Jailed conman Mark Acklom, who was due to be released from prison next Friday, has agreed to be extradited to Spain within 10 days in order to complete an unfinished sentence in the country.

The 48-year-old, who was to be freed from jail after serving less than half of his five-year sentence in the UK, was transported from Erlestoke Prison in Wiltshire and was arrested on arrival at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Thursday.

Stating his name and date of birth in the dock, the serial fraudster – wearing black glasses, a face mask and a grey jumper – signed a legal document ordering him to be extradited to Spain within 10 days to serve an 18 month sentence.

He had initially refused to leave his cell for the extradition bid.

He is wanted by Spanish authorities after he fled to Switzerland during a temporary release during a three-year sentence for defrauding two brothers, whom he conned into paying him deposits on flats he claimed to own in London.

Acklom will have served barely a third of his five-year and eight-month sentence in the UK for tricking his former lover, Carolyn Woods, into giving him her life savings of almost £1m.

He vanished with Ms Woods’s money in 2013 and fled abroad, first to Spain, then Italy, then Spain again, where he was jailed, then Switzerland where Sky News tracked him down.

His arrest and extradition to the UK in 2019 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.

He took his friends 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 Acklom has been jailed five times for deception in Spain, once in the UK for forging medical prescriptions and more recently in Switzerland for fraud.

He will remain in custody before being taken to Spain.

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