Ex-Premier League star jailed for £15m fraud of friends and family to fund luxury footballer lifestyle
12 January 2023, 12:38 | Updated: 12 January 2023, 17:51
An ex-Premier League star has been jailed for seven and a half years for defrauding up to 100 friends, family members and associates out of £15 million.
Richard Rufus, who spent his entire career at Charlton Athletic, was found guilty of fraud, money laundering, and carrying out a regulated activity without permission.
The ex-Premier League player told his victims he was a successful foreign exchange trader and convinced them to invest in his 'low-risk' scheme, promising a 60 per cent return.
The prosecution team found that Rufus, 47, used £15 million to pay back his investors in a pyramid-style scheme, which saw him use funds from new investors to pay back returns to older ones.
Richard Rufus arrives at Southwark Crown Court
He also falsely claimed to have made millions of pounds for a church, as well as for fellow ex-footballers.
Rufus, who retired after 11 years in the game, committed fraud to maintain a lifestyle of a professional footballer.
Despite retiring in 2004 due to a knee injury, Rufus continued to live in a luxury five-bed house, drive a Bentley and wear a Rolex.
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Roger Makanjuola of the CPS said: “Rufus acted in a selfish manner without any concern for his victims.
"He took advantage of his status as a professional athlete, a respected church member and he used the goodwill of his family and friends to scam them and associates out of millions of pounds by falsely claiming he was able to offer a low-risk investment in the Foreign Exchange Market.
“He claimed that he had been successful with his investment strategies previously, but the investments were fraught with risk and he lost his victims’ much needed money to the amount of £15million.
“While making these huge losses he put approximately £2million into his personal accounts, allegedly for the purposes of investment but this was never transferred over to his trading account.
“We now commence confiscation proceedings to seek to recover his ill-gotten gains”
Detective Constable Claire Sandford-Day, from the fraud operations team at the City of London Police, added :“Rufus deliberately deceived those who were close to him and those who trusted him and scammed them out of substantial sums of money.
“He used his status as a former footballer to make it appear that he was leading a life of wealth as a result of his former career and investments, when the reality was, he was not making profits from his trading activities and was using the money from his victims to pay for his lifestyle.”
