Former Premier League footballer jailed for seven years over £15m Ponzi scheme

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 spent some £300,000 on his own lifestyle, including payments for travel, car finance, restaurants and shopping.

Among the lies he told was that he did not need a licence from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) as there was an exemption that permitted him to trade on behalf of friends and family.

Rufus was found guilty of four counts of fraud by false representation, money laundering and one count of carrying out a regulated activity without authorisation, following a four-week trial, police said.

Detective Constable Claire Sandford-Day, from the fraud operations team at the City of London Police, said Rufus “(made) it appear that he was leading a life of wealth as a result of his former career and investments”.

“Rufus deliberately deceived those who were close to him and those who trusted him to scam them out of substantial sums of money,” she said.