Daily Express Thursday, August 8, 2019 11DX1STBy Ruki SayidBy Adam Aspinall
and Amy-Clare Martin
GAS and electricity
bills will be slashed by
almost £1billion this
winter after price caps
were lowered.
Regulator Ofgem said
11 million householders
on the dearest “standard
variable rates” will pay
£75 less as average dual
fuel bills fall from
£1,254 to £1,179 from
October to March. And
four million customers
on pre-payment meters
will see bills fall by £25,
from £1,242 to £1,217.
The lower cap, after
a fall in wholesale
prices, is designed to
protect those on the
dearest tariffs.
Householders who pay
separately for gas and
power will see electricity
bills fall by an average of
£22 from £661 to £
from October 1.
Gas bills will come
down by £54 from £
to £539, Ofgem says.
Chief executive
Dermot Nolan said:
“The price caps require
suppliers to pass on any
savings when cost falls.
“The energy bills of
around 15 million
customers on default
deals or pre-payment
meters will fall this
winter to reflect the
reduction in cost of the
wholesale energy.
“These customers can
be confident that the
price they pay for their
energy reflects the costs
of supplying it.”
Yesterday, experts
urged those on the
expensive standard
tariffs to switch.
Richard Neudegg of
uSwitch said: “A price
cap reduction seems like
good news, but the new
level is still £333 more
expensive than the
cheapest deal people can
switch to today.”
Guy Anker of
MoneySavingExpert.
com said: “There’s a
huge risk this will lull
people into a false sense
of security that they’re
on a decent rate.
“Yet the 11 million on
a standard tariff are
almost certainly being
ripped off now and after
the cut because standard
rates will typically be
£300 a year more than
the cheapest.”
Ofgem admitted the
best deals can be had by
switching. It will review
the price cap in February
for the summer.
Industry body Energy
UK said this was
“a challenging time
for suppliers”.Energy
bills will
be cut for
11 million
Carolyn
Woods,
right, at
Bristol
Crown
Court to
Mark
Acklom,
above,
jailed for
five years
and eight
months for
a series of
frauds.
Left,
Acklom
pictured in
Geneva
while on
the run
in 2017I was suicidal, says
£300,000 con victim
as she sees love rat
jailed for five years
A SHATTERED victim of serial
conman Mark Acklom revealed she
nearly took her life after he merci-
lessly defrauded her of £300,000.
Ruthless Acklom, 45, posed as an
MI6 agent and rich Swiss banker to
woo glamorous 61-year-old divorcee
Carolyn Woods before fleecing her of
her life-savings and going on the run
across Europe.
Yesterday at Bristol Crown Court
Acklom pleaded guilty to five counts
of fraud amounting to £299,000 and
was sentenced to five years and eight
months in prison.
Last night Miss Woods, of Bath, said:
“My life, as I knew it, had indeed been
destroyed and it has only been the
love of my two daughters that has pre-
vented me from ending it completely.”
Serial crook Acklom, who was first
convicted of fraud when he was 16,
became one of Britain’s most wanted
men after he left Miss Woods and a
string of other victims almost destitute
in 2012.
He was believed to be on the run on
the Costa del Sol in Spain but was
eventually tracked down in Zurich,
Switzerland.
Police found him living in a luxury
apartment overlooking a lake in June
last year – but not before he tried to
escape police by jumping off a balcony.
It was later revealed he had been
happily living there with his Spanish
wife and two young daughters under a
false name for more than two years.
This was yet another chapter in a
lifetime of deception for a privileged
public schoolboy who first got a taste
for wheeler-dealing by selling porno-
graphic magazines to fellow pupils
while at Eastbourne College public
school, East Sussex.
He then fine-tuned a “City slicker”
act which he used to dupe his early
victims by passing himself off as a
stockbroker, although this soon saw
him end up in Feltham Young
Offenders Institution in west London.
He pulled off his biggest sting in
May 1990, when at 16 he convinced
the Leeds Permanent Building Society
was a 25-year-old stockbroker on
£214,000 a year.
They gave him a £466,000 mortgage
for a £516,000 executive home in
Dulwich, south London, not far from
one owned by Margaret Thatcher.
His father Bryan Acklom said after
his son’s first court appearance: “I
don’t think he realises what he has
done. I don’t think he feels anything.”
At 18, Acklom stole his father’s
American Express goldcard, going on
shopping sprees at Harrods and treating
girlfriends to top hotels and restaurants.
He soon managed to run up an
£11,000 bill on the goldcard and also
owed £34,000 to a private jet charter
company before his father finally
reported the credit card stolen.
After serving time in Feltham, he
was released in 1993 and by the late
1990s washed up in Spain.
Again, it was not long before he was
in trouble with the law and in 1998 he
was jailed for two years for a fraud
involving unpaid hotel rooms.
He married Maria Rodriguez in
Totana, Murcia, in 2009, later chang-
ing his name to Marc Ros Rodriguez.
But yesterday Acklom was finally
brought to justice for his wicked
crimes against Miss Woods.
He was a picture of indifference as
Miss Woods’ moving victim impact
statement was read out in court.
Devious Acklom had embarked
on an intense year-long relationship
with her after they met in a clothes
shop she worked at in Tetbury,
Gloucestershire, in 2012.
He promised to marry her while
tricking her into handing over her
life- savings.
He vanished with the cash, leav-
ing Miss Woods ruined and on the
brink of suicide.Wicked
Pictures: SWNS