“I didn’t start my life as a criminal—I was a child prodigy on the violin and had a successful career performing worldwide. But in my mid-twenties, I developed a repetitive strain injury in my wrist, and my music career came to a sudden halt, leaving me without an income. That was the trigger for my first financial crime, which led to my first prison sentence. It was a basic, blunt fraud that the police unraveled in a matter of hours. In prison, I met more serious fraudsters and ended up forming conspiracies for future financial crimes. I was alongside individuals convicted of some of the biggest frauds ever. One of them, Achilleas Kallakis, stole £760 million from Allied Irish Bank and used it to acquire swathes of real estate in central London. Another was Giovanni Di Stefano, known on Netflix as the Devil’s Advocate, who claimed to be a solicitor and represented figures like Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi—until it turned out he had never qualified as a lawyer. So I was in prison with very committed and dishonest individuals and I sharpened my tools and went on to commit more serious offences.”