Alex Wood
Most financial crime training works off case studies written after the fact. It teaches people what fraud looks like from the outside. What it rarely gives them is the working logic of the person on the other side of the transaction. That blind spot is what allows sophisticated scams, mule-account networks and AI-enabled impersonation to keep finding room inside well-resourced institutions.
Alex Wood is a reformed fraudster and counter-fraud advisor to UK banks, regulators and police, and co-presents BBC Radio 4’s Scam Secrets.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Alex Wood
- First-hand operator knowledge of social engineering, impersonation and mule-account networks, drawn from years inside the work rather than modelled from the outside.
- Active advisor to the Home Office, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Cabinet Office, the Financial Conduct Authority and UK police forces, so the material reflects current regulatory and policing priorities.
- Consults for Tier 1 banks including NatWest and risk firms including Experian on the fraud mindset and social engineering, giving risk, compliance and customer-protection teams a structured view of how scams are designed.
- Co-presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Scam Secrets with Shari Vahl and Dr Elisabeth Carter, a weekly national broadcast that keeps his case base current rather than historical.
Biography highlights
- Co-presenter, BBC Radio 4 Scam Secrets, alongside journalist Shari Vahl and criminologist Dr Elisabeth Carter
- Advises the Home Office, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Cabinet Office, the Financial Conduct Authority and UK police forces on fraud mindset and social engineering
- Consults for Tier 1 banks including NatWest and risk firms including Experian
- Author of the forthcoming memoir Facing the Music: From Her Majesty’s Palaces to Her Majesty’s Prisons, represented by Andrew Lownie Literary Agency
- Trained classical violinist, Purcell School, Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music; early performances at the Royal Festival Hall, Royal Opera House and Wigmore Hall
- Named speaker at Counter Fraud 2023 and UK Cyber Week 2024
Biography
Most fraud controls assume the attacker is a technical problem. The last decade of evidence says the attacker is a psychologist with a laptop. What banks, insurers and regulators rarely get in the room is the working logic of the person on the other side of the transaction, and that is what Alex Wood brings.
Wood trained as a concert violinist at the Purcell School, Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music, and performed at the Royal Festival Hall, Royal Opera House and Wigmore Hall. A repetitive strain injury ended the career in his early twenties. What followed was a decade of fraud, including a 2015 conviction for impersonating the Duke of Marlborough across London hotels and a later sentence tied to banking fraud. He was released from prison in 2022.
Since then he has become a working advisor to the Home Office, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Cabinet Office, the Financial Conduct Authority, UK police forces and Tier 1 banks including NatWest. His focus is the mule-account economy and the social engineering playbooks that defeat otherwise strong controls. He co-presents the BBC Radio 4 series Scam Secrets with Shari Vahl and Dr Elisabeth Carter, dissecting live cases with forensic detail.
His memoir, Facing the Music: From Her Majesty’s Palaces to Her Majesty’s Prisons, is represented by Andrew Lownie Literary Agency, and a documentary on his story is in production with Mindhouse Productions, the company founded by Louis Theroux. For a risk committee briefing, what Wood delivers is specific: how a criminal chooses a target, how a customer is moved into a mule role, and where in a bank’s own process the decisive second of hesitation was lost.
Key speaking topics
- The fraud mindset and how sophisticated scams are designed
- Social engineering and impersonation at scale
- Mule accounts and the retail-banking fraud perimeter
- AI-enabled fraud and the near-term threat surface
- Informal value-transfer systems and underworld banking (Hawala, Daigou)
- Counter-fraud culture inside large financial institutions
Ideal for
- Heads of financial crime, fraud and compliance at banks, insurers and law firms
- Risk and customer-protection teams rebuilding fraud prevention programmes
- Internal audit, AML and onboarding functions facing mule-account and impersonation pressure
- Counter-fraud conferences, regulator-facing events and financial services leadership summits
Audience outcomes
- A working view of how fraud is designed from the offender side, not the detection side
- Specific frames for spotting social-engineering and impersonation pressure earlier in the transaction path
- A read on where AI-enabled fraud and underworld banking are pushing the near-term threat surface
- A speaker whose BBC Radio 4 co-presenter role keeps the material current with national-level fraud reporting
Talks
A session on detection and closure of the mule-account networks that retail banks rely on to identify and disrupt scam proceeds.
Key takeaways:
- How mule accounts are recruited, organised and layered across institutions
- Detection signals that typically sit below standard monitoring thresholds
- Practical actions for retail-banking fraud and onboarding teams
A briefing on how generative AI is being used in fraud against financial services, from voice cloning to synthetic identity.
Key takeaways:
- The near-term AI-enabled fraud threat surface, not speculative scenarios
- Why existing KYC and customer-verification flows are now easier to defeat
- Priorities for banks building AI-aware counter-fraud controls
A session on informal value-transfer systems, including Hawala and Daigou, and how organised fraud proceeds move outside the regulated financial system.
Key takeaways:
- How informal value-transfer systems are structured and why they are resilient to standard AML controls
- Intersections with high-street retail, remittance and crypto flows
- Implications for AML, sanctions and correspondent-banking teams
A first-person session on the decision-making and behavioural patterns that drive sustained fraud careers.
Key takeaways:
- The reasoning patterns that let serious fraudsters operate at scale over long periods
- Why behavioural framing is a better base for fraud prevention than generic awareness
- How to brief frontline staff so they can interrupt scams earlier in the interaction
A session on the specific impersonation and deception tactics used against high-value customers and corporate victims.
Key takeaways:
- The script patterns and pacing that make modern social engineering effective
- Where customer-facing teams typically fail to interrupt the sequence
- A checklist of high-value interventions for fraud and customer-protection teams
Videos
Testimonials
Fees
| EUR | GBP | USD | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home Country | Under €12000 | Under £10,000 | Under $15000 |
| Asia Pacific | Please enquire | Please enquire | Please enquire |
| Europe | Please enquire | Please enquire | Please enquire |
| Middle East & Africa | Please enquire | Please enquire | Please enquire |
| South America | Please enquire | Please enquire | Please enquire |
| United Kingdom | Under €12000 | Under £10,000 | Under $15000 |
| US East Coast | Please enquire | Please enquire | Please enquire |
| US West Coast | Please enquire | Please enquire | Please enquire |
| Virtual | Under €12000 | Under £10,000 | Under $15000 |