We look into the case of Elliot Castro, a man from the Southside of Glasgow who scammed over £2 million of stolen credit during the late 90s early 2000s starting when he was just a teenager.
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00:00You could argue he was probably at the time one of the most wanted men in the world.
00:20He was this guy in the south side of Glasgow.
00:22In terms of Glasgow crime, this is highly unusual and probably on a scale never seen
00:28before.
00:29He was always impersonal, fraud, confidence tricks, exploiting, loopholes.
00:34He seemed to have almost a gift, if you like, for scamming the system.
00:38All that still happens, it's just moved in a different online era.
00:42And it gave him a fantastic lifestyle, which eventually caught up with him.
00:46Take a big deep breath when you do it.
00:50What do you want to know?
00:52There's certainly no shortage of crime in Glasgow.
00:55The city is widely recognised for its violent tendencies, it was once even named the murder
00:59capital of Europe.
01:01Crime in Glasgow generally alludes to very physical, emotionally driven actions.
01:06This is what makes the case of Elliot Castro so shocking.
01:10A person considered one of the most prolific fraudsters the UK has ever seen due to a series
01:15of crimes he began committing when he was just a teenager.
01:18I mean, it's a very unusual case.
01:26It's a young man from Battlefield in the south side of Glasgow, had quite an unusual sort
01:34of checkered upbringing and suddenly found himself working in a call centre in Glasgow
01:42and saw the opportunity to create some bogus identities using the information that was
01:49coming into the call centre.
01:51Elliot Castro had an ordinary upbringing in Glasgow's south side.
01:55He had nice, normal parents and lived in a safe community.
01:58Yet he is the perpetrator of a number of fraudulent acts that gripped Britain in the early 2000s.
02:04Born in 1982 in Aberdeen to a Scottish mother and Chilean father, he grew up in the Battlefield
02:10area of Glasgow.
02:11Elliot left school at 16 years old with no qualifications but managed to secure a job
02:17in a local call centre selling mobile phones.
02:21He claimed to be 18 to get his foot in the door.
02:23Now keep in mind that at this time the concept of credit payments and the nature of these
02:27transactions was still relatively new and so there wasn't the safeguards in place that
02:32we have today such as voice recognition and recorded calls.
02:36Elliot soon realised that the job put him in a position of power.
02:39The customers on the other end of the call trusted him with their personal information.
02:44They willingly handed it over without doubting his authority.
02:48At one point he began recording these details in a notebook.
02:51He would even use psychological tactics to retrieve extra information from them, mimicking
02:55their accent and tone to increase his trustability.
02:59He would say stuff like, there's a slight issue with the bank, they've asked me to
03:02collect some extra information.
03:04And then the recipient would usually respond with enthusiasm, unquestioning.
03:09What he then did was call the credit card companies pretending to be the account holders,
03:14change the address to his own in Glasgow, say he'd lost the card and ask if they could
03:18send out a new one.
03:20Once he'd received it he would call and change the address back to avoid suspicion.
03:24These were the days before chip and pin so when he spent all he'd have to do was swipe
03:28and then mimic a signature.
03:30At first all he was buying was CDs and then by his own words he developed an addiction
03:35to getting away with it.
03:36He tested the boundary more and the spending became much more extravagant.
03:40Now of course these aren't victimless crimes but he could not see the consequences of his
03:44actions.
03:45He assumed it would be the credit card companies that took the fall.
03:48He was working as a teenager in a position of trust.
03:52He was working in a call centre, as many people do across the UK, and instead of putting the
03:58transaction through in the way that he was supposed to, he put it through in a different
04:03way.
04:04There was a kind of crack in the system, it didn't immediately get found out and then
04:08things escalated fast.
04:10This became a fraud on an industrial scale.
04:15I think he basically just found it quite easy and it was just really from there that it
04:20escalated and he became a kind of global sort of con man.
04:24I don't think anyone will ever know how much that he actually gained from the various cons
04:30that he perpetrated over about a four year period which often resulted in prison terms
04:36but he seemed to have almost a gift, if you like, for creating false identities, scamming
04:43the system and using that to obtain credit or credit cards for which he had a fantastic
04:52lifestyle, travelling the world, buying luxury goods at various outlets, New York, London,
04:58the Bahamas, you name it, he was there.
05:01Elliot used other people's credit to pay for first class trips across the world, designer
05:06clothes, luxury hotel stays, rounds of expensive drinks at bars.
05:10Whatever he was based at the time, be it Glasgow, Manchester, Belfast or London, an ordinary
05:16day for him usually consisted of shopping in the afternoon and then partying all night.
05:21Between 1998 and 2005, Elliot scammed upwards of £2 million.
05:27He was caught by authorities on multiple occasions during this period.
05:31On some he managed to talk his way out of custody but on others he was charged and had
05:36served short sentences in Scotland, England, Ireland and even Canada.
05:41During these stints, instead of reflecting on the crimes he had committed or considering
05:45the consequences, he used the time to research and contemplate where he went wrong and what
05:51he could have done differently to have gotten away with it.
05:53This was why each time he was released, his methods became more advanced, he developed
05:58his approach, became more ruthless and cunning.
06:01Elliot's initial means of obtaining fraudulent credit ran out when the list of accounts in
06:06his notebook ran out.
06:07He had left the call centre by this point and was now living entirely on other people's
06:11money and eventually their credit card companies or account holders would get suspicious and
06:16cancel the card.
06:18He then turned to physically pickpocketing credit cards in bars and nightclubs.
06:22When he became known for this, he upped his tactics and began targeting the rich.
06:26He would call the reception of fancy hotels where wealthier people would be staying, people
06:31that had higher credit limits and ask for a Mr Smith or Jones.
06:35He chanced it using common names as usually there was someone with it who was staying
06:40there.
06:41After the call was transferred to the room, he would pretend to be the hotel's deputy
06:45manager and claim there was an issue with the bank and they had asked him to retrieve
06:49extra information.
06:51Then he would call the credit card company and pose as the account holder, saying he
06:55had a nephew called Elliot Castro and wanted to help him out with his travels.
07:00They would then send a card in Elliot's name to his address that was billed to the person
07:04he had scammed.
07:05The kind of fraud that Elliot committed at the time wasn't something, whether it be in
07:13Glasgow, Manchester, London, Belfast or wherever in the UK, that anybody had really saw at
07:19that time before.
07:22We're sitting in 2025 talking about it.
07:27Ways in which they commit fraud now are probably a lot more advanced than they were then, but
07:33there's complications around that.
07:35Obviously social media became a bit of a barrier to doing that.
07:39People can share details of ways in which they've been targeted, whether that be on
07:44Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and they can get that message out there.
07:49But in those days, people weren't used to this, so there'd probably been a hell of a
07:53lot more forward giving out personal details, bank account numbers.
07:59In terms of Glasgow crime, this is highly unusual and probably on a scale never seen
08:05before.
08:06I mean, a lot of the crime that I report on in Glasgow tends to be quite localised.
08:11It tends to be sort of local incidents involving local people or organised crime groups or
08:18criminals that operate in Glasgow, the West of Scotland.
08:21But here was somebody who wasn't from a criminal background.
08:24For me, it was a respectable, law-abiding family, a good family, well brought up in the
08:32normal manner, but he perpetrated a con or a scam that was global.
08:37You know, this was somebody that was being hunted all over the world, you know, by various
08:43organisations and, you know, people that scam big hotel groups and designer clothing
08:49chains and you name it, you know, so there was a global scale of it.
08:54I mean, it's been compared to Frank Abagnale, you know, people be familiar with, played
09:02by Leo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can, which was a sort of similar type scam where
09:07somebody was taking on false identities and making millions of pounds in fraudulent activity.
09:14It was an international on a global scale.
09:17I think that's what's different with this one, with Elliot Castro, that what he was
09:21doing was on a global scale.
09:23This was somebody that was not being hunted for by police in Glasgow, but by authorities
09:28in the USA and London, you know, the Bahamas, you know, you name it, Canada as well.
09:37You know, this was a scam and a con on a global scale and it's something we hadn't
09:42quite seen before in Glasgow.
09:44He was smart about it, he was clever about it, he was probably quite sophisticated.
09:48Whether he would have got away with it today because of those ways and means of social
09:53media to spread that word that this was happening, that possibly wouldn't have been the case.
10:00Certainly, a case of its time, this wasn't something that anybody in the UK had saw before.
10:08There was instances where he almost got caught, there was instances where he was kind of shut
10:14down by authorities, but he kept going back to it.
10:18It was almost like an addiction, that he was addicted to what he could extract from people.
10:25Walking around Glasgow, I think people would say it's a pretty safe city, that this type
10:33of crime is not something that you really read about a lot or hear about a lot on such
10:37a wide scale.
10:38Of course, at the time, probably the word-pressing issue in Glasgow that used to be known as
10:44murder capital of Europe, so probably a fraud on a mass scale that cons people out money
10:50isn't something that would probably be too much of attention to people.
10:54But yeah, I think it certainly brings it home that this type of crime and fraud was committed
11:02on such a scale within your own city.
11:05Of course, it can be easy to watch news reports from elsewhere and kind of sit back and think,
11:12you know, that will never happen to me, but these were people that walked these city streets,
11:16these were people that you maybe shared a bus or a train with, or passed in the circuit
11:21hall seat of Buchanan Street, so this was something that became probably real for a
11:26lot of people that didn't think that that could actually happen to them.
11:30The technology was different then, obviously the internet was on the rise, more and more
11:34people were using the internet to access information.
11:37He'd be using the internet in his workplace, he'd be using computers in his workplace,
11:43but what was different then was that there wasn't the same safeguards, people weren't
11:47aware of the potential for fraud and ways in which they could get away with it.
12:03Well, I mean, you know, I think a lot of people either go to uni with or school with, sometimes
12:07that's their first job that they start in, and it's just one of those jobs, you know,
12:1295 or whatever that you go into, you get your work done, you leave and you go up the road,
12:16so, you know, the people who work in call centres, it's pretty kind of structured in,
12:23you know, their day-to-day format, and probably for people to think that, you know, the person
12:27that's sitting beside them in a call centre could be getting away and doing stuff like that,
12:30it's quite incredible.
12:32A lot of fraud just now is people literally scamming, hacking into accounts, posing as
12:38people, giving false information, conning people out of their bank accounts and details.
12:44But this was something slightly different, where somebody was working in a call centre
12:50where they had access to that information, and all they had to do was literally write
12:55names and addresses of people, bank account numbers, and then go on posing as that person,
13:01pretending to be that person, then getting sent a replacement card out.
13:06That'd be a lot harder now, there would all be sorts of steps you'd have to go through,
13:11you would get sent a text message to your phone and all that kind of thing, then you
13:14have to put the code in, but these things didn't exist then, probably things were a
13:19lot more trusting.
13:20Looking back, you think about the levels of security that existed then, maybe it's less
13:27than what it did now, but could this happen again?
13:30Probably.
13:31It could probably still happen today.
13:33That's easy to spread that message nowadays, because you hear about these targeted attacks
13:38and whatever else, in those days it probably wasn't as easy to let people know and make
13:42them aware that this is going on, but I specifically think for older people, who have not been
13:48brought up with technology that our generation has experienced, that there's still a vulnerability
13:55about them, to just hand over their details.
13:58And you still see it in the news today, that probably lessons aren't completely learned
14:03from this, that people still willingly are conned, whether that be AI technology, recording
14:10the voice of a loved one, phoning up to ask for money, or just simply asking questions
14:16that they think nobody else would know apart from a banker, or an energy provider or something
14:21like that.
14:23Certainly with this case, as a big lesson learned, I don't know, because it still happens
14:28today.
14:29This is just probably an example of it happening to a scale that had likely not been saw before.
14:36We share our details with people in positions of trust all the time, I think that's a really
14:40interesting part of this.
14:43There's the kind of mythology of it, but we share our, we volunteer our information to
14:51people in legitimate positions, to authorise staff on a daily basis, but what happens next,
15:00what are the safeguards to make sure that that information stays secure?
15:06I think one of the most common ones is about car crashes, usually here, you know, I heard
15:11you were involved in an incident, I've never been in that kind of situation before.
15:16You then get phone providers calling you up that you're not with, asking about your
15:22contract.
15:23I certainly know from my parents' perspective, Wi-Fi is another common way in which people
15:29phone up and try and sell you a service, or TV provider, so as I say, it's still prevalent
15:35till this day, and whether you get a conversation with somebody on the phone or it just goes
15:41dead, there's still some chance in the other end of the line, trying to get money off you
15:47or details off you.
15:48Alex Castro became quite sophisticated, I think it wasn't sort of crude attempts to
15:54scam organisations or people, it was quite sophisticated, but also in an era where there
15:59weren't the same safe checks as there are now.
16:01I think there was a certain respect for the bravado of it, the fact that a teenager managed
16:06to go on this wild ride, buying champagne from his friends, taking flights all over
16:12the world, staying in expensive hotels, I remember one of the reports mentioned the
16:19fact that he was a fan of the movie Home Alone 2, so he flew to New York and stayed at the
16:24Plaza Hotel, just as Macaulay Culkin did, on other people's money.
16:31I think that's a nice little tabloid vignette, but it is important to state that this isn't
16:42a victimless crime and this is other people's money, and if people within the system are
16:48exploiting it, or people who are just on an absolute rampage, running from credit card
16:53to credit card, that is something that, a very serious issue, and it's something that's
16:59only been amplified in recent years.
17:01I think there's an element of shock right away, because you think, how did somebody
17:04get away with that for so long, and then, you know, not just committing the crime, but
17:09then, you know, jetting off to places such as the Plaza Hotel in New York, and wherever
17:14else, and absolutely lapping it up now.
17:19That, I think, brings a completely different kind of understanding and interpretation of
17:24what actually went on here.
17:26It's all very well in committing the crime, but then, the after story to it, I think,
17:31people look at it and think, you know, how did they get away with it, because to go and,
17:36you know, a kind of spending spree and kind of go mental with the money, is quite remarkable.
17:42I remember vividly the tabloid fury around it, the way that it connected with people.
17:48Obviously, it's still very famous in Glasgow, one of the reasons we're still talking about
17:53it today, but it resonated beyond that.
17:57I think part of it was because of the playboy lifestyle that was claimed by Elliot.
18:06Can I go into New York and stay in the Plaza Hotel, probably something that a family would
18:11save up a couple of years to do, or for a trip to New York, even then, not just staying
18:15at the Plaza Hotel, one of the top hotels in the world, so it's a crazy jump, and as
18:19I say, I think that part of it brings the magnitude of this case into perspective, that,
18:25you know, there's obviously the crime element of it, and committing the fraud, but then
18:31there's the aftermath of it, and going and spending and splashing the cash, which is
18:36incredible to think about.
18:38It was quite remarkable all Elliot managed to get away with, considering he acted alone.
18:43He was a young man, barely in his twenties, from a very ordinary neighbourhood in Glasgow,
18:48so far removed from all the extravagance, and yet he got away with it for so long.
18:52Battlefield, to me, is one of those kind of southside neighbourhoods, much like, you know,
18:56neighbouring Strathbongo and Sholins, it's friendly, you walk about their streets, it's
19:02pretty secure.
19:03Battlefield, to anybody that knows it, it's not big in size, it's only up the road from
19:08Hampden Park.
19:09Battlefield 2, where, you know, thousands of football fans flocked to for football matches,
19:14but, you know, I think people have got certain perceptions, a neighbourhood in Glasgow, and
19:19it's not an area of the city that people would think that, you know, such an impactful crime
19:26would be happening in, but it just shows you, you don't always know what's on your doorstep.
19:32It was quite shocking when it came to pass, I mean, I'd never heard of the guy.
19:35Normally when you cover crime, particularly organised crime, you get to know who the individuals
19:40are, and the people involved, and, you know, various criminal enterprises, who the names
19:45are, and the different gangs, but this was somebody operating on their own, you know,
19:49it was somebody who would have no, as far as I was aware, no connections with any organised
19:54crime groups, he was basically operating alone, to the police and the various federal authorities
20:03across the world that would investigate him, and all the companies that were scamming would
20:07have their own kind of internal security people that were looking out for him, but
20:11it was a bit of a closed circle, it was not an individual that would probably be known
20:17to the public, or known to journalists, but maybe obviously known to the people that he
20:22was scamming, and they would be aware of who he was, particularly after his first kind
20:27of convictions in prison terms, but certainly it was something we'd never really encountered
20:32before, and there was an element of it, you know, it was almost a kind of Hollywood fantasy,
20:37you know, the comparison that had been made with Catch Me If You Can, it was, you know,
20:42a young Scot, law-abiding Scot on the outside, being involved in probably a major global
20:52scam, and really something we hadn't come across before.
20:55There's a tendency to focus on the fact that this teenager managed to fly off around the
21:03world spending other people's money, there's a tendency to look at it as a crime that there's
21:09no victims, people think of it that it's the bank's money, it's not individuals' money,
21:14they forget that people's trust has been violated in so many different ways, the pressure, the
21:20stress, the trauma that comes from their money being taken away from them, I think that's
21:27why people are still kind of fascinated.
21:31You could argue he was probably at the time one of the most wanted men in the world, yet
21:35he was this guy in the south side of Glasgow, probably a tall, intense person, quite a normal
21:41individual, but somebody who was having an impact on a criminal scale across the world.
21:47The level of coverage was huge, this was a really big story, he's turned this episode
21:55in his life into something that is becoming a different career, he works in trying to
21:59help people avoid fraud.
22:01Fraud is part of the background to every transaction that we make now, because so much of our transactions
22:08are cashless, so much of it is online.
22:11This predates all this, it was up close and personal, fraud, it was confidence tricks,
22:17exploiting, loopholes, impersonating other people's identity, but all that still happens,
22:26it's just moved in a different online era.
22:30After a long international search he was finally arrested and sentenced to two years in prison
22:35for fraud, though he was released after 12 months.
22:39During this prison sentence he did reflect and came out the other end with a new outlook,
22:44regretful of what he had done and willing to make a change.
22:47He became a fraud prevention consultant, working for huge organisations such as Barclays, the
22:52Metropolitan Police and the FBI.
22:55Today he lives in the south side of Glasgow, he is a public speaker and DJ.
23:00We hemorrhage cash through our phones, cards, contactless now, we don't even think about it.
23:07You don't really know how much money you're partnered with until the end of the day.
23:12You're relying on banks and individuals to safeguard your details and ensure that something
23:19isn't going on in the background that you don't know about.
23:23But I don't think anyone among us, as vigilant as we are, are immune for something if there's
23:31a determined criminal at work who wants to get your money.
23:35I suppose what you really learn is that if someone wants to take your money then they probably will.