Food bank fund raiser spent £75,000 on himself

A ROGUE trader who was allowed out of prison to raise money for food banks spent £75,000 on himself including tickets to see Rihanna, the pop singer, a court heard.

Alex Hope, a foreign exchange trader, was jailed three years ago for masterminding a £5.5 million Ponzi scheme to fund his lifestyle and gambling habits,

Yesterday, he was sentenced to a further 16 months in prison for using funds on concert tickets and prosecco instead of repaying authorities.

While in prison in Brixton, south London, Hope was granted release days so he could work to make money that he said would be donated to food banks, according to a prosecution statement.

He was required to pay £166,696 as part of a confiscation order. Instead, between April and September 2016, Hope spent £75,000 while on release, buying 42 bottles of prosecco from a supermarket, tickets to see the musical Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and a boxing match, and four tickets to watch pop star Rihanna in concert, the prosecution statement said.

Hope pleaded guilty earlier this month to perverting the course of justice by trying to hide funds from regulators and investors he had cheated instead of handing the money back as required by earlier rulings.

Mark Steward, the Financial Conduct Authority’s executive director of enforcement and market oversight, said in a statement. “He has shown contempt not only to the court, but also those he has harmed.”

Hope, who was originally arrested in 2012 at the age of 23 and jailed three years later, had nearly 20 months added to his seven-year prison sentence in 2016, having handing over just £1,000 of the money he was ordered to repay.