Former Premier League footballer Richard Rufus has been jailed for running a £15m foreign currency exchange Ponzi scheme.
The London-born 48-year-old was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison at Southwark Crown Court today.
Rufus, who played 99 times in the Premier League for Charlton Athletic, tricked friends and family into giving him money to invest in a scheme which he billed as low risk and high reward.
But his trading was heavily loss-making and he returned only £7.6m of the £15m he received, and used hundreds of thousands of pounds to fund his own lifestyle.
Rufus claimed he was an experienced foreign exchange broker but was in fact running a pyramid scheme, using his victims’ money to reimburse others who had paid in.
As a result of the fraud – which ran from May 2007 to the end of 2010 – relationships and loyalties between friends had been shattered, with many suffering huge financial and mental health difficulties, City of London Police said.
Rufus twice helped Charlton earn promotion to the Premier League before injury cut short his career at 29. He was later inducted into the club’s hall of fame.
Analysis of his finances showed Rufus…
