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The 13-Year-Old Con Man Who Built a Citywide Fraud Empire · True Nightmare Stories

0:03
Speaker 1: He was 13 years old. He was running a company
0:06
Speaker 1: with offices in central London, a staff he paid in promises,
0:10
Speaker 1: and a client list that stretched across the city. By
0:13
Speaker 1: the time anyone thought to look closely, he had already
0:16
Speaker 1: moved on. There is something in this case that stopped
0:19
Speaker 1: me cold when I first came across it. Not the
0:22
Speaker 1: scale of the fraud, but the age at which it began.
0:25
Speaker 1: In July of 2004, a boy named James Blake Cameron
0:29
Speaker 1: sat in his grandmother's house in West London and built
0:32
Speaker 1: a website. He was 13. The site sold plasma televisions.
0:37
Speaker 1: Orders came in. Money arrived in the form of checks
0:40
Speaker 1: and postal orders. Tens of thousands of pounds flowing into
0:44
Speaker 1: several bank accounts he had opened himself. Most of the
0:46
Speaker 1: televisions never arrived. The customers waited. James moved on to
0:51
Speaker 1: the next thing. He did not look like a criminal.
0:53
Speaker 1: He looked like a child. Because he was one. And
0:57
Speaker 1: that detail, the gap between what he appeared to be
1:00
Speaker 1: and what he was actually doing, is the engine of
1:03
Speaker 1: everything that follows. James Blake Cameron was born in 1990
1:06
Speaker 1: in London. For the first 11 years of his life,
1:10
Speaker 1: he lived with his mother. His father was never part
1:13
Speaker 1: of the picture. When his mother died, James was 11
1:16
Speaker 1: years old. He inherited approximately 16,000 pounds. What he did
1:20
Speaker 1: with part of that money is the first sign of
1:22
Speaker 1: something unusual. He spent it on books, criminology, business. He
1:28
Speaker 1: was a child who had just lost the only parent
1:30
Speaker 1: he had ever known. and he spent his inheritance studying
1:33
Speaker 1: how systems work and how they fail. He went to
1:36
Speaker 1: live with his grandmother in West London. The house was ordinary.
1:39
Speaker 1: The neighborhood was ordinary. Nothing about the external circumstances suggested
1:44
Speaker 1: what was quietly forming inside a boy with too much grief,
1:48
Speaker 1: and too many books, and no one watching closely enough.
1:51
Speaker 1: By the summer of 2004, the website was live. He
1:55
Speaker 1: accepted orders for plasma televisions, opened multiple bank accounts, and
1:59
Speaker 1: collected money from strangers who had no reason to doubt him.
2:02
Speaker 1: He was operating from a residential address. He was 13.
2:06
Speaker 1: The gap between the child anyone would have seen and
2:09
Speaker 1: the operation he was running is a gap that nothing
2:12
Speaker 1: rational can fully close. What happened next made it stranger.
2:16
Speaker 1: Between July and October of 2004, Cameron did not slow down.
2:20
Speaker 1: He rented office space in London on credit. He hired staff.
2:24
Speaker 1: He gave them titles and responsibilities and the impression of
2:27
Speaker 1: legitimate employment. He owed his first landlord approximately 8,000 pounds
2:32
Speaker 1: by the time he disappeared without paying. The staff never
2:35
Speaker 1: received wages, the offices were vacated, and James moved somewhere
2:39
Speaker 1: new and began again. His declared role model was Frank
2:43
Speaker 1: Abagmail Jr., the conman whose story became the film Catch
2:47
Speaker 1: Me If You Can. Cameron told people around him that
2:50
Speaker 1: he felt like that character, not with embarrassment, with something
2:53
Speaker 1: closer to recognition. In January of 2005, police arrested him
2:58
Speaker 1: for the television fraud. He was released under investigation. He
3:01
Speaker 1: walked out and kept going. Within weeks of that arrest,
3:04
Speaker 1: he was running two online stationery firms. He placed advertisements
3:09
Speaker 1: for Dyson vacuum cleaners in national newspapers, a campaign that
3:13
Speaker 1: cost approximately £ 20, 000 in December alone. He visited an airfield
3:18
Speaker 1: in Northamptonshire with a woman he employed as his secretary.
3:21
Speaker 1: and he spent an afternoon inspecting private jets as a
3:24
Speaker 1: prospective buyer. He was 14 years old. In March of 2005,
3:30
Speaker 1: he opened a new chauffeur account under the name Gemma,
3:33
Speaker 1: a female alias, and spent £ 4, 000. Four months later, in
3:37
Speaker 1: July of 2005, he sat across a table from a
3:41
Speaker 1: woman named Emily Nash and offered her a job. Nash
3:44
Speaker 1: was an undercover journalist for the Daily Mirror. She had
3:47
Speaker 1: been sent to interview him. She arrived not knowing what
3:51
Speaker 1: she would find. Cameron arrived not knowing who she was.
3:54
Speaker 1: Two people performing roles neither had disclosed, sitting in the
3:58
Speaker 1: same room, each believing they had the advantage. The Mercedes
4:01
Speaker 1: that brought her there was dark blue. The business card
4:04
Speaker 1: he handed her was embossed. The salary he offered, 32,000
4:08
Speaker 1: pounds per year, was specific enough to feel real. She
4:12
Speaker 1: left with the card. He left with the impression that
4:15
Speaker 1: his empire was still intact. Neither of them was entirely right.
4:19
Speaker 1: The arrest in January 2005 should have been the end
4:22
Speaker 1: of it. That is what everyone assumed. A 13-year-old boy,
4:26
Speaker 1: caught running a fake television business from his grandmother's spare room,
4:30
Speaker 1: released under investigation while the police built their case. The
4:33
Speaker 1: logical conclusion was obvious. The scheme collapses. The boy stops.
4:37
Speaker 1: The system handles it. Cameron did not stop. Within weeks
4:41
Speaker 1: of his arrest, he had launched two new online stationery firms.
4:45
Speaker 1: He placed display advertisements for Dyson vacuum cleaners in national newspapers,
4:50
Speaker 1: spending roughly £ 20, 000 on print space in December alone, money
4:54
Speaker 1: he collected from customers who would never receive a single appliance.
4:58
Speaker 1: He was 14 years old and operating on a scale
5:01
Speaker 1: that most adults never attempt. The arrest had not frightened him.
5:05
Speaker 1: It had, if anything, clarified something for him. The system
5:08
Speaker 1: moved slowly, and he moved fast. That detail changes everything
5:13
Speaker 1: about what comes next. He hired a secretary, not a classmate,
5:17
Speaker 1: not a friend playing along, an actual adult employee who
5:20
Speaker 1: believed she was working for a legitimate company. He had
5:23
Speaker 1: her accompany him to an airfield in Northamptonshire, where he
5:27
Speaker 1: spent an afternoon inspecting private jets, asking questions about charter
5:31
Speaker 1: rates and maintenance schedules, performing the role of a young
5:35
Speaker 1: entrepreneur evaluating his transport options. The airfield staff had no
5:39
Speaker 1: reason to doubt him. He wore the right clothes, used
5:42
Speaker 1: the right language, and his secretary stood beside him taking notes.
5:46
Speaker 1: He was 14. In March 2005, he opened a private
5:51
Speaker 1: chauffeur account under the name Gemma, a female alias he
5:54
Speaker 1: used in email correspondence to add a layer of distance
5:58
Speaker 1: between himself and the contracts. He spent £ 4, 000 through that
6:01
Speaker 1: account in the first weeks. By June, a single-car firm
6:05
Speaker 1: had billed him £ 7, 293. By April 2006, after one firm
6:11
Speaker 1: closed his account for unpaid debts of £ 5, 543, he opened
6:16
Speaker 1: a new account with the same company under a different
6:18
Speaker 1: name and ran up £ 5, 000 more. The rational explanation at
6:22
Speaker 1: this point was still available. A disturbed adolescent, compulsive behavior,
6:27
Speaker 1: a cycle that would eventually exhaust itself Investigators were building
6:31
Speaker 1: a case. The youth justice system had protocols. These things
6:35
Speaker 1: take time. That explanation stopped working in July 2005. A
6:40
Speaker 1: woman arrived for a job interview at the offices of
6:42
Speaker 1: Worldwide Stationery. She had responded to an advertisement, then contacted
6:47
Speaker 1: by email, and was now sitting across from a 15-year-old
6:50
Speaker 1: boy in a well-cut suit who offered her a position
6:53
Speaker 1: paying £ 32, 000 a year. He had arranged for a dark
6:56
Speaker 1: blue Mercedes to collect her, He presented an embossed business card.
7:00
Speaker 1: He spoke with the fluency and confidence of someone who
7:03
Speaker 1: had done this many times. Because he had. Her name
7:06
Speaker 1: was Emily Nash. She was an undercover journalist for the
7:09
Speaker 1: Daily Mirror. She had not gone there to expose him specifically.
7:14
Speaker 1: She had gone because the job offers seemed too clean,
7:16
Speaker 1: too professional, too perfectional, too perfectly assembled. She sat across
7:21
Speaker 1: from him and let him conduct the interview. And she
7:24
Speaker 1: recorded everything. Two imposters. One rune. Neither one showing their hand,
7:30
Speaker 1: Nash left with her story. Cameron left believing he had
7:33
Speaker 1: hired an excellent candidate. The encounter only became symmetrical later,
7:37
Speaker 1: when Nash's investigation connected with a tip from a woman
7:40
Speaker 1: who had actually worked for Cameron for three weeks, been
7:42
Speaker 1: promised £ 2, 000, never paid, and had been warned by police
7:47
Speaker 1: that her employer was under active investigation. That employee had
7:51
Speaker 1: called Nash directly, and Nash already had the interview on tape.
7:55
Speaker 1: What the recording captured was not desperation or mania. It
7:58
Speaker 1: was craft. Cameron's pitch to Nash was structured, unhurried, and specific.
8:04
Speaker 1: He knew the salary range for that type of role.
8:07
Speaker 1: He knew what a legitimate job offer sounded like. He
8:10
Speaker 1: had studied it. He had spent part of his inheritance
8:13
Speaker 1: on criminology books. He had been reading about con artists
8:16
Speaker 1: and investigators since he was 11. Frank Abagnale Jr. was
8:20
Speaker 1: not just a film he had watched. Cameron told friends
8:23
Speaker 1: openly that he felt like the character from Catch Me
8:25
Speaker 1: If You Can. He was not hiding the comparison. He
8:28
Speaker 1: was claiming it. That admission does not make him sympathetic.
8:32
Speaker 1: It makes him something harder to categorize. The moment Nico
8:35
Speaker 1: Williamson chose to confront Cameron directly, he believed he had
8:39
Speaker 1: the situation under control. Williamson owned Climate Cars, a private
8:43
Speaker 1: hire company in London, between July and August 2008. Cameron
8:48
Speaker 1: had been running up charges, individual rides, account billings, accumulated
8:53
Speaker 1: debt that by September had passed 4,000 pounds. One day
8:57
Speaker 1: alone produced 280. One pounds in charges. Williamson had done
9:02
Speaker 1: the accounting. He knew what he was looking at. He
9:05
Speaker 1: had Cameron brought to him. Cameron arrived, settled into the
9:08
Speaker 1: back seat, and unwrapped a lollipop. He placed it in
9:12
Speaker 1: his mouth and explained, with complete composure, that the invoices
9:16
Speaker 1: had not yet reached their due date. He was not aggressive.
9:19
Speaker 1: He was not flustered. He was not flustered. He sat there,
9:23
Speaker 1: 17 years old, lollipop in hand, and managed the conversation
9:27
Speaker 1: the way someone manages a minor administrative inconvenience, Williamson. A
9:32
Speaker 1: grown man who ran a business found himself in the
9:35
Speaker 1: position of having to argue with a teenager about whether
9:37
Speaker 1: invoices that everyone in the car knew would never be
9:40
Speaker 1: paid had technically come due. That image, the lollipop, the backseat,
9:45
Speaker 1: the absolute stillness, is the one that stays. By September 2008,
9:49
Speaker 1: two taxi firms had filed complaints. A hackney company reported
9:54
Speaker 1: a debt of £ 4, 582 for the period July through August.
9:56
Speaker 1: A Harrow company reported £ 21, 000. Cameron had also launched a
10:03
Speaker 1: lingerie website, Finest Lingery Online, for which he had contracted photographers, models,
10:09
Speaker 1: makeup artists and studios. None of them were paid. A
10:12
Speaker 1: modelling agency lost approximately £ 10, 000. A photographer lost £ 8, 500. She
10:19
Speaker 1: received an email from a company called Urban Fashion informing
10:22
Speaker 1: her that it had entered voluntary liquidation. The email was signed.
10:27
Speaker 1: She had no reason to know by a fiction. When
10:29
Speaker 1: she tried to trace Urban Fashion, it dissolved in her hands.
10:33
Speaker 1: Cameron had also at some point during this period threatened
10:37
Speaker 1: at least one person who attempted to confront him more
10:39
Speaker 1: aggressively than Williamson had. The threat was not physical. It
10:43
Speaker 1: was a warning. Any attempt to force the issue would
10:46
Speaker 1: constitute interference. He was a minor. He knew exactly what
10:50
Speaker 1: that meant legally, and he used it. The phrase he
10:53
Speaker 1: reportedly used to multiple victims, you can't touch me, I'm
10:58
Speaker 1: under 18, was not bravado. It was a legal argument
11:01
Speaker 1: delivered by someone who had done the research. The system
11:04
Speaker 1: designed to protect children was being operated by one as
11:08
Speaker 1: a shield. He had been to London Fashion Week. He
11:11
Speaker 1: was spending £ 150 a night on taxis, attending industry events,
11:16
Speaker 1: performing the life of a young entrepreneur in the creative sector.
11:19
Speaker 1: He was 17. His juvenile record at this point was
11:23
Speaker 1: already substantial. But juvenile records are sealed. Every new victim
11:27
Speaker 1: met someone with no visible history. Every new firm that
11:30
Speaker 1: took his account had no reason to check further than
11:33
Speaker 1: a confident voice and a professional manner. His second arrest
11:37
Speaker 1: came in 2008. His first adult court appearance came in
11:40
Speaker 1: October 2009 at Southwark Crown Court when he turned 18.
11:45
Speaker 1: The judge handed him 50 weeks, suspended. He walked out.
11:49
Speaker 1: In March 2010, he appeared again. Eight counts of fraud
11:53
Speaker 1: by false representation. One count of obtaining property by deception.
11:57
Speaker 1: One count of obtaining services dishonestly. Total value, £ 82, 000. The
12:03
Speaker 1: judge noted that Cameron had not re-offended in the five
12:06
Speaker 1: months since his previous hearing. Fifty weeks. Suspended again. Cameron
12:11
Speaker 1: walked out of Southwark Crown Court and told reporters he
12:14
Speaker 1: had not expected that outcome. He said it like a
12:17
Speaker 1: man who had just gotten lucky. The record suggests he
12:19
Speaker 1: had expected it all along. There is a version of
12:22
Speaker 1: this story where James Blake Cameron is explained by the
12:25
Speaker 1: psychology of grief. A child loses his mother at 11.
12:29
Speaker 1: He inherits 16,000 pounds and no one to guide what
12:33
Speaker 1: it means. He fills the absence with structure, offices... employees,
12:38
Speaker 1: business cards, because structure is the closest thing to stability
12:41
Speaker 1: he can construct. The fraud is displacement. The performance is protection.
12:46
Speaker 1: That version is coherent, and it is probably partially true.
12:50
Speaker 1: It does not account for the lollipop. It does not
12:53
Speaker 1: account for the fact that after his 2007 juvenile sentence,
12:56
Speaker 1: six months in a youth custody center, six months of
12:59
Speaker 1: community service, explicit prohibitions on using taxis and selling online,
13:05
Speaker 1: He returned to exactly those activities within weeks. The restrictions
13:09
Speaker 1: were not ambiguous. He simply did not observe them. When
13:12
Speaker 1: he visited strip clubs and attended Fashion Week at 17
13:15
Speaker 1: while under a supervision order, it was not impulsive. He
13:19
Speaker 1: had calculated that the cost of those choices was manageable.
13:22
Speaker 1: He was right. The deeper question is not why Cameron
13:25
Speaker 1: ran cons. The deeper question is why the system's response
13:29
Speaker 1: is arrest, release, sentence, suspension, Second sentence, second suspension, functioned
13:36
Speaker 1: as data points in his model rather than as deterrence.
13:39
Speaker 1: He was not undeterred because he was reckless. He was
13:42
Speaker 1: undeterred because each encounter with the system confirmed the same thing.
13:46
Speaker 1: The gap between what the law said and what the
13:48
Speaker 1: law did was wide enough to operate in. A photographer
13:52
Speaker 1: lost 8,500 pounds and received a liquidation notice from a
13:56
Speaker 1: company that never existed. She had no legal recourse that
14:00
Speaker 1: moved faster than Cameron did. A modeling agency lost 10,000 pounds.
14:05
Speaker 1: Nico Williamson lost 4,000. Each of them did what you
14:09
Speaker 1: are supposed to do. They reported. They documented. They waited.
14:14
Speaker 1: The process ground forward at the speed of institutions. Cameron
14:17
Speaker 1: moved at the speed of a teenager with nothing scheduled
14:20
Speaker 1: on Thursday. By the time he was named publicly, March 23rd, 2010,
14:27
Speaker 1: The day he turned 18, the police estimated his total
14:30
Speaker 1: take at approximately 250,000 pounds across his career. The two
14:34
Speaker 1: adult sentences together suspended every week of custody they imposed.
14:39
Speaker 1: He enrolled in a fashion course. No further charges have
14:42
Speaker 1: been recorded. The case leaves one question that has no
14:45
Speaker 1: clean answer, whether Cameron was a damaged child running from
14:48
Speaker 1: grief or a calculating operator who understood the architecture of
14:52
Speaker 1: consequence and found it workable Were both of those things
14:56
Speaker 1: layered inside the same person? That question is still open.
15:00
Speaker 1: What is not open is the accounting. Roughly 250,000 pounds.
15:05
Speaker 1: Two suspensions. One fashion course. The lollipop stays in the image.
15:10
Speaker 1: He was 17. Sitting in the back of a car
15:13
Speaker 1: belonging to a man he owed thousands of pounds to.
15:16
Speaker 1: And he was completely calm. Not performing calm. Calm. Whatever
15:21
Speaker 1: was happening inside James Blake Cameron in that moment. It
15:24
Speaker 1: did not look like a child who had lost his way.
15:27
Speaker 1: It looked like someone who had arrived exactly where he
15:30
Speaker 1: meant to be. In October 2009, James Blake Cameron stood
15:34
Speaker 1: in Southwark Crown Court for the first time as an
15:36
Speaker 1: adult defendant. He was 18 years old. The judge handed
15:40
Speaker 1: down 50 weeks, suspended. Five months later, Cameron was back
15:44
Speaker 1: in the same building, facing eight counts of fraud by
15:47
Speaker 1: false representation, one count of obtaining property by deception, and
15:52
Speaker 1: one count of obtaining services dishonestly. The total across those charges, 82,000 pounds.
15:58
Speaker 1: The judge noted that Cameron had not reoffended in the
16:01
Speaker 1: five months since his first appearance. He handed down another
16:05
Speaker 1: 50 weeks, suspended. Cameron walked out of the courthouse and
16:09
Speaker 1: told a reporter he had not expected that outcome. That
16:12
Speaker 1: sentence carries more weight than it first appears. He had
16:15
Speaker 1: spent six years building an empire of borrowed credibility, and
16:18
Speaker 1: the system had suspended his sentence twice. What he had
16:21
Speaker 1: not expected was mercy. The system that was designed to
16:25
Speaker 1: protect minors had shielded him through adolescence, and now, as
16:28
Speaker 1: an adult, it had shown restraint a second time. The
16:31
Speaker 1: gap he had worked inside for years had not closed.
16:34
Speaker 1: It had simply changed shape. The police estimated that across
16:37
Speaker 1: his entire operation, Cameron had moved approximately 250,000 pounds through fraud.
16:43
Speaker 1: That figure is not a judicial finding. It is an estimate.
16:47
Speaker 1: No court ever bound a number to the full scope
16:49
Speaker 1: of what he built between the ages of 13 and 17.
16:53
Speaker 1: because so much of it happened while he was legally untouchable.
16:56
Speaker 1: The anonymous employee who had worked for him for three
16:59
Speaker 1: weeks and was owed roughly £ 2, 000 when the police warned
17:03
Speaker 1: her off, she never collected that debt. Nico Williamson, the
17:07
Speaker 1: climate cars owner who confronted a teenager in the backseat
17:10
Speaker 1: calmly eating a lollipop, recovered some portion of his losses
17:13
Speaker 1: through civil action, but the record does not confirm a
17:16
Speaker 1: full return. The photographer who lost £ 8, 500 to the fictional
17:21
Speaker 1: liquidation of urban fashion The modeling agency that lost approximately 10,000 pounds.
17:26
Speaker 1: For them, the suspended sentences were not mercy. They were arithmetic.
17:31
Speaker 1: There is something specific that stays with this case after
17:34
Speaker 1: every other detail fades. Cameron told friends he felt like
17:37
Speaker 1: the boy from Catch Me If You Can. He admired
17:40
Speaker 1: Frank Abagnale. He had read the books, studied the mechanics,
17:43
Speaker 1: and then applied them at 13, with an inheritance that
17:46
Speaker 1: should have been a safety net. That inheritance came from
17:49
Speaker 1: his mother, who died when he was 11. The money
17:52
Speaker 1: she left him, roughly 16,000 pounds, went toward Plasma TV websites,
17:58
Speaker 1: office leases, stationery company accounts, and business books. It funded
18:03
Speaker 1: the first version of what he would become. Whatever she
18:06
Speaker 1: intended for those 16,000 pounds, it built the scaffolding for
18:10
Speaker 1: six years of fraud across dozens of victims. By his
18:13
Speaker 1: early 20s, according to the available record, Cameron had enrolled
18:17
Speaker 1: in a fashion course. No new charges followed. The boy
18:20
Speaker 1: who had dressed in designer suits at 14, who had
18:23
Speaker 1: printed embossed business cards, and offered a journalist a salary
18:27
Speaker 1: of £ 32, 000 a year apparently stepped off the stage he
18:30
Speaker 1: had built and into something quieter. Whether that represented genuine
18:34
Speaker 1: change or simply a pause, no record confirms. The detail
18:39
Speaker 1: that does not leave is the lollipop. Not the suspended sentences.
18:43
Speaker 1: Not the 250,000 pounds. Not even the moment when Emily
18:47
Speaker 1: Nash sat across from a 14-year-old who thought he was
18:50
Speaker 1: interviewing her while she was recording everything he said. The lollipop.
18:55
Speaker 1: Nico Williamson confronted a teenager who wrote him 4,000 pounds.
18:59
Speaker 1: And that teenager sat in the back seat, unhurried, and
19:03
Speaker 1: explained that the invoices had not yet come due. His
19:06
Speaker 1: voice was calm. His expression gave nothing away. He was
19:10
Speaker 1: 17 years old and he had been doing this for
19:12
Speaker 1: four years, and somewhere in that interval the performance had
19:15
Speaker 1: stopped being performance. It had become the only register he knew.
19:19
Speaker 1: Cameron had started at 13 with a dead mother's inheritance
19:23
Speaker 1: and a library of books about how systems work and
19:26
Speaker 1: how people trust. He had learned that confidence is a currency,
19:29
Speaker 1: that the right suit and a printed card and a
19:32
Speaker 1: dark blue Mercedes at the curb will carry a person
19:35
Speaker 1: past almost any reasonable checkpoint. He had learned this not
19:39
Speaker 1: from a mentor or a criminal network, But from reading,
19:42
Speaker 1: and from practice, and from a legal architecture that told
19:45
Speaker 1: him repeatedly that consequence was deferred, the system built to
19:49
Speaker 1: protect children had protected him. The question it leaves behind
19:52
Speaker 1: is not whether Cameron was brilliant, or broken, or both.
19:57
Speaker 1: The question is what the invoice has actually said. The
20:00
Speaker 1: ones he told Nico Williamson had not yet come due,
20:03
Speaker 1: because in every deal Cameron ever made, the invoice existed.
20:07
Speaker 1: He printed them, signed them, sent them on letterhead from
20:10
Speaker 1: companies that had no assets and no intention of paying.
20:13
Speaker 1: He just always made sure someone else was holding it
20:15
Speaker 1: when it came due. He was still holding the lollipop
20:18
Speaker 1: when Williamson walked away. This show is made by Oboe Media.