Sports Entrepreneur Jailed For Olympic-Sized Lies

A notorious con man - who told a gold medalist Olympic-sized lies - was jailed for three years today for cashing in on the 2012 dreams of young athletes and their parents.

Fraudster Mark Cas, 47, signed-up sprinter Mark Lewis-Francis, 29, - who clinched gold in the 4x100m relay at the 2004 Athens games - with outlandish promises of sponsorship deals totalling £35m lined up.

Using the athlete's name, plus Heptathlete and TV Gladiator star Lucy Boggis, 20, who he also signed to Global sponsorship Group Ltd. Cas pocketed £13,000 in membership fees.

"You decided you needed big names to reel in smaller fish," Judge Nicholas Ainley told Cas (pictured) at Croydon Crown Court. "This was a very nasty fraud.

"You decided this business was not going to make enough money for your greedy purposes so you swindled people. You are addicted to swindling people, you have been doing it all your adult life."

Global Sponsorship Group Ltd. promised lucrative sponsorship deals with FTSE 100 companies including Audi, Virgin and Vodafone in return for a £500 membership fee.

In reality the company was penniless and set-up by Cas, who lived in a bail hostel in West Brook Road, Thornton Heath, shortly after his prison release for another fraud.

Lewis-Francis agreed a £144,000 three-year contract, but dumped Cas when his first two cheques bounced and Boggis agreed an eight-year deal worth over £456,000.

Nottingham-born Reigning European and Commonwealth 110m hurdles champion Andy Turner, 30, from Hucknall, agreed a £132,000 three-year contract; Sprinter Abi Oyepitan, 31, a Commonwealth bronze medalist, agreed a £86,000 three-year deal and former national long jump champion Gary Wilson, 25, penned a £72,000 three-year agreement.

Cas was convicted of falsely representing to Lewis-Francis and Boggis that Global Sponsorship Group Ltd. would pay those sponsorship contracts, cover medical bills and provide an Audi car.

He was cleared of a similar charge in relation to Turner, Oyepitan and Wilson.

"He was formulating a bogus scam whereby athletes would be conned into parting with their money," prosecutor Mr. Mark Paltenghi told the jurors. "The scam was brought about by him trying to climb on the London Olympics bandwagon.

"The defendant identified there was money to be made in the corporate world of sponsorship amongst British athletes because there was a lot of them that needed support.

"He devised a half-way house, in his own words, a match-making service for a fee," added Mr. Paltenghi.

"His business purported to provide a lifeline for athletes who needed funding and for a fee provide companies that were willing to provide it.

"It all looked very attractive, very profitable. The answer to the prayers of many athletes.

"This scheme was never intended to be genuine, it was utterly bogus and dishonest from the outset, dreamt up as a plausible enterprise.

"The defendant did not have a thirty-five million pound portfolio. There were no corporate sponsors. He did not have a single penny of funding available at all."

The court was told Cas used the five "Ambassador" athletes to woo younger promising athletes, with their parents often paying the membership fee to secure lucrative sponsorship.

He pleaded guilty to seven specimen fraud counts in relation to those victims.

Cas - who has a string of convictions under his old name Castley - has previously served five separate prison sentences for deception.

He was jailed for three years and eight months for duping the people of Tewkesbury and Stevenage in a "get-rich-quick" scam and used fake cheques to fund his lavish wedding at 500 year-old Thornbury Castle, Gloucestershire and finance helicopter rides to Ascot racecourse.

He previously received four-and-a-half years for a Hampshire scam, which netted him hundreds of thousands of pounds, after victims - including a top barrister - invested in a bogus surveillance equipment deal.

Cas even posed as a multi-millionaire on internet dating site sugardaddie.com, bedding film director Michael Winner's PA, the night before they viewed a £3.4m Essex mansion he was 'buying'.