EP 029 Scott Kidd: From Fraud Offender to Fraud Defender

Professional Bio

Scott Kidd is a highly accomplished professional with a diverse criminology, psychology, and finance background. Currently a PhD candidate with an MA in Criminology and Criminal Justice and a BA (Hons) in Psychology, Scott is a member of The Howard League for Penal Reform ECR group and a Criminology and Criminal Justice researcher. In addition to his academic pursuits, Scott is also an Integrative Psychotherapist and Fraud Consultant with experience working with universities, the prison service, and the police force. He is a sought-after guest speaker in criminology and psychology, sharing his expertise and insights with a wide range of audiences.

Prior to his current work, Scott held managing director and corporate finance executive roles, specialising in high-value finance, corporate restructuring, and recovery strategies. He brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to his current work, which includes participation in various research projects and prison outreach programs. Scott has a unique perspective on financial crimes, having served 11 years for such offences. This lived experience has informed his work and research and given him a deep understanding of the complexities of the criminal justice system. Overall, Scott Kidd is a dedicated and accomplished professional with a passion for criminology, psychology, and finance. His diverse background and experience make him valuable to any organisation or project.

LinkedIn:    www.linkedin.com/in/scott-kidd-475aa01ba

Twitter:     https://twitter.com/criminologykidd

Threads:   https://www.threads.net/@kidd6733

Security Circle ⭕️ is an IFPOD production for IFPO the International Foundation of Protection Officers

Transcript

Yoyo: 0:15

hi, this is Yolanda. Welcome. This is an IF pod production for Ifpo, the very first security podcast called Security Circle. I want to thank all of our listeners, however they listen to the Security Circle podcast, walking, jogging at work, driving home from work. We really appreciate you. If PO are dedicated to providing meaningful education and certification for all levels of security personnel and make a positive difference to our members' mental health and wellbeing, and in line with our, strategy to bring you the best in class in the security industry, I found you a rather exceptional person. His name is Scott Kidd. He's currently studying a master's degree in criminology and criminal justice. He's an integrative psychotherapist and a fraud consultant. He's a guest speaker in criminology and psychology, and he gonna find out why in a minute he's working with universities, the prison service, and the police forces. Formerly Scott worked as managing director in corporate finance executive roles, and he has a specialism of high value finance, corporate restructuring and recovery strategies. He participates in various research projects and participates in prison outreach programs, and he has lived experience having served 11 years for financial crimes at her Majesty's service. Scott, welcome to the Security Circle podcast.

Scott: 1:41

Hello? Yes, good to be here and thanks for inviting me on today.

Yoyo: 1:45

Hey, listen, we met, didn't we actually very recently in London, we were at the Tower of London. Yes.

Scott: 1:49

Very fitting place.

Yoyo: 1:51

I was just gonna say, did you get any vibes there that like thousands of people were hung

Scott: 1:55

there? Yeah. No. But it was a bit of a strange a strange venue for it, but I think probably quite apt considering the sort of the nature of the conference, and that kind of thing. So yeah, an interesting place to hold or be part of a conference really. But yeah, it was, yeah, it was good.

Yoyo: 2:10

So, I mean, I found your keynote incredibly interesting, which is why I approached you to speak to today. And this is because you have this amazing lived experience in criminality. And I know that I say that kind of jokingly cuz obviously I was a former police officer. Let's go back to before you started to get involved with crime and let's understand who Scott Kidd was when he was a kid.

Scott: 2:34

Yeah. Okay. Well, the first misconception is everyone thinks I'm pretty posh and all the rest of it. The reality is something quite different to that. I grew up on a council estate some of the, probably the roughest ones in Newcastle and in Leicester. And the thing is, you notice that I said Newcastle. I'm born and bred Jordy, but I don't have a northern accent. And that's probably because when I moved down from Newcastle to Lester at the tender age of 11, and that was the year when Lester Newcastle had just not Lester out of the premiership. So, being on a rough council state that were quite avid, Lester City football supporters, they really didn't take too kindly to a Jordy arriving in their patch. I quickly kind of learned to reinvent who I was and my accent as such. So, yeah, so that's probably why I'm, one of the first things you'll note in terms of I'm quite good at reinventing myself and I'm quite good at playing the character that I need to play for the role that I'm in at the time sort of thing. Growing up really yeah, it, it was tough for me. my mum and dad are together, but it was quite challenging. My dad was an abusive alcoholic. My mum suffered heavily with a mental health and I had a sister that had special needs. So a lot of my kind of formative years were dealing with a lot of sort of trauma and the things that kind of come from that kind of thing. And looking after my sister was one of the things I did as well and that kind of got me into a lot of trouble at school because my sister's got learning difficulties. People used to take the mick out of her cuz she was deaf and those sorts of things. So I ended up defending her. So I was in trouble at school an awful lot. I was always fighting, I was always sticking up for her because people would pick on her. And that got me into a lot of trouble at school. So kind of my sort of formative school years weren't great. My teachers pretty much trapped me probably with a, that they thought I deserved at the time and weren't very supportive of my sort of family life situation. And in fairness, some of the schools I went to, I take as much of a beating from the teachers as I would do from the kids, to be honest with you. So it wouldn't be the first time that our teachers, threw me across a classroom and almost threw a glass window. So, yeah, it's it was tough and it was challenging. But what it did give me was this kind of drive and this kind of tenacity to kind of elevate myself from where I was no whatever it costs, whatever it would take to get myself outta that situation. And that was basically formed outta the basis that they always told me that I would never be anything. That would always be a failure. And I would never succeed. So for me, my view was that I'm gonna succeed, I won't be a failure. And took that kind of negativity and it kind of became a key driver in sort of me going to my professional life and then onto other things as well. It

Yoyo: 5:17

sounds like you were a really resilient kid, because with all of that going on, I should imagine sometimes the last place you felt that you really wanted to be was at home.

Scott: 5:28

Yeah I really didn't want to be at home to be honest with you. I had to be for the times where, when I was looking after my sister, so I used to do like cooking, cleaning, all that kind of stuff, making sure I school uniforms were ready, for the next day. Cause my mom was pretty much in bed, most of it. So yeah, so I developed that resilience, but then also because I wasn't getting the structure that I needed as a child I joined the Air Cadets, that gave me the discipline that I needed and skills and things like that, that I could use. When I felt like I couldn't express myself, I then joined a drama group so I could express myself in theatrics and all those sorts of things. So the things that I didn't get from my kind of sort of childhood or the support, et cetera, I kind of found ways in which I could actually sort navigate myself to things that would give me that support, that would give me that guidance, that would give me that structure. And I think that made me even more resilient as I went along. But obviously with that comes a lot sort of consequence to yourself, you've kind of, you do develop some of the wrong ways of thinking with it as well, so, it's, yeah. It wasn't without its problems, but yes, it did create quite a lot of resilience as such.

Yoyo: 6:34

How do you identify those wrong ways of thinking now as an adult man when you look back?

Scott: 6:39

I think it's the fact that I was able. Because of the trauma that I experienced, I was able to create these kind of images or these people or personas that were shields. So if I was to be attacked, it would be the shield that would be attacked and it wouldn't be me. So it's very easy when putting these sort of different sort of faces on to then actually do whatever you do when you are wearing that mask. So you can become that person. You can become that thing, but that's not actually who you are as a person. So although I'm doing something that's moral in that sense, it's the mask that's doing something immoral, not me, who's actually got a very high sort of moral compass. Who doesn't want to do bad things, who doesn't want to do those things, but in order to survive. I was able to do that and put those masks on. But then one of the other things, because of my kind of background as well, is that a lot of your senses when you're in these sort of trauma sort of arenas or experiencing this trauma coming at you, you become, you senses become heightened. So in terms of my hearing's I've got really sensitive hearing in situations. I'm always looking for the risk. But so cuz I'm always looking for the risk. I always see the opportunity, I always read the room, I read the situation probably a lot quicker than someone that's not experienced, the trauma that I've experienced. And when you are actually doing something that's very much confidence based or you're working something where you're actually looking to manipulate or gain an advantage, that actually feeds into that. So it's very easy when you are wearing this mask, when you don't have the morals, when you have these heightened sets of natural sort of instincts and abilities. So then actually then utilize them to do things that you want to do. And that's what I rec now recognize now in my life. That's what I did. And it's been a process of deconstructing who I was. Lots of therapy. I'm gonna admit, I've done weekly therapy for years. I won't say my time in prison did anything at all to rehabilitate me. Cause it absolutely didn't. Everything that I've kind of done or moved on to do has been through my own sort of vo of self, like discovery and actually things that I've done, not that the system's done to help me. If anything, the system, all the systems' done has actually leave me with complex PTs d So, from, five and a half years in custody you're gonna see some stuff. And then obviously, coupled with being involved with risk organized crime internationally prior to that I've seen an awful lot of things as well. So it's yeah, it's quite it's one of those things. It's yeah, you have to think, strip it back down. Rebuild myself. Here I am as I am now, without these masks, without these protections. And it takes a bit of adjusting and a bit of getting used to be honest. So yeah, I find

Yoyo: 9:18

you intriguing. I mean, everything you've just said there I think is gonna resonate with a lot of people. Because I think as adults we have this opportunity to reflect back, don't we, on ourselves as younger people. The one question I'm gonna ask you now, I hadn't planned to ask you until later, but I think it's quite relevant now because of where we are. If you could go back and speak to your younger self back in time, at what specific time and age would you go back and approach yourself and what would you say? Well, this

Scott: 9:49

is something I have thought about. If I could go back and change it, what would I say to myself? And I don't think that I would change anything. Well, not even don't get caught. No. I wouldn't, and I, a lot of people think, no, you would definitely not do that. You're not wanna get caught in all the rest of it. But if I hadn't have, I look at my life where I'm now, I'm married. I've got three children, two with my ex-wife, one with my one with my wife. And I'm in a totally different place in my life. I'm very happy. I'm content. And if I hadn't have gone down the paths that I've gone down, if I hadn't have got my first sentence, then that wouldn't have led me to the relationship that I'm in now. And I wouldn't have got what I've got now, where I'm actually happy. I don't worry about things. I'm not orient, like driven by money, by wealth, by status, and that, and like I used to be. So I can actually truly be myself with people who are genuine, who are very loving and caring and who I absolutely idolize. So it's kind of, it's a, it's one of those things like, would you change your things? The answer in reality, no, because what I've got now is far better than what I would've had then by even by changing things for the better then

Yoyo: 11:03

what a transformation. Okay. So. At what age were you when you first got your experience of crime and you understood that maybe this was a pathway for you?

Scott: 11:15

Okay. Well, it's, I've been around a lot of sort of criminality. I've been a lot of, around a lot of people on council, the states growing up that have gone into crime. So I've always been around crime, but I never engaged in it. And it wasn't until I actually set up my own my first business, which was a leasing company. So I had a vehicle leasing company, did short term leases. We were quite unique in the market at the time. We grew very quickly and we're doing very well. Then there was a residual value shift in the market, so used vehicles basically lost a lot of their value overnight, and this was the times when you saw Lex vehicle leasing went bust, obviously before they were bought out again, and a lot of others went bust. But because of my kind of upbringing in childhood and this kind of promise that I would never fail or become this failure, I couldn't let my company fail. And the first thing that kind of, this sort of sense of leg legality was an accident. So we were on, cuz we were buying so many vehicles, we were on monthly v a t claim backs as opposed to quarterly ones because we were dealt with such a volume of invoices. And we'd put an order in for a couple hundred or so vehicles and that will be in processed, we'd already done the v a t return, which is quite often cause we'd have the invoices, the v they'd go off within our return. And we hadn't even taken delivery of the vehicle residual value dropped out the market. We canceled the deal with the manufacturer cause we were buying, several hundred cars at one go. And then all of a sudden I get this big v a T payment come into my bank account. At the time, obviously when everything's starting to go, credit lines are starting to drop off from the banks. They're starting to close things down because the risks within the market, et cetera. And I'm like, I can't let this fail. So I kind of thought, I'll keep hold of this money for a bit in case we need it. We needed it to pay for staff wages, et cetera. And I did that. But my intention initially was I'll pay it back. We'll get things sorted. We'll ride this sort of like, the blip in the market. We'll reassure ourselves we'll work out how we're gonna do it. We'll look at how we can make more profit and see if we can survive it. Obviously couldn't do that, but so I thought, okay, we just need to do it a little bit more. So I basically then created a fake scheme and then I started to do it more and more. And there's a strange thing, I actually started to enjoy it a little bit. Why is that? I enjoyed getting something back on the systems that I felt failed me. Me the school system failed me when I should have had support from things that were going on at home. No one was there to support me when the school should have supported me. When I told them that there was issues, they didn't. So it was kind of like this, it was all part of the system, like the kind of the governmental system. And I was like, well actually I'm now getting what I need from the system. Something I never got before. Yeah. So I took that kind of personal motivation and enjoyment out of taking money from the system. And that kind of then made me think, well, can I actually do other things? So one of the things I did on a number of occasions is I would set up a company, I would set up arrangements with accountants like Pricewaterhouse, Coopers, et cetera. And then what I'd do is say, right, I'm gonna send these projections to you. Can you confirm the actual integrity of these projections? Da. Right? Can you just put that in writing that you confirm these thing the projections, I, they get a letter from Pricewaterhouse Coopers. I would then obviously take that, put it into our sort of my high quality scanners. I would then reprint the letters off exactly as they should have been. So recreate their stationary with their stuff on from what we had there. And I would actually change it to these. This is confirmation of the actual current net position of the business as it stands right now. I would then take that to my corporate bank manager who are all about relationships. So they want my business, they don't want someone else have the business. So I'm already onto a winner there because I can manipulate that as a line in cause they're thinking they're getting this big high corporate entity. And then I inadvertently would play that relationship with the bank of the relationship with pwc. Everybody wants to please me right now and make the bank think that those projections are real. Get price. What House Coopers to verbally confirm that those, they've prepared those figures and they're absolutely bang on. Next thing I've actually got an accountant to confirm projections as real figures, and I'm getting a million pound overdraft. And you can just, you can imagine how many times you could do that if you wanted to kind of replicate it. Not that I did, but you can imagine how many times you could do.

Yoyo: 15:52

Is that the key though is to not be too greedy? I mean, is that where some people go wrong, do you

Scott: 15:57

think? Absolutely. The most successful schemes that I know that have been ran and done, they operate take a million pounds and then they close it down. So if you've got a 50,000 pounds investment to actually set up a company to make everything look legitimate, bonafide, and all the rest of it, you make it, take it up to a million, close it down, move it to a different police force area. You're not raising too much of an attention at one part and one area, and you can just literally keep moving around the UK and creating all these opportunities with new accountants, with different people under different aliases, with different IDs, different names. There's no kind of nothing linking to it. You're working out a different offices and yeah. And before the, you realize you've created it. But one of the other things that's quite key to this, and especially when you're making much bigger sort of schemes, is that one of the best assets you can have are real people. So I would employ real people and pay them real wages to work in real roles to manage my accounts. So they were perfect to then transfer, to raise invoices, to pay the bills, to make everything look legitimate. So when you have a V A T inspector, for example, if you're doing a V A T scan, v a t inspector comes in, they see everything that's there. They see the people, they see the offices. Everyone's working, I'll just get you this file. They've got all of it in place and they don't realize it's not the people that are working, they don't realize it's not real. The v a t inspector think it's real because they're actually selling the actual comm. Yeah. And then that's how you go on from it. So yeah. So it's, and that's the tougher part because obviously you are using real people, but that's how you make something real and make it happen a lot quicker and a lot more effectively. But the thing is, it's not, the thing to be is not greedy. Cause when you get greedy, people start to notice you. If you're in an area for too long, people start to talk about you. And that point, when they start talking about you and they see cars and they see money, and they see all these different things, that's when you realize that, You're just becoming arrogant. You become cocky and you're actually opening yourself up to be caught. Yeah. And I didn't get caught for anything I'd done. I got caught because somebody who used to work for me in one of the positions, who knew what was going on, who used to go around setting these things up, got caught doing something when I'd left the country. Cause I was living over in Marba at that point and they said, well actually, you don't wanna go after me cause I can tell you about something that's much bigger that's been going on a lot longer. And they went, Queen's evidence on me. So hence why I got thought. Yeah.

Yoyo: 18:29

And so for those people who dunno what Queen's evidence is, it's basically testifying without fear of prosecution. To give up obviously more valuable information on somebody else. So that's pretty tough, isn't it? Because it sounds like you were running quite good operation. It's quite locked tight. You've got plausible deniability with all of your employees. And then somebody goes and lifts the lid on it. Were you sleeping all right at this time or were you worried that you were,

Scott: 18:55

I just don't, I don't sleep very well at all. So, I'm a vivid insomniac, so, yeah I'm always, I've always been busy, except for now, instead of creating a new scheme when I wake up in the early hours of the morning, I'm actually doing research or doing all my sort of background reading for how to prevent people from offending how to stop people, from going down that recidivism cycle and going back into custody. So I actually work with Brian to kind of like, make that transformative change. So that's where my time's kind of really kind of, invested at the moment.

Yoyo: 19:24

so you were in Marba where the whole thing collapsed. How did that roll out and how are you, how did you realize that Oh shit moment was

Scott: 19:33

happening? Well the oh shit moment was I was over from Marba and I was actually borrowing a boat from Fairline except for they didn't realize they were giving me a boat for free. And I got arrested on the back of the boat. how did they even find you? Because my passport had flagged that I was in the UK and they basically then tracked me. I had a car in Chelsea at the time. So I had a nice little AMG Merck that was sat there that I used to use and they tracked that worked out that was there and I was basically on the back of the boat. And they caught me on the back of the boat just as I was leaving. So with a 3 million pound yacht, that's just like, that's

Yoyo: 20:12

like a scene out of a movie like the

Scott: 20:14

Mething. It's, yeah, it was at the end of the boat show, at the London Boat Show. So hotel. So, yeah. So yeah, I was literally just about to leave with my newly acquired asset which was a Forex, a fake Forex transaction that they thought was real and they thought they'd been paid and they hadn't been paid. And it's we weren't going into sort the depths of that because it's still open for people to do, I suppose. But yeah, so, and that was it. And that's where I got caught. So I got caught on the back of my latest purchase.

Yoyo: 20:44

And do you know how long they'd been looking into prior to getting arrested?

Scott: 20:48

Well, my offending actually the sort of the core offending before I got caught for other things that they then obviously found because they caught me with certain things at that point. Was from 2003 and I didn't receive my first sentence until end of 2008. Okay. Wow. So, so quite

Yoyo: 21:05

a while. how easy was it finding a lawyer to defend you? How was that process like?

Scott: 21:10

I was quite fortunate to get a guy called Paul Ritz, who is an absolutely fantastic qc. And he specialized in my area. He specialized in fraud. He went on to work within the prosecution element of prosecuting bigger cases cuz he's that good. So I was fortunate to have a local firm that I knew in London that dealt with some other things. They had some good contacts, put me through to a top guy and Paul was brilliant. You meet certain people that have gone through the sort of barrister career and some of'em are quite up themselves and stuff, but Paul. Was very real. He was very on the ball, very sharp with things. And although I got convicted I always knew I was gonna get convicted. There's no way that I couldn't. And the reason why I couldn't is when the person who went Queen's evidence when they did what they did, there was a safe that was in a house that wasn't registered to me, that somebody was basically living in free of charge. Cuz it was a three story, I could just literally go in through the bottom, get what I needed and leave and no one would ever knew, know if I was there or not there. This person let them know where the safe was. It had literally all the documents, all my templates, all the things that you need to keep in order to do things quickly and easily. So, there was no way I was getting off with it. But in fairness, when I should have been getting sort of nine to 12 years, I got six years. When I should have been getting five years, I managed on the first one to get away with 15 months. I got absolutely spanked when I should have actually got six months. Ended up getting three and a half years. Yeah. So it's like, it's one of those ones, but they kind of all went on in, in succession from each other really from that point. So it's yeah it's been an interesting ride. And I've had a lot of, well I had quite a bit of government interest in me cuz one of my companies had dealings with one of the government offices. And because of that, that came into kind of investigation with one of my things. And because of that, ed Davey at the time got very involved in my case cuz he was the business minister. And because all my things were facilitated through businesses, I had. The department for Business, energy, industrial Strategy, they're the ones that actually prosecuted me. So I had BS and I had H M R C kind of like being fueled by Ed Davey at the time to basically go after me in the way, for example, when I was being charged, when I ended up in Leicester and one of the thing, one of the times being charged, they sent the most senior prosecutor to come up to physically charge me instead of letting the police do it. That's the kind of level of interest that they had in me, and they still do because I'm the first person to ever be given a serious crime prevention order from the Department for Business Energy, industrial and Strat strategy. So what's a

Yoyo: 23:52

serious crime prevention order? Take us through that. For those who

Scott: 23:55

dunno. Basically when your sentence finishes, you get an order imposed on you, which is a maximum of five years, which I got. And in that five-year period, they basically can manage your finance. They basically have access to all your finances. They restrict your amount of bank accounts. You have credit cards, savings accounts. You can't have joint accounts with anyone else. They know about all your assets, any movement you need over a certain nominal amount. Yeah. Phones, they have access to your phones. So they can actually basically go into your phone whenever they want and they can come and search a house at any moment. Right. Without getting the same sort of permissions that they would normally do. It's very kind of, almost any part of your life can be interrogated for five years and if you are found to have breached anything within that five years, you can get an automatic five years in prison.

Yoyo: 24:42

Wow. That's pretty significant considering it's, you didn't get that sentence for some of the convictions.

Scott: 24:48

Yes. So it's quite a it's a challenging thing. And the one thing quite funny is it actually finished A day, five days ago. Congratulations. Yes, thank you. So yeah, I could now actually have a joint account with my wife. Again, it's simple as that. We can't even have a joint bank account. Yeah. So we have to transfer money between our bank accounts to pay bills and stuff. It's just crazy. So tell me,

Yoyo: 25:13

you get arrested and what's the impact to your family at that time? Can you

Scott: 25:18

remember? Yeah. Me, my, all my big sentences were th things that happened before. Me and my wife were together. Obviously I've married before. But my wife has in a sense suffered and my youngest son has suffered the most from it. It's had a huge impact on them. It's been very hard on them. And I think this is the one thing about criminality I think you, there's that secondary victimization of families, society, treat them differently. People talk about them. People will say that, oh, don't play with your son because his dad's in prison, and those sorts of things. So I think that's that secondary victimization, which is something that often isn't accounted for. And in a sense they have it harder. I went through proceed of crime. We're losing our houses, we're losing all our assets. And there's my wife having to sort out where they live. And then coming to visit me and then sending me more money in. Because you don't, as I dunno if you know about prison wages, you get paid like 10 quid a week. and that you've gotta use that for phone credit. But if you arrive to have, so much money sent in, You're family is sending your money in to support you so you could eat better. So you can buy food to top of the food that you've got. Cause you don't get an awful lot, you need to maintain family contact with phones. So there's send'em to make your phone calls like for example, when you're in prison to make a 10 minute phone call costs you 80 p Wow. To make a 10 minute phone call to your family. They've got a monopoly on that. So you get absolutely exploited. So you're in a sort of very poor situation. You're getting exploited to maintain family ties. Maintaining family ties is what stops re-offending ultimately. And the system does nothing to support that. In fairness, they'd make it harder. So in terms of the impact family wise it's financially difficult. And then they have to deal with the sort of social stigma. Then they have to deal with the sense of grief. Cause it's almost like, even though you are alive, and even though they're still seeing you, they're grieving the relationship you had before when you were there every day. So it's so hard with families and it's one of those things that people don't understand. the impacts of it, and I think that's a key motivate for a lot of people when they do decide not to carry on doing what they're doing really. So, for anybody

Yoyo: 27:26

who's, dancing on the line of, shall I, Shanghai, let's talk about prison life. Can you take us through what that first, so I remember this from the Sure. Shank Redemption, which is obviously a famous movie that if you like, Morgan Freeman launched his career really into stardom and that. It's compelling and I know it's a very dated film, even in the sense that it's periodic in it's making, there's that kind of real feeling of when you're locked in that very first night and how many people don't, deal with that very well. Can you remember your first day?

Scott: 28:01

Yeah. First, yeah, I can. My first day was to kind of really throw it, it's, you basically lose all sort of sense of individuality when you first go in. They take the strip that off from you. They kind of, obviously you strip search initially. As soon as you go in, you get put into sort of prison tracksuits, that kind of thing. You're meant to be giving prison shoes, but if they don't have any, then you continue to wear your own shoes. And I'll say that cause it's kind of quite poignant because when I went to court I went there, I was still under this kind of title that I'd been given from when I was in Spain of the Barron. So it was like, can Barron Scott kid make himself known to courtroom number four? I'm there in this kind of brown, like multi brown caramelo handmade suit with brown brogues, but the three different color leather, like tri-color leather brown brogues. And I go into prison. They strip search me. They put me in this prison tracksuit, and then there's no prison trainers in my size, so I have to wear my caramel designer shoes as well. So I'm wearing winkle picker shoes, basically with a gray tracksuit, and I land in wandsworth. So yeah, that was quite interesting. My first couple of hours had been there. I basically went there, I'd been in my cell literally for 10 minutes. Somebody basically tried to come and then robbed me with a knife. That was the first, that was my first couple of minutes. So my first, sort of interaction with anybody was me basically kicking somebody out the cell. And then after that, when that door shuts and it clunks, you realize that you have lost all power and all freedom and all of that independence and the things that kind of feed into you, and it makes your heart sink and it's not an easy thing to deal with, and it doesn't get easier. You just learn to deal with it differently. Yeah. And a lot of people I know, some of the biggest and the hardest and the nastiest of people, they go through a rough time in prison. They don't show it this thing. The schemes called the listener schemes, which I was part of, I was a listener and basically we were trained by the Samaritans and we could be called out 24 hours a day, completely confidential, went to a private room. So you'd have some youth, your hardest gangsters calling us because they've had a dear John let us basically saying that the partner's splitting up, a family member's dying or died, that they can't cope with prison at that time, that they've had a bad day. And these people are at the point where they're suicidal. Yeah. So we talk about suicide, we talk about death. And the whole reason why we do that is to kind of, in a sense, to look at them, get them to look at other options, what they've got going on so that they don't kill themselves. And that's actually run by prisoners voluntarily. You don't get paid for it. So we volunteer to help other prisoners so they don't kill themselves because it is. Bad, I've witnessed so many things. I've witnessed three people being murdered in front of me. I used to see, people can get jugged all the time and to to explain what jugging is. Or it's also known as they call prison napalm. It's when someone boils a cattle up and they pour sugar into the kettle, so it becomes molten sugar water, and they sugar over people. Like it burns their skin. I saw that weekly, happening. I've seen so many people get stabbed. I've seen so many people getting beaten. I've seen so many people get legs broke, jaws broke. I've seen that not just from the prisoners and I've seen absolute real brutality from prison officers. And I always remember one time someone I'd actually been working with who was struggling really bad with their mental health who'd killed themselves, and they hung themselves from the window. And the two prison officers were on morning Unlock, cuz we'd already been unlocked. So we were on way working round and they saw this person hang. So they opened the prison door so you could literally see the person hanging at the end of the door from the window. And they were just stood outside laughing about it, letting everyone watch this person hang. Yeah. And it's like, where's the humanity in that? Yeah. If the person's dead, treat them with some respect. So, so prison is rough and I've seen some rough things. I've seen some rough things from prison. On prison. I've seen rough things on prison understaff. But then I've also seen some brilliant things. I've seen prisoners helping people when, when they don't have anything themselves helping people out so that they don't have nothing. I've seen certain members of staff that are absolutely brilliant as well, that have actually, that really genuinely care about people and actually help people, so it's not completely all bad. But it's not great and all the misconceptions that you have within the media that everyone's on PlayStations and they're playing games and all the rest of it. Most of the people in prison right now are banged up for 23 hours a day. They get one hour a day out the cell and that's half an hour exercise on the yard, which isn't exercise. It's walking around in a circle, itlo in a big chicken coop, if you wanna put it that way. And then picking your food up. And then if you lucky, you get a shower and if you lucky, you make a phone call. Now, if you obviously do certain jobs like orderly jobs or certain jobs that keep the prison running, then you get more time out. If you engage in education, then that's great. You can actually get a couple of hours, two or three hours out yourself for that. But there's not enough places to facilitate education. There's not enough jobs in a prison. You could have a prison that's got. A thousand people in there, but there might only be 200 jobs and 200 education places. So you've got 600 people that are sat there not doing anything, so they're banged up for 20 hours a day. And it's, and if you are in a cell, with people that you don't know initially, like, especially when you first go in, you go into a local prison, but in the space of one month I had 12 different pad mates. So I'm actually sleeping, eating, sleeping, and to pardon the sort of language shitting Yeah. In a room that is eight foot by five foot and the toilet is at the head of the beds. Oh. And if you're lucky, you've got, if you're lucky, you've got a curtain. Yeah. And where you are actually, where there's a table for you to sit and eat is less than a meter away from where the toilet is. So if someone's used the toilet and you are your it's, and it's then obviously tee time, it's not pleasant. Yeah. You can see my face. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, so

Yoyo: 34:17

to your point earlier you said that you didn't feel that prison really did anything to reform you. It's quite significant. That, and what you've just relayed as your lived experience in prison is quite significant. What's the solution? Because I don't think anybody thinks it should be a jolly ride, but it seems like. Across the world, it's not working. And I remember my uncle saying to me once I told him that I had to bring in this guy for theft, shoplifting. It was quite early on in my career, and he had 85 previous convictions for theft. And my uncle said, well, if this was Dubai, he wouldn't have, he would've just done that the one time. I'm like, oh no. Have you seen how many people there are with just one hand in Dubai? So, clearly, yes. Even the thought of having your risk of being amputated at the risk isn't a deterrent to stop people committing crime, poverty is a clear indicator in committ requirements survival. And to a degree, the origins of your story are about survival, the survival of your business. But what's what's the answer in relation to prison reform,

Scott: 35:24

Scott? Yeah. Well, the thing is, Terence deterrence doesn't work at all. Because you're asking people to take into consideration something that they don't think is gonna happen for a start. So, so to have a deterrent would be to admit that you think you're gonna get caught and that you're definitely gonna be, prosecuted for it. So for me, the way in which you actually really bring around true prison reform is you treat people in prison as human beings, you take away all the negativity that they may have experienced in life. You humanize them and you give them those positive experiences so you deal with the underlying issues which caused them to offend. I was in prison for five and a half years, and other than sentence planning, no one actually ever truly asked me why I did what I did. So, you're there for that period of time and no one's actually asking. Nobody's really cares about it. When you look at Norway, which is kind of like one of the leaders in terms of prisons and all that. Now they've got problems still. They're not perfect by any stretch. They've got a crumbling infrastructure that is being renewed and it's the ones that are being renewed at work, but they work in a thing called principle of normality. So what that basically means is that everything you experience is the same as what you'd experienced outside healthcare. If you take part in education and take part in the course, then that course is actually provided by external education providers. Now in the UK they'll say, yeah, we do the same thing, but they don't because they use Milton Keens College. So if you have a certificate that's come from Milton Keens College, anyone that's employing you in employment area knows that you're been in prison.

Yoyo: 37:01

Oh really? I didn't. I live in Milton Kings. I didn't know that.

Scott: 37:04

So, yeah. So you know, no. Obviously I feel sorry for the people that do go to Milton Kings College for normal education, but they underwrite that if you have an educate like qualification from Novus, it's the same thing. So in Norway you, you'll actually get your sort of qualification as if you'd got'em at school. For the same exam boards and everything else. So there's no differentiation there. They also treat like a human being, like I've mentioned, but then they actually look at things like, to help you get through things. So their prisons officers, they're trained for two years. Our prison officers are trained for 12 weeks. When they train them in psychology, conflict management. All those different things. So when there is a situation there, they deescalate it before it becomes violent. Yeah. They looked at em. Passing on ways to the individuals on how they can deal with things differently without violence, without criminal behavior. And when you look at all those things and bring it in sort of combination, people leave prison better than they came in prison. Into prison. Yeah. People in UK go into prison and come out worse than they went into prison come out, which is a spiral of repetition. Absolutely. They'll have experienced more trauma. They'll probably got onto drugs because it's so damn rubbish and horrible. And all the things, when people say, punish them harder, well punish them harder. You're just gonna make another victim in society because all they're gonna do is come out angrier, more messed up and more damaged than they were when they went in. And that's the thing. So in order to change the kind of, the penal elements of things or the penology of it, you need to really. Invest in those individuals and actually not treat them as gone. Not treat them as something that, you don't have the time of day for, but actually invest that time. Help them help themselves, give them the skills that they need, fix the issues that they may of, things that they may have experienced such as trauma. Deal with those things at the core, and by doing that, you'll allow people to come out. Now our recidivism rates are around about 60%. That's people that have been in prison within the first year will re-offend. Oh wow. If you look at some of the best facilities in Norway, their recidivism rates are between 16 and 18%. Okay. So what they're doing is working. Yeah. Cause they've taken an approach that actually looks at the individual, looks at what the individual needs, and then actually looks to help them to help themselves. To give them the skills, to give them the opportunities. When you come outta prison, it has just gone up. But when I left prison, if I hadn't have had a family or support or whatever, they give me 46 pounds when I left prison. So I've got no job. Yeah. I've got no address. Yeah. Here's 46 pounds. I wonder why most people end up re-offending quickly.

Yoyo: 39:58

Yeah. Because that's sometimes it's not even enough for a train to get you

Scott: 40:01

home. No. Well, they will give you a travel warrant. Okay. But when you get home, where you gonna stay? Yeah. You've got

40:08

no

Yoyo: 40:08

house. So having support and infrastructure is really critical.

Scott: 40:11

Absolutely. Whereas in Norway you'll earn wages. You'll learn a proper trade if you haven't got a trade. You'll actually earn a wage almost as if you were working like, minimum wage. So much goes to the victim, which I'm all for, putting money back into the system, you cost the system, put money back in. But a large proportion of that money gets put into savings for them. So when they leave, they've got a big chunk of money. Yeah. Employers there because their kind of culture is more of a social work type culture will give people jobs. Yeah. So because of that, they're kind of like leaving with money, with jobs, with housing, cause it's all organized and hope and a future and skills and everything else. And and a lot of people stop re-offending, and it's all good. Because the plan

Yoyo: 40:57

is really, when you come out, is to live a life. That means you never go back to that kind of lived experience again. Exactly. That's not nice.

Scott: 41:05

Exactly. But if you are kind of warehoused, and that's what the UK process system is, it's warehousing. They don't put any time into you. The only people that ever get any sort of help with any sort of mental health or behavioral or developmental issues or anything like that, that they've developed over their sort of formative years are the most violent and the most dangerous physically. If you are a normal, regular offender, you don't get that. No. So, and it's just horrible to see people. And that mirror will go around when you're in a long sentence. You see the same people going out and coming back in Yeah. Constantly. And each time they look older, they look grayer. Yeah. And Yeah. And the next time they, when they don't come back, you're thinking they're probably dead. Cuz the cycle of life that they've got into, and I think that's the horribleness of it. But, nobody wants to do these things. Government doesn't wanna change it because it's not popular with voting. So when the biggest vote, when is we'll hit, come down hard on crime. Yeah. And both parties, whether you left or your right, are both the same. They're both very much along the lines of hard run crime, all these things, all the research is there, all the evidence is there to say prisons do not work, but none of them listen to it because it's not popular. And it's all about political populism.

Yoyo: 42:20

I was sur I was surprised that you said you were in Onesworth. That sounds like a high category

Scott: 42:24

prison. Well, everybody goes into a category B prison. Okay. Wow. And when you first start, and you know why? Because that's the local prisons. They're there to take murderers, they're there to take fraudsters. They're there to take people who, you know, who have got like fines that they haven't paid the fines and they've been in prison for not paying any fines. So, one of my pad mates got a first moved there. This really nice guy he was, he basically, he went to church. He had these like perfect dreadlocks. He was so softly spoken gold, like really thin rimmed glasses. You think, oh, he's such a lovely guy. What's he doing in prison? He'd basically caved his girlfriend's head in with a radiator and then decided to cut her liver out and eat it. Oh God. So I'm actually there as this fraudster. Yeah. Living with a cannibal.

Yoyo: 43:20

Has he watched entirely far too many Anthony Hopkins movies?

Scott: 43:24

In fairness, I think it was a cultural thing because she, he thought she'd actually cheated on him cuz they'd splitting up and in order to stop her soul going on to where it goes on to, if you eat part of them, then they can't then send. So it was something to do with that, which was the kind of motivation behind eating her. But even still he ate his girlfriend, well his ex-girlfriend.

Yoyo: 43:45

There's some kind of twisted logic in that type of cannibalism.

Scott: 43:48

There is. It's a bit of a strange one. You do eventually work your way through the system and you do eventually, you can work your way through to open conditions where like obviously you are in an open state where there's no walls and stuff, but when you are in a long sentence, yeah. You can't go to certain places if you've got a certain length left on your sentence. So you have to be held in higher categories. If they think like, whilst my proceeds of crime was going on, they were. Basically, I can't then move, I couldn't be moved through the estate because I was at risk of escape.

Yoyo: 44:19

Yeah.

Scott: 44:20

To marba. Well, after Marba I did go on the run in between sentences. So take us through. What are you

Yoyo: 44:28

like? Well, I don't, considering the conditions you told me about in prison, I don't blame you.

Scott: 44:34

Well, I went to I got given the first sentence, which they served me for, and what they did is they held back my main case and they didn't present that until the day that my license finished. But because they did that, I then had bad character. Right. Yeah. And this was for the big chunk. This is what was looking, I was looking, getting 12 years for, and this happened and I'm like, I ain't going back to prison. I know that I, this is the big case. I know this one's coming at me. So I'm not go, I'm not doing it. So I went on the run. So I got my Audi D eight long wheel base at the time, which is the one from the transporter. So to give you an idea Yeah. And Jason stay from style, he transporter across Europe. So I went, I dropped down into the south of France. I then went over to obviously through Monaco, Italy. Then from Italy I went over to Greece. Then from Greece I went to cost from cost. I went into Turkey, went, drove around the whole south end of Turkey to pick up the ferry to get over to Northern Cyprus. Cause I didn't know, want'em to know where I was. Obviously Northern Cyprus there was no extradition. Yeah,

Yoyo: 45:41

right.

Scott: 45:42

So you did your homework. So yeah. So I did my homework and went over and lived in Northern Cyprus for a while. And how was that? Well, it was nice. They were there watching me the whole time I was there, so Oh, really? They had offices there, so I knew them. I used to buy them drinks for a laugh and those sorts of things. But they put so much pressure on my sort of family structure and network that I agreed to go back. Now they reported in the press that they arrested me. Well, yes, I was arrested because I was wanted, but the arrest only came out the fact that I actually told them that I was surrendering. Right.

Yoyo: 46:20

Oh, what are they, like, there's no need to even do

Scott: 46:21

that. But then, because obviously Interpol almost caught at Istanbul Airport one point, but they didn't have the paperwork, so I escaped them long stories. But there's lots of different parts of this narrative, but I won't give you the whole story, otherwise this would be like a 12 part podcast or something. But tell us the plane

Yoyo: 46:37

story. That was so funny when you told

Scott: 46:39

me the plane story. Oh, yes, the plane story. Well, so obviously I'm arrested by them. They didn't have the paperwork initially to strike me, so I went to a Turkish prison and then from the Turkish prison, they took me with an armed guard, put me on a plane sat me down the guard, left the plane, and made sure that I stayed on it. Flying back to the uk. There's a couple sat next to me and I'm talking to them and I'm getting quite drunk on the plane at this point moment in time. Cause I know that I'm going away for a long time. Yeah. And the air stewards was absolutely fantastic. She just kept giving me drinks. I wasn't even paying for these drinks at this point. She just kept bringing me wine. She's like, you are really nice. I'll just like give you loads drinks. And I don't think she liked the police or whatever, I dunno why, but she just was like, fueling me. And I said to this couple, I said, oh yeah, I'm going to prison when I get back. They went, oh yeah, or how long for, so I'm looking at nine to 12 years. And they're like yeah. I said, no seriously. And they just did not believe me. And this stewards came up to me towards the sort of just before we landed and she said do you want to get off the plane first or do you wanna let the other passengers go so they can arrange basically to let them go first, or me to go first now? And I said, look there's family's here with kids and all the rest of it. Let them get off so they can carry on with their journey and all the rest of it. I'm in no rush because it's not like I'm going anywhere other than to a police cell right now. Yeah. So, let that happen. So obviously they disembarked through all the rest of it. Obviously didn't believe me. I obviously move out the way. Let'em get off and just set myself back down. Please. Come on. Armed guard kind of thing. Cause I'm under this international warrant and basically leading me in obviously pointing guns at me into the airport. But because I'd been at the airport, I had to book in at East Midlands Airport through the actual customs desk. Yeah. They basically paraded me, handcuffed to the desk, booked me in underarm, God, Ben walked me back out to the car that's on the tarmac and I just locked eyes with this couple who at this point looked completely white. I mean, literally all colored drained out their face. And you could think, you could just see them thinking. Who were we sat next to? Because there's me surrounded in these burly police officers. Were like, guns pointing at, in my direction, basically as I'm being paraded back into a car, driven off the guitar Mac. It was v p service and that it's the quickest customs queue I've ever been through. Quicker than going pri private chat and fairness. But, so yeah, it was,

Yoyo: 49:03

And I think I think I said to you at the time that, that, that couple are probably telling that story at every dinner table event that they have,

Scott: 49:10

Since Yeah, possibly. Possibly. But it's one of those things, it's a funny story, but it kind of marked the beginning of a very, long period in custody. But, it's, it's what defines you and what it's what you become from it, isn't it? At the end of the day, I suppose. So.

Yoyo: 49:25

So what encouraged you or what motivated you, I should say, to go down the academic route and was that something that you'd planned while you were in prison or were you planning other things while you were in prison?

Scott: 49:36

Okay. When I was, well, whilst I was in prison, I thought, I got to this point, I thought, I just can't keep doing this. So I wanted to train to do something different. So I trained to become a psychotherapist, which is a battle in itself because the prison refused for me to do the course. Yeah, to do psychotherapy because I said I'm learning about the brain, so I might be able to manipulate people more than I did before. I'm like, I'm in serving a long sentence because I can manipulate people anyway. I don't need psychotherapy for that. I want to help the brain. But through going through that process of actually learning to become a psychotherapist, I was actually self in administering the counseling to myself. I was actually starting to rationalize my life. I was dealing with my own trauma, my own background. I could actually see the sort of d the defects in my personality that allowed me to facilitate what I did, and I didn't like that, so I addressed it. So it was through that and it was a book by Albert Ellis called Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy, which Albert Ellis basically, along with Beck's, created cognitive behavioral therapy. But, and rational therapy still exists now and it's reemerging even more so, but it's a bit more, it's a bit different to more to the standard cognitive because it really challenges quite a regrettably the thought. It challenges what we think about ourselves, it's what we tell ourselves internally, and it makes you rationalize that and stop that negative narrative that leads to that. Sort of things that destruct your sort of your wellbeing and your self-worth and those things. So by dealing with those things, you can see things clearly as opposed to dealing with an impulse or instinct. And by doing that I started to see things differently. I saw myself, I saw society, I saw a different way for myself. Then I came out and I thought, I really wanna do more in this. And I wanted to kind of, learn more about it and understand human behavior at a much deeper level. So I decided to do a, a, a degree, a BPS accredited degree in psychology. And I did that. Now, what I found from doing my degree in psychology is that psychology is very discriminatory towards people with lived experience. Is it, I found it is they don't, it's not something as inclusive. You think they understand behavior, so therefore they're gonna be more inclusive. Well, actually I found that to be, something very much Of the wrong assumption really. So I kind of thought, okay, is it just the psychology of the genre? Is it students? And that kinda thing. And I found that there's a lot of negativity and a lot of stigma and and a lot of it's not the typical things cuz you expect someone when they know about your background, they're not gonna like you, that's fine. But people will go out their way to actually derail you because you've got cause of your lived experience. They look to almost sabotage you to a certain extent. Yeah. And that's both lecturers and students. So I was like, I don't like this and I don't understand it cause it's not what I expected it to be. So I actually did my dissertation study on the subjective attitudes of students towards the opportunities for ex-offenders. So I Good for you. So I studied the base of that and I found really quite significant findings. Yeah. Even to the point where I've presented them at an international conference and I'm presenting them later on this year. At the European society of Criminology's conference in then Florence. So, cuz it's, it was such a big thing. So I thought, I've gotta do more in criminology kind of, studies that where I can really make a difference. It's okay to understand that these attitudes exist. How do we change them? What are the experiences that are people are experiencing? But having psychology as one thing, I thought, well I need to have the criminology side, but also I want the other side of the criminal justice. Not the side that I know of. Criminal justice. I want to know the theory, I wanna know their motivations. I wanna know why they do what they do. So then I did, which I'm doing at the moment, which I'm just about to finish a master's in criminology in criminal justice. And what's your dissertation gonna be? Well, I'm actually looking at the high levels of public violence in areas of permanent recession, which happens to be skegness in Lincolnshire where I'm studying. So I'm looking at how the impacts of covid, the cost of living crisis, but also is it there a transient kind of criminal community that move in and around the area, which I know there is. And how does that then manifest into public violence? And because it's got the highest level of violence, public violence in Lincolnshire, it's a study on that. So that's what that one's on. But the study that I kind of look, when I looked at the student side, what I haven't done is I've not looked at what are the experiences of individuals that have gone through higher education. With that experience of the criminal justice system, and does that student experience that universities kind of offer or sell the offering of actually apply to people with that lived experience? Do they get the same experience? Does the the e D I, which is the equality diverse and inclusion elements of university actually apply to them? And if not, should there be an inclusionary category within university to support people with assistance from offending? Yeah, and guess what? No one's actually done this piece of research. So I'm doing a PhD, which I saw later on this year, which is actually focusing on that. So I'm gonna do a really in-depth three-year study looking at the, what universities are as an environment, what people with criminal justice experiences are, and how we can create policy, how we can create mechanisms to support them through that process of desistence from re-offending. So that is the kind of my criminology kind of, element of things.

Yoyo: 55:24

I mean, my mouth is open because I'm just floored by you, to be honest with you. Is it just built into us as humans that we have to be in some kind of self prescribed hierarchical structure, like a caste system, that it's okay, like now we can't be racist. Now we can't say things that are bigots and prejudicial and homophobic but it's okay to be mean to somebody who's a criminal or has Yes. Yeah. And it's almost like, is that a safe space just to just be

Scott: 55:55

prejudiced? Yeah, I think it is. Really. And I think, it's one of those areas because people will go, well, we don't care. They deserve what they get. Yeah. They've done what they've done. And yeah, I can understand that. I've spoken to a number of victims, that have had some horrible things happen to them, and some of their outlooks now are very refreshing and I think a lot of people can learn from them. I can understand why people would feel that way, but if you want to stop more victims, if you want to stop people from hurting people and from people from getting hurt, you have to actually take that kind of that wider look and say, actually they are a real person. They're an individual. They've made mistakes. But just because you've committed a criminal offense doesn't make you criminal. The act is criminal. Yeah. But that doesn't define you for life as a criminal. And that's the kind of shift we need to kind of create in society, because if we don't do that, Then all we're gonna do is basically put fuel onto a fire and it will just keep burning and more people are gonna get burnt from it. And it's a real, it's a difficult thing and it's difficult if you've experienced it, and I understand, people's perspectives and opinions and everyone's entitled to their thoughts, and I can understand it, and actually empathize and almost agree to certain extent. But just because someone's done something heinous, let's say, doesn't necessarily mean that we should treat them that way forever or punish them forever, and it's like, for me, cuz my sentence was so long, I forever have to declare micro conviction if I'm asked for life. Yeah. I can't even buy sparkles and bonfire night because it's got gunpowder in it. Cuz I have a firearm ban. Just silly things like you can't even be a mechanic and work with airbags because they've got gunpowder in them. Just filming stuff like that. And there's so many different things. And at one point I thought, I'm gonna earn some more money. I'm gonna look from a driving instructor. Yeah. Whilst I'm doing my sort of my studies, to fund me and all the rest of it work the hours around myself. But I can't even be a driving instructor because I can be a driving instructor if I've beaten somebody up. But because I've committed fraud, I can't be a driving instructor. So there's so many different barriers within institutions and the systems that you can't possibly understand fully or navigate and then they just present you with these obstacles on blocks constantly. So I think as a society, we have to acknowledge that there's a responsibility from all of us to work towards this problem. Now I'm not taking the justification away. I did what I did and I deserve to be punished for what I did. I'm not saying that. And that, I think there is a place for prisons most definitely. Cuz there are some very dangerous people that need to be. Kept in a situation where keeps them safe and society safe until they can get the interventions and help to stop them from doing what they're doing. And if they can't get those helps and interventions, then they need to stay there. I'm totally with that, but I then think, well actually, if you've got people there, you need to work with them and you need to stop it, because if you don't, then there's just more victims, there's more people getting hurt and you don't realize when you are offending that level of hurt that people can experience until you re, until you speak to somebody who's actually experienced that, you're like, actually, yeah, I get that now. Well, listen,

Yoyo: 59:10

what's next for you coming up? You're involved in a lot. I know you've got your PhD coming up and you, this is the sort of time of year where you're getting everything prepped and ready, but you are supporting, aren't you financial institutions to help them combat crying. Tell me what you can

Scott: 59:26

about that. Well, I can't obviously mention the companies that I'm working with at the moment. But I'm working with a number of companies that provide specialist training to the various industries, whether it be government financial institutions, et cetera. And what I'm doing is I'm creating cases for them, like training cases at the moment. So how I could actually, manipulate it, how they can investigate better, how they could prevent it. Things to look for, how they can change their procedures, their policies, their systems in order to prevent, someone like me exploiting relationships. So I very much work on the insider threat side of things. And I help them in a sense develop their materials so they're real materials that are robust, that can be used to prevent, individuals exploiting holes within the systems. So ultimately I'm using my experience of all the different areas, some that I can talk about and some obviously that we won't talk about. To basically help them to teach people so that they can stop those things being hap you know, being perpetrated against their companies and organizations.

Yoyo: 1:00:39

Yeah. Cuz all you've done really is exploit loopholes. Yes. There's huge gaps in policy, gaps

Scott: 1:00:45

in, I'm just a tax advisor.

Yoyo: 1:00:47

There's gaps in checks, gaps in sense, checking gaps in governance, risk and compliance. All you've done is exploit gaps. Absolutely. And I'm a bit similar to you in the sense of I see risk everywhere as well. I'm very risk driven and I think that's why in, in the Maine, the police have certainly, through my experience and a very apathetic approach to financial crime, certainly at regional level. Because they operated certainly when I was in the job, in a sense that, listen, they don't wanna help us. They don't wanna give us the information we need so they can take the hit. Yeah. And there was that general feeling, but there were also general feelings around women in sexual crime as well, which had no place in, in being in policing. But even then, as a young detective constable, you're kind of thinking, well, that doesn't mean to say it's right, and, but it's true. There were many barriers and lots of red tape in going down. And then if a financial crime occurred at regional or city level, if that was handed down to a DC it would usually be one that wasn't liked very much. Yeah. Because there's no way that guy or girl. He's gonna get a detection Yes. In this side of their career, because it, they take years sometimes to follow the audit trail. Well, so I'd like to think it's a bit better now than it used to be.

Scott: 1:02:06

I think in some areas it is. I think where the issue is there's this negativity in some ways from the police forces using individuals like myself because there's this kind of like arrogance. We don't need their help. But in reality, I can say openly now that they do not understand what I did, how I did it to this date. If they did, then it would've been a different picture altogether. Yeah. So if they utilized people with that specialist experience more, then they could actually prevent. These things. They could detect better. They could understand it. It's like when you have courts, now you have courts who basically prosecute, your jaws and all the rest of it, but they don't understand financial crime. They have no understanding of it. So you need to change how the justice system works. You need to have courts, which are specialists where they can actually, who understand it, who aren't, if you talk about a million pounds, they don't go a million pounds. It's like it's a million pounds. So I see a million pounds, it's just a million pounds. It's low, isn't it now? Yeah. It's, it is it's a small amount of money that is there. It's just a number. It's not something there. And in some ways you have those things that kind of feed through with the people that were investigating you. So what you need is, you need someone who can actually say, well, this is a situation. I can look at it logically. I can actually look at it without that kind of arrogance or potential ego that I'm gonna beat this person, I'm gonna do this. And actually say, this is what's been, this is what's happened. This is what you need to do. This is. What the case is. They don't do that. They miss a trick in my book from doing that. Other companies that sort of train organizations, they're onto this now. They're like, right, yes. We want lived experience because we can actually generally create value and actually help our customers, which actually creates us value within our companies. Yeah. Because we're we're, reducing, their, the, our customers risk. So I think it's been a real shift in the market for that. But I don't think policing is anywhere near where it needs to be. And I think it needs to have specialists. Even when you've got like the serious fraud squad, a lot of them don't understand half of what they're doing.

Yoyo: 1:04:19

And the threshold. I remember hearing back in the naughties that the threshold for them getting involved was at least 10 million, but I think it's even gone up now. Yeah. So if you are hovering anywhere between the one and 10 million mark, then your likelihood is no, no one's really gonna come hunting you down

Scott: 1:04:34

and that's why you always leave your schemes to drop at a million pounds because he's investigate you.

Yoyo: 1:04:41

I've spoken to people as we've crossed through a security circle, a number of different subjects, and it's definitely come up that there needs to be a sexual offenses judicial system and court system. Yeah. You've got family court for juveniles for family issues. You've got other types of courts, you've got coroner's court for example. Yes. And I think if, if there was a specialism around just having the right people in the rooms when there's no reason why you should have the exposure you have. For example, for sexual crimes in open court that you have nowadays, they should be private. Totally document documentable, recordable and private and financial crime can have its own judicial system where you've got experts, but hey, we live in a little bit of an idealistic world. I think.

Scott: 1:05:23

We do. We do. And that cost money. Cause you'd have to pay a lot of money to get those people that understand the area of things, to actually sit in a room and do that, I suppose. And at the end of the day, they work on a basis. If they get a conviction, then they get a conviction. Whether it's the right conviction or not, it's a result at the end of the day. And I think that's where things differ. I don't think there's that kind of impetus to kind of really, do what needs to be done. But then I can say that about the justice system. The justice system isn't about truth. It isn't really about justice. Yeah. It's about what we can get to prove that we're doing something, but in reality, are we actually doing what we should be doing? And I don't think they are. It's like when you read all these things, like, and especially when you see in the media, this person never showed remorse. You're not asked to show remorse. In fact, quite often you are advised by your counsel not to react or show remorse because that'll only wind the judge up. Yeah. And that'll get, the judge will give you more time. How is that justice? Yeah. If you actually show remorse that you're gonna get more time. Yeah. So it's all that kind of, it's that stage of it is that the actors in the room and, if you look at lots of cultures in terms of how they define the legal process, it's actors, they call them the actors, and you've got the prosecution, the defense, and they're acting in front. And you've got the judge with the wigs and they're acting and it's all about the showmanship to show that we're doing this thing, that we're punishing, that we're, we're con, we're make putting the bad people away and that'll make you people feel safe and great and all the rest of it. And the reality is they're just making it worse for society. They're not actually really issuing or handing out justice and there's so many injustices that get caused by these things in the pursuit of it. And yeah, I just think there needs to be real reform in terms of within the criminal justice system as a whole, within the prison system and within how media report things and how society or sort of experience to things. It's like, for example, one of the elements of my study that I did when I looked at subjective attitudes, we, what we found is if someone didn't have experience of someone being in the criminal justice system, they were really negative towards them. Yep. Someone who had a positive experience, who had actually spoken to somebody that had been in the justice system and realized they were real and a human being, and the same as them in so many ways, just with probably problems or different situations going on. They were far more accepting and far more likely to give them an opportunity. So that makes you think, what do we need to do? Do we need to educate people that people will make mistakes, but that doesn't mean that they should be that mistake for the rest of their life or to be defined by that mistake. And then if you do that, then if someone's then got a job and they'd be able to pay for themselves and they've got these things, then they're not having to go and rob somebody. and it kind of stops those things from happening. So I think there needs to be a real sort of shift in that sort of paradigm, really.

Yoyo: 1:08:14

To your point about the juries that have experience with somebody, you talked about lived experience. That can be even exploitable by defense and prosecution, legal teams as well, because they can deliberately rule out jurors Yes. If they feel they're gonna be more sensitive to somebody who's offended or more or less sensitive. So sometimes that's exploited, isn't

Scott: 1:08:35

it? Absolutely. Well, you mentioned earlier on about sexual offending. If there's a se as someone who's basically raped someone in terms of that kind of thing, then if that, if the, for example, the person that was assaulted, it'd been on a night out, then they don't want to actually put as many women onto the jury because women are actually harsher in judging other women. Yeah. So it is actually better to have a more male jury than a female, and the same thing's the same. So Yes, they can completely manipulate that. Yeah. And the system in the sense is designed in such a way that. When you have your closing arguments and the order that people give evidence and then prosecution, defense and prosecution, et cetera is designed. So the last people that you hear are the people that they want the jurors to remember. Yeah. So you can actually create a different form of bias just by the process. Yeah. there are lots of different things that they do that can seriously manipulate the process and the systems. Just the way in which they talk to people to, well police officers and sense can say something, a few choice words to some used about to do a witness statement and I can completely change the way they record the situation. Yeah,

Yoyo: 1:09:46

I know. I have some exposure to that. So, listen, before we wrap up, cuz we will need to wrap up very shortly now. Highlights low lights, Scott.

Scott: 1:09:57

Well, the highlights are that I'm obviously, home enjoying my career in academia, obviously, being with my family, that kind of thing, rebuilding my life without the same pressures, the same stress. So they're real highlights of my life. I don't have the motivations that I had before, as I had before. So yeah, so it's good to be happy. It's taken me to 45 to actually get happy, but, well, but I'm there now anyway, so getting a bit old and bit gray around the edges now. I suppose the low lights were the, was the impact that my offending had on my family. They still bear the consequences of my actions. They were punished. More so than I was. Yes, I was there. Yes, I was witnessing horrible things. But they had that punishment and then some on top. Yeah. And they had that worry about me and all of those things. So I think that was the biggest low light, of it all. I don't care the fact that I lost millions of pounds in confiscation. I don't care about all of those elements of things. The low light for me, is the fact of the impact that criminal offending has on the sort of, I'd say, like I say, the secondary victims of it.

1:11:10

Yeah.

Yoyo: 1:11:10

And that was one of the big things that sort of struck me when I first saw you speak at the We Fight Fraud event. Yes. Well, what can I say? Phenomenal story. We've run over, this is like a real bomb for issue. Thank you so much. There was just so much to ask you about and and I hope that I satisfy the curiosities of our listeners and that no mom jogging was falling over at the the description of this man eating someone's liver. We will put a sensitivity disclaimer at the very beginning. We don't wanna offend, but listen, super good stuff. Thank you, Scott, for joining us on

Scott: 1:11:48

Security Circle. Thanks for having me. Thank you.