An Aberdeen con artist has told his astonishing story of how he became Scotland’s most wanted credit card thief.
Elliot “Fiddle” Castro spent more than £1 million of innocent people’s money by the time he was 20 by stealing their bank details.
Now turning 41, he has recounted his younger years as one of the UK and Ireland’s most wanted conmen in the BBC’s ‘Confessions Of A Teenage Fraudster’.
Castro used the money to fund a lavish lifestyle in Glasgow which he said “others could only dream of”.
He said: “By aged 20, I’d spent well over a million pounds of other people’s money all over the world. Once you’ve had a taste of something nice it’s very hard to go back.
“You don’t do all of that without getting banged up now and then. But no level of guilt or length of sentence had ever persuaded me to stop.
“Other 16-year-olds were trying to get into a nightclub on fake IDs, while I was cheating innocent card holders out of their own money.
“And I wasn’t bad at spending it either. I lived a life you could only dream of.
“The best hotels, the finest restaurants, first class as standard and none of it paid for from my own pocket.
“I’d love to tell you I got away with it all but for every night I enjoyed in a five-star hotel I endured many more behind bars.”
Castro got a taste for crime after his first job in Aberdeen, working in a call centre selling mobile phones.
Only 16, his role meant he could harvest private information from customers in the guise of making a sale.
The breach of privacy eventually got him his jotters, but not after he collected enough personal info to convince money lenders to send him credit cards.
Close call on rail carriage
The scams threatened to catch up with him though after getting into a bizarre scenario while on a train.
After using a doctor’s details to blag his way onto a first-class rail service, he found himself in trouble after the carriage tannoy sounded looking for medical help.
A rail attendant remembered his card which labelled him a doctor and found himself treating a sickly woman.
He recalled: “The train inspector remembered the card was in the name of a doctor.
He said: “She took me through the buffet car where there was another passenger and two other doctors.
“Now I had not got a proper idea of what was going on with this lady but I thought it looked like a panic attack — in my ‘expert medical opinion’.
“And fortunately the other two doctors agreed with my medical diagnosis.”
Eventually brought to justice
Castro would eventually move to Ireland after a series of close calls with police and switched to a different con which involved victims hard-wiring him money.
It led to an astonishing splurge which included a BMW worth £50,000, shopping sprees in Los Angeles and a £10,000 casino venture in Monte Carlo.
But Castro eventually became sloppy under the weight of his many scams.
In 2005 he was sentenced to two years in an open prison aged 21 after being caught purchasing £2,000 worth of gift vouchers in Harvey Nichols in Edinburgh.
He said: “The thrill had gone. I was spending and partying on autopilot.”
Castro said: “Things could have gone one of two ways for me but the last time I came out of prison I decided I would never go back.”
“Fiddle” says he is now reformed and works as a music producer, as well as advising on fraud prevention.
He added: “One of the best things to come out of this is that over the last ten years or so I’ve had the opportunity to give advice to other young people who have gotten in touch having heard my story.”
Confessions of A Teenage Fraudster is on BBC Scotland, 10 pm, on Tuesday and BBC Three, 9 pm, on Wednesday.
All episodes on iPlayer from Tuesday 4 June.
