City trader dubbed King Popper after he spent £32,000 spraying himself with champagne is jailed for £5.5million Ponzi scam 

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Alex Hope boasted he was a financial whizz-kid while swindling unsuspecting investors out of £5million to fund a flashy playboy lifestyle

A city trader dubbed 'King Popper' after he spent £32,000 spraying himself with champagne was jailed for seven years today for a £5.5m Ponzi scam.

Alex Hope, 26, of Canary Wharf, east London, boasted he was a financial whizz-kid while swindling unsuspecting investors to fund a playboy lifestyle of gambling and exclusive nightclubs.

He blew vast sums in casinos, hotels and clubs around the world in an 'hedonistic' £2 million binge.

Hope was promoted as a 'successful and talented' trader by 'mentor' Raj Von Badlo, 57, who lured investors into parting with £4,292,820 with PR stunts and smooth sales patter.

A jury of five men and six women unanimously found Hope guilty of fraud following a retrial after just three hours and 57 minutes of deliberation earlier this month.

He pleaded guilty before the trial to carrying on a regulated activity when not authorised by the FSA.

Today Hope appeared at Southwark Crown Court sporting a lavender jumper, white open-necked shirt and with his dark hair gelled in the short back and sides style.

Von Badlo, also known as Raj Shastri, wore a navy suit and tie and sat alongside his partner in crime in the dock.

He confessed to enticing people into the fraud and making misleading statements following the collapse of the first trial.

Judge Deborah Taylor said Hope legitimately earned around £65,000 but it appeared 'not enough' for him.

She noted an 'extraordinary feature' of the case was that people took Hope at 'face value', granting him access to premises, handing over cash, and giving him media hype.

'That helped to build the myth and once the bandwagon had started rolling, people were keen to jump on,' she said.

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'The truth was this was a Ponzi scheme, you were trading little money, making substantial losses and spending the money on yourself.

'Your spending of their money was prolific, you were betting it in large sums in the Palm Beach casino in Mayfair.

Hope blew vast sums in casinos, hotels and clubs around the world in an 'hedonistic' £2 million binge

'Your story that you were paying money into the casino to take it out, to give to Von Badlo to give to investors was manifestly absurd.'

Hope had splashed out on Rolex watches, designer clothes and first class travel to America with his friends.

'Today is the first time you have shown any remorse about the losses suffered by investors, even after you were arrested you continued to lie to them,' she said.

'Underlying your actions was greed.'

Judge Taylor added: 'You treated that money as your own and you squandered investors' savings and retirement monies in a hedonistic spree.

'It is right to say that they have not had their money back yet and have expressed their dismay at the way you treated their money.'

The conman splashed £32,000 in one evening at a Champagne Spray event earning him the title 'King Popper'

Hope was jailed for seven years for the fraud and a 16 months for carrying on a regulated activity when not authorised, to run concurrently.

He showed no emotion as the verdict was read.

Von Badlo was jailed for two years for making misleading statements and a further 12 months for communicating inducements, to run concurrently.

Hope represented himself after passing a hand-written letter to Judge Taylor before the retrial in which he claimed his lawyer, Annette Henry, was in league with the prosecution.

He wildly accused Ms Henry of being in cahoots with the other side after learning she had accepted a cereal bar from prosecutor Sarah Clarke.

Although he later backtracked from his 'extraordinary' complaint, Miss Henry was forced to withdraw from her position after finding herself professionally embarrassed.

Reading from a laptop from the dock today Hope told the court it was a 'relatively unsophisticated scheme' which did not involve 'complexity and cleverness'.

He said: 'This trading scheme was set up with good intentions but clearly became overwhelming for myself and got out of control from an administrative point of view.

'I never set out to defraud people,' he insisted, adding it was a 'small scale' until he met Von Badlo.

But Bernard Tetlow, for Von Badlo, said his client had been duped by Hope and had even handed the young trader £165,000 of his own cash of which he recovered £95,000.

'He invested in the scheme himself and encouraged others to do so because he genuinely believed in Alex Hope.

'He was, of course, as it turns out naive and gullible in the extreme to have done so but he took Alex Hope at face value,' he said.

Former Wembley stadium catering manager Hope reinvented himself as a currency markets expert after teaching himself economics.

He eventually landed an office job with City-based training school Forex Academy before meeting Von Badlo while working as an independent trader at Zone Invest.

Judge Deborah Taylor said Hope legitimately earned around £65,000 but it appeared 'not enough' for him

By the end of 2011, investors were pouring cash into the trading scheme and huge sums were appearing in Hope's bank account.

Hope pocketed an 'eye-watering' £5,565,620 in just 13 months, between March 2011 and April 2012, which he used as a 'personal piggy bank' to fund his extravagant lifestyle.

Just £520,796 was paid back to the duped investors.

The conman splashed £32,000 in one evening at a Champagne Spray event in the five-star Grange Hotel near St Paul's Cathedral earning him the title 'King Popper'.

'This was an event that was organised where people could go to this hotel and buy bottles of champagne and, in effect, spray them over each other,' said Ms Clarke.

Hope can be seen in a video of the event wearing a drenched blue t-shirt as hundreds of bottles of expensive champagne are sprayed around a packed room.

Hope's champagne collection - he pocketed £5,565,620 in just 13 months, between March 2011 and April 2012

Another night partying at the Playground Hilton in Liverpool was so excessive Hope hit the headlines for his spending.

He blew £45,987 on a Midas-sized bottle of Ace of Spades champagne that was opened as a publicity stunt by him.

The nightclub PR then boasted to the press that the 'high-roller' had splurged £200,000 in a night.

The party-boy blew a whopping £65,113 in a single night at the Aura nightclub in Mayfair.

Hope also spent £1m at the Palm Beach Casino, whose website brags it is the 'most exclusive casino in Mayfair'.

He lost £353,600 after playing games where more than £5 million was passed backwards and forwards over the table at the lavish venue he visited more than 81 times.

But £604,400 simply disappeared from the cash deposited with the casino, probably in cash withdrawals, and has not been traced.

Receipts showed a 'snapshot' of his wild spending, including a taste for Christian Louboutin trainers

Ms Clarke said it was 'quite clear' that Hope's money 'must have belonged to confirmed investors' in his trading scheme.

'Were any of the investors told that their money was going to be put into a casino and then withdrawn in cash for it to disappear?' she asked.

Receipts unearthed at Hope's address showed just a 'snapshot' of his wild spending, including a taste for Christian Louboutin trainers and expensive watches.

Hope also treated himself to luxury trips around the world, blowing nearly £64,000 on 'upper class' travel to Las Vegas, Miami, New York and Dubai.

He blew £130,327 on a stay at beach front resort the Fontainebleu in Miami and racked up bills of £38,838 in one night at the Cirque du Soir in Dubai.

A video filmed at the five-star Trump SoHo hotel in New York shows Hope pan around the luxurious suite and ends with a shot of his bed, strewn with money and designer clothes.

'Here is the bedroom,' he says, 'just being silly, laying some money out, you can see the 50s and the 100s.

'Did a little bit of shopping today as you can see, bought some Ralph [Lauren], bought some trainers as well, bought some Burberry... yeah, this is me.'

Videos taken from his mobile show him panning stacks of cash, in one he brags '£28,000 profit, boys' and in a second '£50,000 profit, boys, ten, 20, 30, 40' before cutting out.

But his dire trading meant he simply was not able to keep pace with his wild spending.

A jury unanimously found Hope (pictured) guilty of fraud following a retrial earlier this month

despite telling his investors that he would trade their money successfully on the foreign exchange markets, only 12 per cent of the total money that investors gave Hope was ever traded and when he did trade, he lost almost all of the money in his trading accounts.

Hope exaggerated his trading abilities and the returns he was making. He used doctored copies of statements from his trading account to mislead investors. 

As a result of this deception, he continued to attract investors, with new money coming in used to pay those who wished to withdraw their funds.

Over 75 investors gave £4.29 million to Hope as a result of Von Badlo's actions. 

'As the money from investors was increasing and his expenditure was increasing, in fact the amount of money that was being deposited on trading platforms in the first place was drying up to virtually nil,' said Ms Clarke.

Alex Hope with Desperate Scousewives star Layla Flaherty at London's 55 Club in 2012

Jamaican international footballer Marvin Elliott, 30, lost £50,000 after investing in the fraudulent scheme.

The midfielder, who plays for Crawley Town in Football League One, handed the cash to Hope after he promised 50 per cent returns in just three months.

Retired teacher Christopher Millard ploughed £25,000 of his own money into Hope's fraud which saw him lose £15,000.

Hope and Von Badlo used extensive PR to lure investors into the scam and spent £3,000 a month of client's cash on publicity provided by London PR firm Full Portion Media.

In one 'spectacularly successful' promotional push, Hope and Von Badlo held a seminar at the four-star Copthorne Hotel in Slough on 10 March 2012.

Glossy folders informed potential investors about the 'Alex Hope Private Fund' and the crowd heard Hope needed £5m to start his 'dream' hedge fund.

He was presented as a financial whizz-kid, capable of making huge profits for his investors at the same time as sustaining trading losses of £500,000 and capital liabilities of more than £3,500,000.

A second promotional stunt saw Von Badlo interview Hope outside the Old Trafford football stadium in September 2011 for a video intended to impress potential investors.

In it Hope boasts: 'It is very easy to make quite a lot of money.'

After suspicions around his Forex fund grew, the Financial Services Authority intervened and arrested him.

Hope admitted violating City rules which state he must have a licence from to work on behalf of others, although he is allowed to trade currency for his own profit.

Hope, of Canary Wharf, east London, denied and was convicted of one charge of fraud.

He pleaded guilty to carrying on a regulated activity when not an authorised by the FSA.

Von Badlo, of Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, admitted making misleading statements and communicating an invitation or inducement to encourage investment activity.