The mother of Britain's most notorious conman Mark Acklom claims his life of crime could be the result of brain damage at birth.
Diana Acklom, 74, said: "What I'm very interested in is whether it might have been a frontal lobe injury at birth because he had a very difficult birth. It was a forceps and a suction birth. And when he was born, you know, he was bruised battered and whatever.
"I never at the time thought about it, but afterwards when I had so much difficulty with his behaviour right from the word go, I did begin to wonder whether there was something in it."
Mrs Acklom, a personal assistant now divorced from Mark's father, told the Sky documentary Conman – The Life And Crimes Of Mark Acklom: "I dismissed it for a long long time and then when he we started getting these serious problems with him I thought about it again really."
Acklom, 46, was jailed in September for duping Gloucestershire divorcee Carolyn Woods, 61, into giving him £300,000 after promising to marry her.
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She fell for his claim that he was a tax-exiled, Swiss-based banker and MI6 agent. In fact, he was living nearby her with his wife and children.
His arrest followed 30 years of fraud which began as a 16-year-old public schoolboy when he was imprisoned for stealing his father's gold credit card.
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He took his pals on trips to Europe in hired private jets, before persuading a building society to give him a £500,000 mortgage which he used to buy a London mansion.
Over the years he has been jailed five times for deception in Spain, once in the UK for forging medical prescriptions and more recently in Switzerland for fraud.
In the new film, forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes dismisses his mother's brain damage theory.
She said: "There's a common saying among scientists that genetics load the gun, but environment pulls the trigger.
"So, it seems quite clear that Mark Acklom has dark triad, psychopathic, narcissistic and Machiavellian personality traits.
"But so do a lot of people in business, media, politics, so what is it that has pulled the trigger on that predisposition?
"There will be a series of events no doubt that would have led Mark Acklom, at some point around the age of 15 and 16, retreating into a fantasy world that was better than the life he felt he was living at that time."
Acklom is serving five years and eight months in prison for swindling Carolyn Woods, but is likely to be free in less than three years.
Police are trying to locate the millions of pounds they believe he has made, but think his money may be well hidden.
Acklom told a judge during a recent Proceeds of Crime Act hearing that he had no assets. The prosecutor said he was "sceptical" of the claim and the judge said he was right to be.
His victim Carolyn Woods says in the documentary: "Right from the oRead More – Source
