May 3, 2023
Richard Rufus was part of both Charlton Athletic teams that earned promotion to the Premier League during the Alan Curbishley era, playing in the 1998 Football League First Division play-off final against Sunderland that Charlton won on penalties. Ten years after being inducted into Charlton's Hall of Fame in 2013, he was convicted for fraud. He was able to convince friends, family members and associates to invest with him by claiming he was getting 60% in returns. One victim testified that he was told by Rufus that he only traded 5% of the capital investment, which meant 95% would have been retained safely - reducing the risk of incurring large losses. This made it seem like an incredibly safe, profitable investment.
In this episode, we discuss how easy it is to get duped into a bad investment, especially when the bad investor is a former star athlete.
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