Russell King (fraudster)
Russell Stephen King (born 11 April 1959) is a British figure known for a long history of alleged fraud. He helped drive the doomed purchase of Notts County Football Club by Munto Finance, a deal linked to Qadbak Investments; it collapsed and was later highlighted in a BBC Panorama programme.
In 2018, after living in Bahrain, he was extradited to Jersey and charged with 25 counts of fraud and larceny for offences that happened around 2008. In 2019 he was sentenced to six years in prison for stealing £670,000 from the Belgravia Financial Services Group; he was released in 2021.
King began his career in the 1980s as chairman of Celebrity Group Holdings, a Kingston upon Thames publishing firm that owned Basketball Monthly and Zodiac Toys (which went insolvent in 1990). He was jailed for two years in 1991 for an insurance fraud connected to an Aston Martin Zagato that had been hidden in a garage. The group later went into liquidation amid lawsuits over alleged fraud by its directors.
In the 2000s he pursued various ventures, including Swiss Commodity Holding and media projects in the Middle East, some of which used dubious claims to attract advertising revenue. He allegedly diverted funds from a partner’s business and sold the partner’s cherished number plates.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 16:47 (CET).