Two Barclays employees were questioned on suspicion of aiding conman Mark Acklom - and Carolyn Woods is now calling for the bank to pay back the cash he stole from her.
Acklom isolated Ms Woods from family and friends, then advised her to set up a new bank account with Barclays.Citing a cash flow problem, he encouraged her to transfer money she thought were loans for building work on a plush home he had bought them.
"If they had shown some interest in me as a client, then perhaps this might not have happened. I mean, I do take responsibility myself, for part of it.""But I think one of the very good things that's happened since I highlighted this sort of coercive control and wrote about it is that people are much, much more aware," she continued.
She discovered Acklom's long history of fraud and was told that far from being a rich bachelor flying in to see her from Switzerland, he had been living nearby with his wife and two young daughters. By that time Acklom had fled abroad. "I've worked so hard to rebuild my mental state. I was in such a manipulative position where I could not move, could not see, could not eat, could not drink, could not do a damn thing, unless I was authorised."
In a letter to Barclays Ms Woods, 62, wrote:"I realise that banking safeguards have improved since 2012/13, but some recent events have led me to believe that I wasted my time going after Mark Acklom and his accomplices through the so-called criminal justice system, and that Barclays Bank should have been held equally accountable for my losses - something I thought would follow on naturally once the case came to trial.
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