Other People's Money: The Rise and Fall of Britain's Boldest Credit Card Fraudster

This book tells the fscinating story of a highly intelligent boy who, for whatever reasons, didn't thrive at school (and was actually expelled from several schools) and ended up without any formal qualifications. Instead, he grew into a young adult using his considerable brainpower to extract vast sums of money from credit card organizations. The book explains some of the techniques involved, though hopefully not in enough detail to encourage others to follow the criminal's example. Indeed, even as we read about his high living in luxury hotels in London, Belfast, Dublin, Manchester, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Dublin, Sydney, the Bahamas, Toronto, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other places, we are regularly reminded that the criminal was constantly on the run. Even so, he spent spells in prison in Canada as well as Britain, usually for a length of time that seems lenient in retrospect. When the criminal tried to stabilize his life in Belfast, chosen because it is part of the UK but with its own distinctive police force, he learned that he couldn't do so for any length of time because people started wondering how he really came by his wealth. People can spot the difference between those who are genuinely wealthy and those who are not, even without any evidence. The stories that the criminal told just didn't add up. When he was continually on the move, people didn't see him for long enough to worry about such matters. So it was that a long spell in Belfast combined with regular visits to certain other places, especially Edinburgh and his parents' adopted home of Glasgow, made it increasingly difficult for the criminal to operate effectively in the places he liked. As the criminal acknowledges, he might have evaded the police for much longer had he continually sought out new places to visit. Somewhere along the way, the criminal realized that his life of crime, while having its moments, would be ultimately unsustainable. The excitement of all the international travel and the lavish spending on luxury goods most of which he couldn't use, was fading. The criminal releazed that the police would eventually catch up with him once and for all, come what may. The other side of the story, from the police perspective, gets limited coverage here but this book is the story of the criminal, so that's fair enough. Nevertheless, the author discussed the case with at least one of the detectives involved. He was based at Heathrow Airport, but what becomes clear is that the various police forces involved focused on their own local cases although they alerted each other if the criminal was captive and whenn he was scheduled to be released. Whether this was incompetence or whether the police were constrained by the way that policing operates in Britain, I can't say for certain. It looks like incompetence but I've seen how how other British public services operate and I know that it may not be. In that case, politicians should read this book and see whether t

This book should be read as both a story and a lesson. Just as a story it is more gripping than many a novel; and as a lesson it is one that we overlook at our daily peril. Neil Forsyth puts his journalistic skill at the service of the phenomenal juvenile fraudster Elliot Castro. He writes mainly in Elliot's persona, occasionally in his own, and once or twice as Detective Constable Ralph Eastgate whose capture of Elliot put an end to the youngster's life of crime, or one must hope so. I don't grudge Eastgate his moment in the sun, and he was obviously very pleasant to deal with and personable, but for all he really did he gets rather a good deal here. In his one direct attempt at capturing Elliot he was ingloriously outwitted, and in the end he was handed his quarry on a tray. As a child Elliot Castro was precocious, but his hyperactive and nonconforming personality made him too hot for the Scottish school system to handle and he finished with nothing to show for his schooling. What he learned, he learned for and by himself. He was fascinated by the high life of the wealthy, and his first foray into fraud was a spur-of-the-moment inspiration while working in a call-centre, from which he was dismissed for not keeping his mind on his work. He was, and presumably still is unless he has burnt himself out already, far brighter than most of us. At every stage of this story, and sometimes under desperate pressure, he was rational, calculating and inventive. Like all his generation he is computer-literate, but he was no hacker. The weaknesses that he spotted so accurately in the security systems of the banks, credit-card agencies, bureaux de change, funds-transfer agencies, hotels and bars were procedural weaknesses and ordinary carelessness. He slipped up at times, he soon gave up picking pockets for wallets, his presence of mind was extraordinary and he kept refining his technique. Here for us all to see is what the great stately financial institutions leave themselves wide open to. That their procedures are a curate's egg is something we may discover the hard way for ourselves. I myself recently had a call from the security department of one credit-card issuer asking whether I had changed my address to somewhere in Leicester. Replying in some bafflement that I would not be answering a home telephone in Glossop if I had, I was told that they had issued a duplicate or replacement card to the Leicester address, but that the system had spotted this address as one previously used for card fraud and they had disabled the card before the malefactor tried to draw cash with it. So far so good. However when I enquired how the fraudster learned my PIN they replied with some embarrassment that they had told him, and they were `trying to plug this loophole'. When I then asked the police why, if the address was known as suspect, they had not gone there, I found that there was a game of who-does-what ping-pong going on between police and banks. It would not take E

Starting at the age of sixteen, Elliot Castro learned how to make use of other people's money. He stole credit card numbers by the handfuls and was brazen enough to use them openly for anything he wanted. He wanted the good life. Childhood was hard for Castro. He went to several different schools due to his behavior, behavior he claims was brought on by being bullied and misunderstood. He just didn't fit in. He was smarter than others his age, had a different accent than his classmates, and a photographic memory. He was teased and felt ostracized. It set him up to live a life of inner fantasy where he was always the winner. And the prize would be that he could live the high life, have a long list of friends, and his father would respect and understand him. He tells of stealing cards, impersonating different business people, and buying friends. The best hotels in different cities become his home. To a certain extent, you can't help but feel sorry for this young man who has obvious needs. As I was reading it, I felt it was too unbelievable, that he did too much of everything. As a biography it is obviously true, but I found it hard to read about how much he took advantage of others--AND never showed any remorse. Armchair Interview says: His story should make everyone more aware of identity theft and credit card fraud.

Elliot Castro, the "audacious fraudster" of this book's subtitle, was finally caught in 2005. His criminal career had lasted some six years, beginning when he stole his first credit card at the age of sixteen. That first theft landed Elliot almost immediately in the back of his first police cruiser, but the experience didn't sour Elliot on a life of crime. He pocketed and profited from many more cards before graduating to a more sophisticated brand of fraud, one that allowed him access to other people's money without the dirty work of swiping wallets. Aided by a photographic memory and a genius for finance, Elliot supported himself for years by scamming credit card companies. He lived as a fugitive, constantly worrying about suspicious clerks, ready to run at a moment's notice, and mindful always of detail: Which credit cards and whose names was he using in which establishments? Which banks asked which security questions? But Elliot lived, ostensibly, very well: he spent money obsessively, at the finest restaurants and the best hotels, the poshest shops, amassing designer clothes and gold-plated Rolexes and more cash than even he could spend. But in the end, not surprisingly, this proved to be an empty sort of existence, and finally one he couldn't sustain. Other People's Money tells the story of Elliot Castro's childhood and career in crime. Neil Forsyth, a freelance journalist, wrote the book "with" Elliot, which apparently means that he wrote the book from interviews he conducted with Elliot (and a few others). But, interestingly, almost all of the book is told from Elliot's perspective, in the first person--and very engagingly--so that it is easy to forget that Forsyth stood as an intermediary between Elliot and the page, sharpening the con man's sentences into a very readable narrative. Forsyth writes from his own perspective only a few times, in a handful of chapters in which he describes, for example, his first meeting with Elliot, or his meeting with Elliot's mother Jane. These chapters, however, are less interesting than those detailing Elliot's experiences. Forsyth's first-person approach to telling Elliot's story is very effective, though I would have liked an explanatory note about the collaborative process, because it is somewhat jarring to read the story in Elliot's voice while knowing that Forsyth is the book's principal author. Elliot may not be a completely likable character. He stole hundreds of thousands of dollars, after all, with little remorse, and dedicated himself to accumulating material goods and to ostentatious display. But Forsyth's book renders Elliot's crimes at least comprehensible. Elliot grew up alienated, in part because he was so much smarter than his classmates, and various events conspired to convince him that deception and wealth were avenues to gaining respect. There were other problems, presumably a compulsive shopping addiction among them, and one leaves the book thinking that Elliot may be more sick tha