Top Sport Fraudsters

The strange case of the Worcestershire cricketer who recently conned his way into a first XI contract has raised eyebrows - and laughter - in the world of sport.

But Adrian Shankar is far from the only conman who has used his wits to earn an unmerited taste of what it's like to play sport at the highest level.

We take a look at sport's top 10 fraudsters.


Cricket - Adrian Shankar
First class cricketer, junior tennis star who played at a national level, Arsenal academy player signed when Arsene Wenger joined the Gunners, and Cambridge law graduate. On the face of it, it seemed that there was no end to Shankar's talents; in reality, his true gift was for spinning a yarn.

The 29-year-old appears to have spent years trying to talk his way into a proper county cricket contract, and when Worcestershire signed him up in the spring of 2011 (on the back of an apparently stellar spell in Sri Lankan Twenty20) it seemed his years of trying to get a game for various county second XIs was over.

Within weeks his life unravelled, however, as it emerged that he had faked documents relating to his age in order to land the contract (and also qualify for ECB young cricketer aid).

That sparked his sacking by the club and prompted an investigation by West Mercia police that is still ongoing at the time of writing. You can read the full extraordinary story here.



Football - Ali Dia
When you get a call from a man you believe to be Liberian football great George Weah, and that man claims his talented cousin is available on a free transfer, you tend to listen. Which is what Southampton manager Graeme Souness (pictured, with head in hands) did when a university student prankster insisted that hapless non-league 'striker' Ali Dia was a chip off the old block, a possible superstar in the mould of the former World Player of the Year.

Nowadays he would be asked to submit DVD evidence, attend a trial at the very least, but this was 1996 and Saints were in the middle of an injury crisis. After only one training session and a cancelled reserve match Dia - who was not even Liberian but French-Senegalese - was called to the bench for a Premier League game against Leeds United.

When Matt Le Tissier picked up an injury after half an hour, Dia was brought on and his headless-chicken performance quickly showed that someone had been pulling Souey's leg.

Taken off after three quarters of an hour, Dia turned up for some physio the next morning, left, and never came back. It turned out he was not a Senegal international, had never played for Paris Saint-Germain and that Weah didn't have a clue who he was. A short spell back in non-league followed before he did the decent thing and went back to university.



Football - Alessandro Zarelli
The cautionary tale of Alex Zarelli was similar to Dia's but more intricate in its planning and execution - and ultimately more successful. The Italian fraudster briefly managed to take a number of small British clubs for a ride after he faked documents from his homeland's FA saying he was part of an official exchange programme, and had played for Rangers and Sheffield Wednesday.

His claims were readily believed by sides struggling in the lower leagues, who were understandably keen to take on a self-proclaimed flair player willing to work for low wages so long as his accommodation was thrown in.

Whether he just fancied an extended holiday in semi-rural British locations, or genuinely believed he could make it as a pro, the petty larceny that followed saw him fleece hotel and B&B stays from Lisburn Distillery and Bangor City, before Total Network Solutions smelled a rat and contacted his so-called contacts before offering him terms.

In the end a Sky Sports crew was tipped off and, posing as football scouts, they arranged an interview with Zarelli. In an Academy Award-worthy performance, he lied through his teeth before being confronted with the truth. He calmly admitted the whole thing before striding away like Keyser Soze, never to be seen again.



Golf - Maurice Flitcroft
'Maurice Flitcroft, Golfer, England' was all that was needed to send the late conman mail, so notorious was the Barrow-in-Furness shipyard worker turned golfer. Flitcroft tried to wangle entries as a professional to several golf tournaments, and somehow blagged his way into final qualifying for the 1976 Open at Royal Birkdale that saw Seve Ballesteros make his sensational Major championship debut as a 19-year-old.

Flitcroft had seen the game played on TV and fallen in love with it, so he bought some mail order golf clubs and took a Peter Alliss instruction book out of the library.

He was determined to enter the Open Championship despite realising quickly that the game is harder than it looks following some practice in fields near his house. Yet he was still dead set on it, and after realising that he was unable to enter as an amateur because he couldn't prove his handicap he simply decided to enter as a pro.

But not only was he nowhere near professional standard, he couldn't actually play golf at all. His score, a 49-over-par round of 121, remains the worst in the R&A's record books. What makes the con more ludicrous is that he turned up with an imitation-leather bag and half a set of mail-order clubs but still got through unnoticed.

Flitcroft became a sensation, something no doubt helped along enormously by the R&A's embarrassingly po-faced reaction to a game old boy who did nothing more than give a lot of people a good chuckle. Undeterred by his failure, he tried to get into the Open again innumerable times - each time with false names such as Gerald Hoppy, Gene Paceky or James Beau Jolley, and often wearing outrageous disguises that generally involved extravagant false moustaches.

Flitcroft ended up quitting his job and became an average amateur golfer, usually shooting into the low 90s, but his notoriety led to several clubs naming tournaments and booby-prizes after the 'Royal and Ancient Rabbit', as he was nicknamed. Flitcroft died in 2007, aged 87.


Marathon - Rosie Ruiz

Cuban-American Ruiz infamously popped up as a surprise winner of the 1980 Boston Marathon.

The only problem with her achievement? She had not even run the race.

Aged 27, Ruiz 'qualified' for Boston after being timed as coming 11th in the free-for-all New York Marathon with a time under three hours. It later transpired that she had not even run the New York race, having been spotted on the subway during the run, yet somehow wangling a finish time after reporting to a medical station near the finish.

But in Boston she pushed her luck, misjudging her fraud as she hopped over the ropes near the end of the race to win in a world-class time of two hours, 31 minutes and 56 seconds. She even pretended to collapse theatrically as she crossed the line. Nice touch.

But alarm bells immediately rang, with none of the genuine competitors remembering seeing her, organisers puzzled at how they missed her at their checkpoints, and a pair of Harvard students reporting that they actually saw her pop out of the crowd half a mile from the finish.

None of this bothered Rosie: she cheerfully gave an interview to TV sports reporters (pictured) after the finish, talking about her 'achievement'.

Her relatively unathletic build did not go unnoticed either and, after investigation, she was stripped of her gold medal and disqualified from New York too.

Her story led marathon organisers to tighten up the way athletes are monitored - they since became electronically monitored and filmed throughout major races - but she failed to learn from it, apparently involved in a series scams as she returned to a career in sales.

She was arrested on at least two occasions, once for allegedly embezzling $60,000 from a real estate company and another time for alleged involvement in a drug deal. Last heard of working as an account exec in Florida, she still maintains she ran both races.

Football - Spencer Trethewy
Young Spencer appeared from nowhere as a 19-year-old 'property developer' with a loose mouth and even looser ethical code. In 1990 he saved Aldershot Town FC from bankruptcy after producing a £200,000 cheque that soon bounced - it turned out that he was unable to repay the money he had borrowed for the buyout and, four years later, was jailed for just under a year for running up bills when his company was suspended from trading.

The difference between Spencer and others on this list is that it was unclear whether his venture was a deliberate con or just an almighty cock-up from an inexperienced entrepreneur: his success since hints that, while living his life in a morally-dubious grey area, it may well have been the latter.

Having changed his name to Spencer Day, he is now a multi-millionaire real-estate banker and owner (and manager) of Chertsey Town FC.



Athletics - Stanislawa Walasiewicz
Also known as Stella Walsh, the Polish-American athlete was a sprint specialist and double Olympic medal winner, taking women's 100m gold in 1932 and silver in 1936, competing for Poland.

She had a long and illustrious career, interrupted by World War II, and throughout her life there was no doubt about her ability - or gender, which is where the story really begins.

'Stella' was tragically killed in a botched armed robbery in Cleveland, Ohio - she was a bystander, gunned down at the age of 69. The autopsy revealed a scandal - she possessed male genitalia, with some evidence of female characteristics, and a combination of XX and XY chromosomes, a condition that would now define her as 'intersex'.

No action has been taken to erase records - modern gender testing involves complex psychological and physiological analysis, not merely a check of the crown jewels - but it was a benchmark for cases since, including the continued controversy surrounding South African star Caster Semenya.

Athletics - Eva Klobukowska
Another Polish sprinter with Olympic medals, there are two key differences from Walasiewicz: Klobukowska stayed in her homeland, and actually failed a gender test.

Klobukowska burst on the scene at the 1964 Olympics when, having just turned 18, she won 100m bronze and relay gold in Tokyo. A year later she stormed to a world record 100m time of 11.1 seconds, incredibly fast for its time. The following season she cleaned up at the European Championships but never got a chance to compete at another Olympics - in 1967 she failed a gender test, showing an extra male chromosome, and was banned from competing.



Baseball - Danny Almonte
The curious tale of baseball prodigy Danny Almonte has parallels with rumours surrounding many football players from developing countries, whose reported ages are questioned, thus clouding their achievements in age-restricted tournaments that often lead to professional careers.

Almonte was supposedly just 12 years old when he came to public notice, standing 5'8" and pitching like a grown man, and becoming a little league sensation after throwing perfect games as his Bronx Baby Boomers team made the 2001 Little League World Series. They won, and were presented with the keys to the city by Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Their opponents were not impressed, however, hiring a private investigator to look into the young superstar's age, a lengthy process that sparked several other investigations both in the US and Almonte's native Dominican Republic. The 12-year-old actually turned out to be 14, and the Baby Boomers had their achievement stricken from the record books.

There is a great deal of evidence pointing to Almonte being innocent in the whole charade: a recent arrival in the US and unable to speak English, it appears he was exploited by unscrupulous parents, who knocked a couple of years off his birth-date to sneak him into the age group. The scandal that followed dragged out for a while before his native Dominican Republic admitted he was born in 1987, not 1989 as claimed.

Perhaps the saddest part of the story is that Almonte was genuinely a talented player - if not a world beater - and after the scandal became a top college player before carving out a semi-professional career.

Football - Togo assistant coach Tchanile Bana
2010 was not a good year for poor Togo. A terrible incident at the African Cup of Nations earlier in the year saw their team bus sprayed with bullets by Angolan separatists, leading to the tragic death of three staff members and injuries to several players.

But the scandal in September of that year was entirely their own doing. Having already been banned for two years for organising a friendly in Egypt without his FA's knowledge, assistant coach Tchanile Bana arranged a match in Bahrain.

Not only did he break that suspension, but when the time came for the game he took a shadow team to the Gulf state, bearing no resemblance to the squad that briefly appeared at the CAN, losing 3-0 and ringing alarm bells with its ineptitude. Bana was banned for another three years and now has no chance of conning anyone in football - surely?