Former Welsh international footballer Mark Aizlewood has been jailed for six years for his role in a £5m fraud involving a government-funded football apprenticeship scheme. The scheme, which promised to help disadvantaged youngsters gain coaching qualifications, was found to have lied about the number of enrolled students and failed to deliver the promised training.
Aizlewood, 58, who played for clubs including Leeds United and Cardiff City, was identified as the leader of the scam. He set up Luis Michael Training Ltd with co-defendants Paul Sugrue, Keith Williams and Christopher Martin, claiming to provide full-time training and a £95 weekly salary to 3,800 students. However, hundreds of these students did not exist, and some who did were only doing two to three hours of study per week.
Paul Sugrue, 56, a former Middlesbrough and Cardiff City player, was jailed for seven years. Other sentences included Keith Williams (four years), Jack Harper (18 months), Christopher Martin (five years and three months), and Stephen Gooding (20 months). The fraud took place between 2009 and 2011, with the defendants pocketing substantial sums: Sugrue took £516,000, Aizlewood £424,000, and others between £249,000 and £448,000.
Judge David Tomlinson described the scam as involving 'eye watering sums of government money' and called it a 'shameful exploitation' that had a serious detrimental effect on colleges. The case was brought after a whistleblower alerted Gwent Police in 2011, leading to a four-year investigation by the Serious Fraud Office that collected 5.2 million pieces of evidence and interviewed 600 people.
