This Man Scammed The World And Nobody Noticed

hey 42 here con men I'm sure you've noticed are whether it's a Nigerian prince promising you a king ransom or a 42 year old plumber called Brian from Scotland who's posing as a nymph called Stephanie online to sell bath water on eBay [Music] deliberately carnivas for their own gain are universally reviled or are they whilst it's true that the guts of most fraudsters are heartily hated by the masses there's an odd exception to this rule the greatest of all con men are given a free pass weirdly Humanity has decided that being bad is bad unless you're really really good at being bad and then being bad is really good think Jordan Belford or Frank Abagnale Jr these men are self-confessed Crooks but they're almost universally respected and even admired in recent years Hollywood awarded both men its highest Honor by giving them a full dicaprioing but what have I told you there was another con man with such unparalleled skill he wouldn't even throw a bone to the so-called Wolf of Wall Street he story is so utterly ridiculous that if Hollywood ever does tell it through the medium of Leonardo DiCaprio of course nobody will believe it during a career of concentrated conning that spanned more than three decades and using nothing but wit charm and more confidence than Donald Trump's eyebrows this man somehow managed to buy a famous football club take control of an investment bank and gain the exclusive rights to more than a trillion dollars of minerals along the way he fooled one of grissom's most senior spymasters hired the services of a former England Football manager and bamboozles North Korea's supreme leader this is a truly outrageous story of Russell King the despot of deception the Emperor of embezzlement the prince of pulling a fast one and perhaps the greatest con man who ever lived even as a young man there was something a little bit different about Russell King he was intelligent a smooth talker charming and ruthlessly ambitious before he'd hit 30 he'd secured the job of chairman at a publishing company called celebrity group Holdings and outwardly at least he was the epitome of success the kind of entrepreneur over-excited tick-tockers make videos about whilst posing in their dad's suit next to a rented Lamborghini King drove fast cars lived in expensive apartments and ate in the finest restaurants like a lot but away from the public eye celebrity group Holdings was in serious financial trouble as the company's chairman it was King's job to turn things around so what do you think he did release a new magazine invest in a flashy marketing campaign pay millions to a slit consultancy firm to come up with some buzzwords nope King May well have considered these options but ultimately he rejected all of them in favor of something far simpler and far more illegal you see he was a proud owner of a whole stable full of supercars and amongst them was an Aston Martin zagato worth well over a million pounds he could simply have sold the vehicle but that would have meant taking a huge hit on the depreciation instead he drove it to his mate's house parked it in his garage and calmly placed a phone call to his insurance company claiming the vehicle had been stolen yet the scam was about as sophisticated as Nicki Minaj's lyrics Aston Martin's Aunt all like common even in Posh neighborhoods after a brief investigation the insurance company found the car and uncovered several other misdemeanors committed by King and his Associates at celebrity group Holdings the company was sued and King went to prison the most auspicious of start to the career of the greatest fraudster in history but prison taught the man who would be con man king something important cheat has never Prosper no just kidding prison taught Russell that he needed to be a lot more careful when ripping people off in the future and as we're about to see that proved to be a very valuable lesson indeed King's next major con came on the island of Jersey where he and a business associate started a new company called Belgravia Financial Services Group in trademark style it wasn't long before King was living the high life he traveled the world in private jets stayed at lavish hotels and they've images from the timer to be believed ate far too much fancy food all on company expenses of course [Music] unsurprisingly this Reckless spending took its toll and pretty soon Belgravia groups finances were less healthy than a deep fried double battered chocolate dip chocolate coated Twinkie and then things got even worse when King's business partner decided to unexpectedly die from a sudden blood clot for most people the death of a colleague is a sad Affair but to Russell King it was an opportunity with nobody around to stop him he stole 670 000 pounds from the company's accounts and hightel the tough to Bahrain before anyone noticed by this point in our story Russell King is still a fairly small time Croc but that's about to change because it was in Bahrain that he came up with an idea that would put him on course to carry out a con the likes of which the world has never seen before in 2009 he returned to the UK ready to put his new scheme into action and it wasn't long before he found a likely Target an investment bank called first London King's plan was simple he claimed to be a representative of the Bahraini royal family with five billion dollars at his disposal to invest in promising businesses first London was a relatively small player at the time and millions of dollars of fresh investment was nothing to be sniffed at they sent one of their senior advisors a man called Sir John Walker to evaluate King's proposal to say that this was Russell's first real test would be a bit of an understatement Walker was a former Royal Air Force officer and one-time director and spymaster of possibly the most generic sounding organization I've ever heard defense intelligence part of the British Ministry of Defense most con men would have run a mile saved all her hair off and emigrated to Mongolia at the mere mention of his name butts as we're about to find out King was not most con men not only did he manage to gain Walker's trust his and Bull story about Bahraini billions proved so convincing that first London gave King 49 of their shares just to have a piece of it armed with nothing more than sheer hutzpah King had become the proud owner of half an investment Bank that in itself is absolutely insane but King Khan was just getting started fast forward a few months and he was living it up in the impossibly lavish Ritz Carlton Hotel in Bahrain with him with several of his associates and the delegation of senior figures from Notts County football club phase two of King's plan by a famous football team was well underway County we're in League two at the time the lowest tier of the English football league but make no mistake this is a proud and storied football club the oldest professional team in the world and the reason the mighty Juventus play in black and white stripes Juventus borrowed some old nuts County shirts back in 1903 and the rest is history in short Notts County was a woolly mammoth frozen in ice and Russell King turned up with a big dodgy flamethrower billions of Bahraini dollars yes I'm aware woolly mammoth will be absolutely football but it was a good metaphor to help pull off the scam King went to incredible Lems to ensure he and his team looked apart the Ritz Carlton is one of the fanciest hotels in the whole of Bahrain and King spared no expense whining and dining his guests he'd prepared a business plan for the club's future and PowerPoint presentations with more slides than a water park what if his associates even pretended to be a Bahraini Prince a disguise that apparently also filled the hotel's staff who treated The Imposter with all the respect they fought he deserved it was an impressive show and the Knotts County delegates were lapping it up as king knew they would the timing was also apt this was six years after Roman abramovich's billions changed Chelsea's fortunes and the year after another Middle Eastern power took over Manchester City anyone who was anyone who happened to be a historic English football club was receiving cash injections and Knott's County had been mired in financial difficulty for years so getting their own Middle Eastern money vaccine could protect them from bankruptcy [Music] still these men weren't idiots the potential sale of the club was a big deal literally and there were certain processes and procedures that needed to be followed King clearly talked a good game but the county delegates needed proof that he wasn't all Guff and no gold to your average everyday con man such a request would have been a disaster after all those Bahraini billions King kept banging on about were like Mark Zuckerberg's emotions they didn't actually exist but it turns out owning a 50 share in an investment Bank comes in pretty handy when you're a fraudster faster than you could say what a bunch of silly Bankers he produced a formal guarantee to the tune of five million pounds confirming that first London Investment Bank would underwrite the deal from that point on the not County officials were in the palm of King's chubby I mean grubby hands and considering their dire Financial straights they agreed to sell him the entire football club for the princely sum of one pound it's worth pointing out here that there are rules against convicted criminals taking over football clubs but King was always careful to mask his own involvement in the deals he was rarely the face of the operation and often acted as a mere consultant of some shady organization he'd set up so when the football league Regulators came asking questions he simply faded into the background he was so elusive that during his time at Knotts County he adopted the nickname Lord Voldemort in hindsight that probably should have been a bit of a red flag andalusive is exactly how Mr Voldemort played things after his takeover was complete his name wasn't on any of the contracts and he didn't do any interviews with the press all the same everyone at Knox County football club knew he was calling the shots and boy did Russell King call some shots within a matter of weeks he'd persuaded former England manager svengar and Eriksen to take up the role of director of football of this lowly little club which was like convincing Gordon Ramsay to manage a Burger King in Slough but King sold the Swede Vision he couldn't resist and he gave him 9 million pounds in shares in a company called Swiss commodity Holdings which was King's latest dodgy Venture so yeah that probably helped as well former Arsenal and England Defender Sol Campbell with the next big signing through the door and it seems as though Kings promised to bring Knox County back to the big time would soon be fulfilled in the meantime King Was preparing to carry out the final stage of his master plan and what's a bloody weird planet turned out to be over the years he'd somehow managed to get himself contacts in of all places North Korea by late 2009 he was ready to put those contacts to good use by buying the Mining rights to all the gold iron ore and coal in the entire country if that sounds a little random it absolutely was but once again King had chosen his Target well since North Korea has the international diplomacy skills of an Internet troll and threatens to Nuke the out of the planet every second Sunday of the month North Korea is one of the most sanctioned countries on Earth it's also one of the poorest King knew only too well that supreme leader Kim Jong-il couldn't afford to actually mine any of the trillions of dollars of valuable minerals hidden beneath his country's surface so why not sell them to King as a Job Lot for several billion dollars in November 2009 King flew to North Korea to negotiate the deal and he wasn't alone with him on the plane to Pyongyang was fengor and Ericsson and yet another fake Bahraini Prince it should be clear by now how insanely ambitious and just plain insane King actually was because if his ruse was uncovered by the North Koreans he was risking far worse than jail time and you might be wondering exactly why King bothered bringing's Fen Along on this mad Escapade but as always he had his reasons if you happen to be a student of the beautiful game all this talk of North Korea football and the late noughties might have triggered some memories cars less than a year after King Co flew to Pyongyang North Korea made only their second ever appearance at a World Cup finals the North Koreans wanted Sven to help them with their preparations for the prestigious tournament and according to the man himself they even asked to abuse his position on the FIFA football committee to help them secure an easy group King Sven and the rest of the delegation were given an audience with North Korea chairman Kim Yong Nam the most senior figure in the entire country after Kim Young Gil for obvious reasons not a whole lot is known about this meeting but by the time it concluded the Mining rights to all the gold iron ore and coal in North Korea were officially signed over to King's new company Swiss commodity holding in Europe representatives of the company were already exploring the possibility of a stock market flotation thanks to King's business in Pyongyang they were claiming assets of 1.2 trillion dollars making Swiss commodity holding one of the most valuable companies on the entire planet but it wouldn't hold that distinction for very long amongst the many things King promised the North Koreans as part of the mining deal was a ship full of Bahraini fuel whether or not that tanker ever existed is unknown what is known is that it never arrived and concerned North Korean officials started asking some very difficult questions it wasn't long before the deal had unraveled completely and King was forced to flee the country in fear of his life considering how well things have been going up to this point it's easy to forget something very important this entire mad scheme was based on literally nothing there had never been any cash only promises and there's not County soon found out promises don't pay the bills from the Caterers to the cleaners the players to the physios nobody at the club was actually getting paid it was the same story at first London the promised Bahraini investment never showed up and the company's directors were beginning to realize they'd handed over half their shares in return for the square root a all king tried to stall by claiming International banking procedures were slowing down the money coming in from Bahrain the trouble was what was he stalling for there was no money so what did the inimitable King do is his kingdom of cards came crashing down around him what he always did of course he book it off to Bahrain in fact he spent the next few years in the Middle East ripping people off in a series of cons in the publishing industry operating under various pseudonyms he seems to have made a fair bit of money too though nothing on the scale of his nuts County and North Korea Shenanigans but this time retreating to deepest darkest Bahrain didn't allow King to drop off the radar entirely he'd left nuts County in financial ruin and first London Investment Bank in administration a lot of people were unsurprisingly pretty damn cross in 2018 the authorities finally caught up with him and Russell King con man extraordinaire was brought to Justice [Music] so just how much jail time do you get for 30 years of deception and Untold millions of dollars in Damages decades centuries Millennia actually King was sentenced to just six years behind bars and he only served three of them what's even more galling is that about half of the time coincided with the covid pandemic meaning King was in prison when half the world was in lockdown anyway at the start of this video I said that the very best con men are respected and often admired but I don't think that's the case of Russell King at least not in the UK you just don't with football over here but it's hard to deny he did some pretty incredible things in his chosen field of ruining people's lives nobody knows for sure just how meticulously planned his grand scheme really was first he conned the bank which allowed him to fool a football club which enabled him to hire Sven who helped him close the deal with North Korea it was almost too perfect it may just be that King was a very ballsy chancer who took advantage of any opportunity that came his way but if he truly did see all of that coming he really is the greatest con man who ever lived [Applause] thanks for watching

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 944,681

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Id: hK1aJhgHkaI

Length: 18min 56sec (1136 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 31 2023