London man sentenced after staging fake £154m takeover bid forged with ChatGPT

A London man was given a suspended prison sentence Tuesday after Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority said he staged a fake 154 million-pound ($194 million) takeover bid for Touchstone Exploration Inc., using false identities and documents forged with ChatGPT in an attempt to push up the oil and gas company’s share price and profit from his holding.

The FCA said Christopher Woolcott, of Greenwich, southeast London, was sentenced on Nov. 10 at Southwark Crown Court. Woolcott had pleaded guilty on Sept. 10 at Westminster Magistrates’ Court to one count of fraud by false representation and three counts of making a false instrument. The regulator said he received a two-year prison sentence, suspended for two years, and was ordered to complete 200 hours of unpaid work and pay 4,627.73 pounds in costs. He also received 14-month custodial sentences for each of the three forgery offenses, to run concurrently with the suspended sentence, the FCA said.

According to the regulator, Woolcott built a sizeable stake in Touchstone before launching the bogus bid, valuing the company at 154 million pounds. The alleged aim was straightforward: drive up the share price and sell into the rise. If the plan had worked, the FCA said, Woolcott stood to make as much as 70,000 pounds.

The FCA said Woolcott tried to make the approach appear genuine by inventing several identities, creating forged takeover documents “using Chat GPT,” and meeting Touchstone’s chief executive at a central London hotel under a false name. Touchstone ultimately determined that the bid was not legitimate, according to the regulator. The company, which is listed on London’s AIM market and the Toronto Stock Exchange, was not under investigation in connection with the case, the FCA said.

Investigators pieced together the case through transaction reporting data, phone records, receipts, CCTV footage and seized evidence, the regulator said. Among the links cited by the FCA, three phone numbers supposedly used by different individuals were traced to the same handset. A parking payment placed Woolcott’s car near a Ryman stationery store from which forged documents were sent, and searches of his home and workplace recovered the phone linked to the fabricated identities. Judge Karu described the operation as deliberate, sophisticated and planned, involving four false identities and forged documents, according to the FCA.

“Mr Woolcott's fake takeover bid was a calculated attempt to profit by manipulating the market. Our investigators followed an extensive evidence trail, exposed the fraud and identified the person behind the ruse. Anyone tempted to manipulate our markets should know that we are fully committed to identifying, investigating and taking action against those who seek to break the law,” Therese Chambers, the FCA’s executive director of enforcement and market oversight, said in a statement.

The case offers a concrete example of generative artificial intelligence being used in an attempted market-manipulation scheme, with the FCA explicitly saying the forged paperwork was created with ChatGPT. The regulator opened its criminal investigation in March 2025 and has said tackling market abuse and financial crime is a priority under its five-year strategy.