. But in reality, it's a rental and he paid for it with her money. And by this point, she's like super in love. Like she's in way deep. She quits her job. She moves in with him. But once she moves in with him, Mark gets real controlling. And he starts isolating her from friends and family so that they can't warn her about what's really going on or talk her out of giving him any money. And this goes on for months. But then, once Mark feels that he's drained her enough, he starts to pull away. And slowly,

he stops replying to her calls and her emails, and he eventually ghosts her. And that is when Carolyn finally realizes that she's been scammed. And of course, she is devastated about this. In fact, she's so devastated that she even considers unaliving herself, and thankfully she doesn't. But meanwhile, Mark's scamming ass, he's already on the run. He eventually ends up in Spain, and there he just keeps conning people. This time he's like selling London luxury properties that he doesn't own to Spanish buyers. But after a few months of this, the Spanish police, they catch him, and bam, he gets arrested. And he gets convicted, and he's sentenced to three years in prison.

prison. So Mark is finally locked up, justice has finally been served, and he'll never commit another crime ever again. Until. Oh, come on. Of course, he's going to commit some more crimes. While he's in prison, he applies for parole and he's granted temporary release on the condition that he surrenders his passport and stays in Spain. But of course, that's not what Mark does. As soon as he's out, he goes on the run again. Why do they even try to? What's this guy? Anyway, so now the Spanish police are looking for him. Meanwhile, back in London, Carolyn reports Mark to the police, because, you know, he scammed her. So now Mark's on the national crime agency's 10 most wanted list. And so he's wanted in both Spain and Britain. And since he can't

go to either of those two countries now, he decides to flee over to Switzerland. And there, he changes his identity and he sets up a fake company claiming to make black box record orders for driverless cars? That doesn't even sound like a real thing. But I guess people fall for it. He even brags that Elon Musk has invested six billion US dollars into his company. And with that bullshit story, he's able to scam someone out of 400,000 euros. So now he's wanted in Switzerland as well.

Days later, bam! The Swiss police arrest him. And he eventually gets extradited back to the UK. Here's his mugshot. shot. He then serves two years in prison there. After that, he has to go serve two years in prison in Spain.