Former Charlton Athletic star Richard Rufus jailed for fraud after ‘living a lie at the expense of others’

A former Charlton Athletic footballer has been jailed for a £15m scam that saw him target up to 100 friends and family members.

Richard Rufus, 47, who was born in Lewisham and spent his entire playing career with the Addicks, pretended to be a successful foreign exchange trader to convince his trusting victims to invest, Southwark Crown Court heard.

He used £7m of the total £15m to pay back investors, while around £2m was used for his own purposes.

The former centre-back has been jailed for seven-and-a-half-years after being convicted of three counts of fraud and two counts of money laundering-related offences.

He will have to serve half of his sentence before being released on licence.

Rufus was found guilty at Southwark Crown Court on December 21 of four counts of fraud by false representation and money laundering.

Sentencing today at Southwark Crown Court, Judge Dafna Spiro said: “The victims of this fraud are haunted by your actions.

“The people who invested did so in good faith. They believed your spiel because they thought you were the real deal.

“You were robbing Peter to pay Paul.

“You were living a lie at the expense of others.”

The court heard how Rufus lived in a five-bedroom home on a private estate in Purley, on which he spent nearly £700,000 over five years on mortgages and loans.

He also paid £70,000 to Mercedes Benz Finance, a further £45,000 to the car company and more than £46,000 to Land Rover.

The court heard how Rufus transferred £222,468.11 to his wife, Simone Rufus, and £158,513.86 to a joint account he held with her.

The only legitimate income Rufus received was the £850-a-month rent he earned on a property in Surrey.

Prosecutor Lucy Organ said: “He scammed friends, family and associates out of millions of pounds by pretending he was able to offer a low-risk investment in the foreign exchange market.

“He claimed he had significant success with his strategy in the past.

“Mr Rufus took over £15m in total. He traded some of it, as I have said, losing vast amounts, but that wasn’t the end of the fraud.

“Of that money, about £2m he never even transferred to foreign exchange trading accounts. He used this money partly to prop up the losses that his scams were making.

“Making payments back to other investors to continue the pretence that they were making a good investment, a so-called ‘pyramid scheme’ and partly simply for his own benefit, treating the money he received from investors as his own.”

The centre-back made 288 appearances for Charlton. He made is debut in 1994,  aged 19,  and retired in 2004.

Pictured: Ex-Charlton Athletic defender Richard Rufus at Southwark Crown Court, where he was charged with fraud in October 2019 (Picture: PA)