Former Wales international jailed for role in £5m football academy scam

A former Wales international who took part in a £5m football academy fraud involving apprenticeships for stars of the future has been  jailed for six years.

Mark Aizlewood, 58, took payments from further education colleges in his role as a director of Luis Michael Training Ltd (LMT).

LMT raked in cash, purportedly by providing young people with football-based apprenticeships at 80 different clubs, until it ceased trading in 2011.

Former Cardiff City and Middlesbrough striker Paul Sugrue, 57, was another LMT director who acted as a recruiter.

He was jailed for seven years while co-directors, Christopher Martin, 53, and Keith Williams, 45, were jailed for five years and three months and four years respectively.

Martin and Williams submitted false accounts, padding out the company’s trading history to help secure lucrative partnership agreements with the colleges.

The colleges then claimed the funds back from the public purse for every apprentice enrolled.

Southwark Crown Court heard that many of those ‘apprentices’ were actually ‘ghost learners’, while others had no idea ‘their names were being used to claim public funding, or people were getting qualifications in their name’.

Jack Harper, 30, was employed as a recruiter for the company and was found guilty of attempting to defraud a further education college through his company FootballQualifications.com (FQ.com).

Martin and Steven Gooding, 53, had admitted their roles in the scheme before the trial began.

Harper was given 18 months and Gooding was jailed for 20 months.

Sentencing the six men, Judge David Tomlinson said that, while the money was claimed from Learning Skills Council, ‘in reality, the taxpaying community’ had borne the cost of the fraud.

He said that Aizlewood, Sugrue and Williams’ assertions of innocence and having been ‘sinned against’ had ‘reached staggering proportions’.

But he said ‘the greater harm done here relates to the way eye-watering sums of government money’ were routed through colleges for personal gain.

He added: ‘This was quite simply shameful exploitation.’

The scam, spanning between 2009 and 2011, came to light following a probe by the Serious Fraud Office.

Aizlewood was convicted of plotting to claim the money after a five months trial but cleared of involvement in presenting the false accounts in order to secure the partnership agreements.

Harper was also cleared of any involvement in the conspiracy to claim funds, but was found guilty of fraud and possessing articles for use in fraud in connection with FQ.com.

Timothy Godfrey, prosecuting, said: ‘Mr Aizlewood, Mr Martin, Mr Williams and Mr Sugrue were all principals and subsequently company directors of Luis Michael Training for the full duration of its activities, and that was from the end of 2008 to early 2011, as co-conspirators.’

He said that Martin, Williams and Sugrue had been convicted on count one as being ‘party to the provision of the false accounts for what they intended to be their joint benefit’.

Mr Godfrey said that, on count two – claiming the money – ‘each of the convicted conspirators brought his own skills to the fraudulent enterprise that was carried out.’

He added: ‘Mr Aizlewood brought in business, he liaised with clubs and trainers and was involved in coordinating quality assurance audit visits by college staff.’

He also acted as an ‘internal verifier for awarding bodies and he instructed work experience pupils at LMT’s offices to produce false internal assessments’.

Aizlewood had told the trial about his family problems ‘before, during and after’ the fraud between 2009 and 2011, culminating in his wife Penny’s suicide in June 2016.

He told his trial that he was focused on his family and as such ‘didn’t have any inclination’ to take part in any conspiracy.

Martin ‘liased with the colleges to secure contracts’ and worked ‘particularly closely with Keith Williams in dealing with finances and processing claims for payment from colleges and from the Learning Skills Council, later the Skills Funding Agency’.

He described Martin as ‘the front man responsible for liaising with colleges and persuading them to enter contracts’ with LMT.

Martin obtained £249,621 from LMT.

Mr Godfrey said Martin was ‘no more and no less culpable then his co-directors’ .

Williams, as finance director, was ‘responsible for overseeing the finances of LMT’ and also liaised with colleges over ‘payments and the progress of the training’

Mr Godfrey said Williams’ ‘principal role was to use organisations of which he was head of centre [LMT] to certify falsely the conclusion of NVQs’.

He added that Williams also acted as an internal and external verifier and instructed worked experience pupils at LMT’s offices to produce false internal assessments.

Gooding ‘approached a number of clubs’ including Monmouth Town and Kidderminster Harriers about working with LMT, from which he received a total of £424,808.

Mr Godfrey said the fraud’s ‘intended loss as of December 2010…was at least £7,276,245’ which represented ‘the amount due for the training said to gave been delivered as of December 2010’.

He added that ‘not all of that was paid because by then Sparsholt College had suspended payments’ before other colleges followed suit.

Mr Godfrey said the ‘total financial impact on Sparsholt College was £2,348,103.’

Examination body OCR had to ‘destroy a large number of certificates’ awarded to candidates when the conspiracy emerged, ‘although some candidates may have legitimately earned their certificates’.

‘Some candidates needed their certificates for employment of a university place,’ Mr Gregory added.

Edexcel similarly had to disqualify 669 candidates from one exam after a sample of 200 exam scripts revealed ‘identical answers’ on 55 papers.

Nigel Lambert QC, for Aizlewood, said his client’s acquittal on count one reflected his case that ‘he was not aware of the fraud in its early stages’.

He added he went into the LMT enterprise ‘with the best of intentions’.

Mr Lambert also said ‘not every learner was false and not all money was fraudulently obtained’.

He noted that Aizlewood had been sacked as manager of Carmarthen Town upon his conviction and was now a ‘ruined man’ who had ‘sunk to the very lowest of lows’.

Justin Rouse, for Martin, said his client had worked within the charity sector ‘almost all his life’, but was a ‘deluded fantasist’ who claimed to be alternatively a doctor and a rally driver.

He told the court Martin had a two-year-old child and asked the judge to consider the ‘consequences for his young family because of his incarceration’.

Judge Tomlinson told Aizlewood he ‘had the skills to run a tight ship, but it would have involved bringing more providers on board and it would have diluted your own reward’.

He said he was able to ‘impose your forceful personality’ and become a ‘self-styled quartermaster’.

He added that Aizlewood’s actions in getting Welsh-speaking schools to provide pupils to produce false initial assessments was a ‘seriously aggravating feature’.

Judge Tomlinson also said Sugrue’s breach of trust with exam board OCR was conspicuous, adding that all four LMT directors had ‘exploited and benefitted from it’.

He said the fraud had a ‘serious detrimental effect on colleges of further education’ and on qualifications which ‘either weren’t delivered or weren’t worth the paper they were written on’.

But he said ‘there was also an undermining of confidence in the commitment and ability of football clubs…to do good work in the community’.

LMT was intended to enter into partnership agreements with various further education colleges with a view to providing apprenticeships.

The colleges would then claim the money back from the Learning Skills Council, which later became the Skills Funding Agency.

The court heard literacy and numeracy tests which formed part of the enrolment process were completed by children on work experience at the LM Training offices.

Harper headed a similar bogus plot to enrol and train apprentices through FQ.com on behalf of LM Training.

He also produced bogus print-friendly bank statements showing money coming in to the firm for non-existent training schemes.

Aizlewood, of Byrn Terrace, Aberdare, was convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation and was acquitted of a second count.

He was jailed for six years.

Sugrue, of Soarel Close, St Mellons, Cardiff, and Williams, of Maes Capel, Cemaes Bay, north Wales, were each convicted of two counts of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation.

Sugrue was jailed for seven years. Williams was jailed for four years.

Harper, of Fleetwood Road, Southport, Merseyside, was convicted of fraud and possessing articles for use in fraud.

He was cleared of a further count of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation.

He was jailed for 18 months.

Martin, of Wicksletts Wood, Newbury, Berks, admitted two similar conspiracy counts and Gooding, of Bawden Close, in Bridgwater, Somerset, previously admitted one allegation of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation.

Martin was jailed for five years and three months.

Gooding was jailed for 20 months.

Confiscation proceedings against all bar Harper will take place on a date to be fixed.

ends