Based on the hit BBC 5Live podcast series, The Trillion Dollar Conman is an audacious tale of an international fraud that is stranger than fiction.
In 2009, Notts County FC were on the brink of bankruptcy when they were taken over by a mysterious company supposedly backed by the Bahraini royal family. The club was promised millions of pounds worth of investment and a list of marquee players, including Sol Campbell and Kasper Schmeichel were signed, in a recruitment drive led by former England manager Sven-Göran Eriksson, who was appointed to take the club all the way to the Premier League.
However, within weeks, as the bills began to pile up, the dream came tumbling down as it transpired that the club, the players and the fans had been tricked 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 and world history, which spanned the globe from Nottingham to North Korea, involving fake sheikhs, fast cars, broken promises and a trail of destruction.
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.
