Description
Based on the hit BBC 5Live podcast series, The Trillion Dollar Conman is a tale of audacious international fraud that is stranger than fiction.
In 2009, Notts County FC were struggling to survive in League Two when they were taken over by a mysterious company supposedly backed by the Bahrain royal family. The club was promised millions of pounds worth of investment and marquee players, including Sol Campbell and Kasper Schmeichel, were signed by former England manager Sven-Goeran Eriksson, who had been appointed to take the club all the way to the Premier League.
However, within months, the dream turned into a nightmare as it transpired that the club, the players and the fans had been duped by a convicted fraudster called Russell King.
The world's oldest professional football club found itself at the centre of one of the most outlandish frauds in sporting history, which spanned the globe from Nottingham to North Korea, involving fake sheikhs, fast cars, broken promises and a trail of destruction.
About the Author
Ben Robinson is an investigative journalist at the BBC where he's a producer on the Radio 4 documentary series File on 4. He has also been series producer for numerous podcasts including Gangster: The Story of Viv Graham, Sport's Strangest Crimes: The Trillion Dollar Conman and Brixton: Flames on the Frontline. He was previously a reporter at the Sunday Post and Lancashire Post.
Reviews
This scrupulously researched and sharply written book reads like a mash-up of Ted Lasso and Billion Dollar Whale. Journalist Ben Robinson tells the wild story of how his beloved local football club was dazzled, dominated and ultimately defrauded by a cast of shady characters, stretching from the sandy shores of Jersey to the concrete dystopia of North Korea.
Generally, I have zero interest in football, but this book had me gasping and - finally - cheering from the sidelines.
Ben has left no stone unturned, no question left unasked, and what is left is a story so dramatic, and at times so ludicrous, that you'll cancel your plans to finish it. * Alice Levine *
Robinson skilfully untangles a global web of corruption from Pyongyang to Nottingham, using masterful investigative techniques and lashings of wry humour. This is pure Theatre of the Absurd. From the golden inner sanctums of Arab Sheikhs, via palm-fringed secrecy jurisdictions and glamourous car racing circuits, Robinson takes us on a barely believable journey to a lowly English football club where the monster fraud finally begins to unravel.
You don't have to be interested in football or, indeed corruption, to read this book, you just need to love good writing.
Book Information
ISBN 9781837731428
Author Ben Robinson
Format Hardback
Page Count 288
Imprint Icon Books
Publisher Icon Books
