LONDON 2012: Olympic con-man sports agent jailed for three years

By James Toney, Sportsbeat

MARK Cas, who swindled athletes hoping to compete at the London 2012 Olympics out of thousands of pounds, has been jailed for three years.

VICTIMS: Athletes Mark Lewis Francis and Andy Turner among those targeted by sports agent con-man Mark Cas (pictured inset)

Cas set up sports marketing agency Global Sponsorship Group in 2009 and included European Championship medallists Mark Lewis-Francis and Andy Turner among his clients.

He charged individual athletes £500 and teams £1000 for his services and promised them lucrative sponsorship contracts worth hundreds of thousands which never materialised. He was found guilty of two counts of fraud by false representation at Croydon Crown Court.

Turner and Lewis-Francis agreed deals with Cas, who was tried under his birth name Castley, worth £132,00 and £144,000 respectively but never received any money.

Heptathlete Lucy Boggis agreed an eight-year deal she believed was worth £456,000 while Abi Oyepitan signed a three-year deal for £86,000.

"I saw Mark Lewis-Francis had signed up as well and he had been featured in one of the national newspapers talking about it, all of that gave it credibility," 400m runner Andrew Steele, a member of the British Olympic team in Beijing, told press agency Sportsbeat last year.

"It was offering a financial lifeline and after the year I have had it seemed perfect.

"I was a bit sceptical about the £500 at first. I asked: 'why does it have to be up front, why can't I give it once the sponsorship has been secured?' They said that if the money didn't materialise then I would get a refund, so I thought I'd go for it.

"I was told British Airways wanted to sponsor me and I was sent a contract to sign, saying I had to commit to three appearances and one photo shoot.

"The money was due on December 20th but it never materialised and it still hasn't.

"Looking back, it was something that was clearly too good to be true and I'm annoyed with myself about it."

Cas claimed his company had an ‘anticipated portfolio of over £35 million in sponsorship packages available from major FTSE 100 companies' but Global Sponsorship Group, based in Croydon, was heavily indebted and lacked the contacts it claimed on its website.

As revealed by Sportsbeat last year, Cas, 46, had previously operated under a series of other pseudonyms when passing himself off variously as a private investigator, security consultant and amusement park operator. 

During a 2004 court case, in which he was jailed for four-and-a-half years, even his own defence counsel described Cas, also known as Castley, as having 'a Del Boy mentality'.

He had also served a previous 15-month conviction in 2002 for fraudulent trading and obtaining money by deception before his 2004 conviction for further frauds amounting to hundreds of thousands of pounds.

"Throughout the investigation Cas has shown no remorse for his crimes," Detective Constable Nichola Lester from Croydon's Fraud Unit said in a statement.

HOW SPORTSBEAT AND MORETHANTHEGAMES BROKE THE STORY

Steven Downes - 2012 Olympic hopefuls fear they are victims of sponsorship scam

James Toney and Gerard Meagher - Olympic athlete Steele fears he is victim of sponsorship scam