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Tycoon admits fraud plot

Marvin Smilon,David Connett
Thursday 11 March 1993 00:02 GMT
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KEITH CHEESEMAN, flamboyant former football tycoon, small- time crook, colourful con-man and big-time champagne Charlie, added another sobriquet to his collection yesterday - international fraudster.

Cheeseman, 50, son of a Luton shopkeeper, admitted his part in an international money-laundering operation involving the Mafia and murder during a brief hearing yesterday at a US federal court in Manhattan.

He pleaded guilty to six criminal charges involving a conspiracy to sell over dollars 550m ( pounds 392m) in stolen securities, including pounds 292m of bonds stolen at knifepoint in the City of London in May 1990.

In return for a promise that he would serve his sentence in a British prison, Cheeseman admitted receiving and handling stolen property.

He faces up to 55 years in jail and up to dollars 1.5bn in fines. Federal prosecutors emphasised yesterday their recommendation that he return to Britain was not binding on the Justice Department.

His lawyer, Leonard Levenson told the court that Cheeseman admitted handling only dollars 23m ( pounds 16m) of stolen bonds.

Cheeseman was trapped by the FBI with a fellow conspirator, a Texan businessman Mark Lee Osborne, in a sting codenamed 'Operation Soft Dollar'. Posing as Mafia buyers they negotiated to buy dollars 10m-worth of the stolen London bonds. FBI agents 'turned' Osborne and used him to help arrest Cheeseman. Despite being placed under FBI protection, Osborne was later shot dead in Houston, Texas.

Cheeseman was arrested by the City of London Police but jumped bail and fled to Tenerife where he was recaptured and extradited to the US. He claimed he fled because he feared a Mafia godfather had put a contract out on him and he only had weeks to live.

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