With trials at Manchester City and Manchester United, a run-out for Liverpool’s reserves and a professional contract at Derby County, Medi Abalimba looked set to for a promising career.
But as his hopes of footballing stardom and the money that comes with it ebbed away, his desire for large houses, fast cars and beautiful women clearly did not.
While many others before and since have begrudgingly returned to a normal life and steady salary, Abalimba instead turned to charm, deception and manipulation to get what he wanted.
In The Footballer Fraudster, a documentary that airs on ITV at 9pm tonight, a forensic psychologist reveals how she has rarely come across a fraud case as extreme as that of Abalimba.
His deception started before his football career was even officially over, and his fraudulent behaviour increased as he moved down the leagues.
He drifted from Oldham Athletic to a team in French football’s fifth tier, to Farnborough in English football’s sixth tier, and then Corby Town in the seventh tier.
He was first given a six-month suspended sentence in 2013 and ordered to carry out 150 hours of community service over an unpaid bill of £25,922 – mostly Cristal champagne – at a nightclub in London.
The whereabouts of football fraudster Medi Abalimba was unknown since his release from prison. But MailOnline can reveal he has been spotted outside a swanky Mayfair hotel and taking trips to Spain (Pictured: Abalimba in Malaga in January)
Abalimba dated Georgia Steel for six weeks. Their whirlwind relationship came to an end when picture was published online of the pair outside a bar in the capital and her manager told her that he was really a convicted fraudster
Abalimba was jailed for four years in 2014 after impersonating ex Chelsea footballer Gael Kakuta to fund a flash lifestyle
His fraud continued as he moved between Manchester, London Derby, West Yorkshire, and Glasgow, where he had spent £14,000 on a team-mate’s credit card.
In October 2014, he admitted 12 charges of fraud. Another 19 offences were taken into consideration, taking the total amount of money defrauded to £163,000.
Sentencing Abalimba to four years in prison, the judge spoke of a ‘catalogue of offences of sophisticated dishonesty, fraudulently representing that you were a person who you were not’.
Outside the court, Sergeant Adam Cronshaw, from Greater Manchester Police, said: ‘[Abalimba] became so skilled in lies and deceit that his character went from plausible to unquestionable. Many of his victims treated him so differently because they thought he was a celebrity footballer.’
He was handed a six-month suspended sentence in 2013, a four-year prison sentence in 2014, and another four-year prison sentence in 2021. Each time Abalimba was characterised as someone who had struggled after going from hero to zero when his football dreams were shattered.
His defence counsel in the 2014 case, said that when Abalimba ‘started to slide and the money dried up, my client couldn’t accept that he didn’t continue to live the high life’ and his ‘difficulties snowballed’.
Relatively little is known about his background. He was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and his family fled for the UK in the 1990s and settled in London following growing tensions in the country.
There were even suspicions about his age. Abalimba’s entry in the 2011-12 Sky Sports Football Yearbook says he was born on October 14, 1992. But documents relating to his various convictions cite his date of birth as May 26, 1989.
Even while in prison, Abalimba kept up a relationship with Claire Merry, an ex-wife of former Arsenal player Thierry Henry, telling her he was a US Navy SEAL called ‘Miguel Johnson’
He was recently snapped in Malaga, southern Spain , where it is claimed he tried to steal more than $1,000 a nurse’s credit card
Even when in jail he continued his schemes, enticing a vulnerable 50-year-old agency nurse working in HMP Moorland into a relationship.
The divorced mother-of-two smuggled in a phone for him before the relationship was discovered and she was sentenced to 20 months of jail time for misconduct in a public office.
After his release from prison in 2018, it did not take long for him to find his next target.
He came to public attention after a relationship with Love Island star Georgia Steel. At first she was smitten with ‘Miguel Johnson’ after meeting him in a Mayfair nightclub in early 2019.
They had been dating for a few months when they were snapped by paparazzi. The next day a newspaper ran the pictures, and attempts were made to identify ‘the mystery American man who appeared to be very wealthy’.
Within days it was revealed that the ‘mystery American man’ was Abalimba, a notorious fraudster. Ms Steel tells the ITV documentary she ‘was instantly in shock, completely numb’.
Scarcely 24 hours later, Ms Steel discovered that a significant amount of money had disappeared from her bank account.
Abalimba insisted it was nothing to do with him but later that year he was arrested at another Mayfair nightclub. He was charged with defrauding Steel of £13,000 and pleaded guilty to five counts of fraud. He was sentenced to 23 months in prison.
Even while in prison, Abalimba kept up a relationship with Claire Merry, an ex-wife of former Arsenal player Thierry Henry, telling her he was a US Navy SEAL called ‘Miguel Johnson’.
He told her he was in Kuwait and that the background noises she could hear were military manoeuvres.
On his release from prison in 2020 the pair hooked up, again staying at luxury hotels, with Ms Merry picking up the bill.
But soon she, like Ms Steel, found unrecognised payments out of her bank account – in total she was defrauded of more than £50,000.
Then in late 2020, he perpretrated another scam after pretending to be the agent of Chicago Bears running back Tarik Cohen, defrauding a chauffer out of more than £100,000.
In September 2021, after admitting 17 charges, including 15 for fraud, Abalimba was sentenced to four years and two months in prison.
It is hard to keep track of just how many people have fallen victim to Abalimba’s scams. He was released last year and his current location is not known.
In a statement to ITV, Abalimba disputed some of the allegations made about him in the documentary but again cited the demise of his football career as the catalyst for his deceptions.
‘The way I dealt with falling short of my dreams wasn’t right,’ he said. ‘I sincerely apologise to everyone I lied to and used.’
The Post-It note handed to a nurse by a valet at the London Marriott hotel in Mayfair which had a mobile phone number written on it and ‘Gyle Chelsea football player’
WhatsApp messages between Abalimba and the nurse, Zhane, in which he tells her his ‘assistant’ has booked her on a flight to Malaga
Zhane messaging Abalimba’s apparent assistant in which see says she hasn’t received the email confirmation for the flight
In the end, Zhane ended up booking the flight herself and asked Abalimba if he would reimburse her the money
The money Abalimba is alleged to have taken using Zhane’s bank card while the pair were in Spain
The American nurse received an email alert saying there had been suspicious activity on her Bank of America card
Zhane sent messages to Abalimba confronting him about the alleged theft in which he appears to goad her
In January Medi Abalimba was again accused of trying to steal money from an American nurse he allegedly wooed by pretending he played for Chelsea – just months after he was released from prison.
The whereabouts of Abalimba, 34, had been unknown since an ITV documentary aired last November about the fraudster who conned Love Island’s Georgia Steel and Thierry Henry’s ex-wife out of tens of thousands of pounds.
Abalimba was jailed for four years in 2014 after impersonating ex Chelsea footballer Gael Kakuta to fund a flash lifestyle.
He was then jailed again in 2021 for four years and two months after he admitted 15 counts of fraud in which he plundered the bank accounts of model Chloe Henry after claiming to be a US Navy Seal in a £160,000 scam.
In February, the Ministry of Justice confirmed to MailOnline Abalimba is no longer in custody.
But it was then revealed that he had allegedly been seen hanging around the £400-a-night Marriott hotel in swanky Mayfair, London, in a £190,000 Mercedes-Benz G-Class.
Then in January he was pictured in Malaga, southern Spain, where it was claimed he tried to steal more than $1,000 from an American nurse’s credit card.
Zhane, a 29-year-old who did not wish to use her surname, was told his name was ‘Gyle’ but she became spooked when she uncovered his true identity after she found a picture of his passport at the four-star hotel Anahita Boutique where they had been staying.
Zhane said she got an alert on her phone hours earlier that an attempt had been made to take $1,318.68 from her credit card. A total of $445.06 was withdrawn from her bank account.
Abalimba was not in the room at the time and she feared he was to blame for the attempted raid on her account.
Zhane discovered her cards went missing one evening while the pair were on the romantic break, but claims they reappeared again after the swindler returned.
Abalimba at the time of his arrest by Greater Manchester Police in 2014. He was sentenced at Manchester Crown Court to four years in prison for a series of high-value frauds
Zhane boarded a Ryanair flight from London on a whim and flew to the Spanish tourist city Malaga to meet up with Abalimba
Zhane (left), from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, flew to the southern Spanish city to be with Abalimba
She hurriedly packed her belongings and scarpered barefooted from the hotel in an Uber in the dead of night, leaving Abalimba snoring in bed as she jetted back to London where she reported what had happened to Scotland Yard.
In February the Metropolitan Police confirmed there had been an allegation of an unsuccessful attempt of theft from a credit card in Spain, however the force would not confirm whether the allegation was made against Abalimba.
MailOnline had sight of emails, the withdrawn amounts from Zhane’s bank account, and has seen private WhatsApp messages between the pair to corroborate the allegations.
Zhane, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, first met Abalimba in August 2023 outside the London Marriott hotel in Grosvenor Square ahead of a night out with a friend.
When she returned to the hotel a valet handed her a yellow Post-It note, seen by MailOnline, which had a mobile phone number written in black biro and ‘Gyle Chelsea football player’.
‘I remember he wasn’t ugly, I guess he was checking me out. I was on the phone my friend was with me and said he was a good looking guy. I googled what Chelsea was and saw it was a soccer team,’ she said in an exclusive interview earlier this year.
‘I feel like not in a sense of dating somebody [it impressed me], but being financially stable yes. I’m not an ugly girl and I have had a bad encounter with an American athlete before.’
In the following months the pair chatted over the phone, with Abalimba talking with a French accent, in which he told her the mother of his two children had died. He also continually broke promises to meet up with her in Los Angeles, Paris, and New York.
The in January, having returned to London for a modelling audition in Manchester, the young nurse decided to contact Abalimba as she believed he lived in a Mayfair townhouse.
But he told her he ‘was in Malaga getting treatment from a specialist for a knee injury’ and told her he would book her a ticket to fly over.
This didn’t materialise and in the end she paid the £150 ticket herself, as she said that Abalimba told her there was a problem with his card, and he promised to pay her back.
She took a Ryanair flight to the Spanish tourist city where he greeted her from the plane, and the pair were finally able to speak to each other face to face.
It is understood that Abalimba has been hanging around the Marriott hotel in London where rooms are priced at around £400 a night
Zhane first locked eyes with the football fraudster in August last year when he stepped out of a G-class Mercedes (stock image above)
The Love Islander appeared on ITV’s documentary The Football Fraudster where she recounted her ordeal
ITV documentary The Football Fraudster told the story of how Abalimba spun a sophisticated web of lies to swindle multiple people
While in Malaga the pair ‘went out on dates’ to restaurants, eating pizza and drinking cocktails, cuddled in bed, and snuggled up together on a romantic horse-drawn carriage ride along the beachfront.
‘I thought I like this guy, he is a normal guy I’m enjoying this,’ she said. ‘I’m in Spain it’s nice weather we are having a good time and we are finally spending time together.
‘We are going out to eat, having drinks and having good conversation. I thought he was a nice guy, attractive… I could see myself taking this guy seriously.’
But things turned sinister on the evening of January 14. Having eaten food at the hotel, she claims he told her he had to ‘go comfort his friend’ as his ‘girlfriend had just committed suicide’ and suggested she go with him.
Zhane stayed at the hotel and fell asleep. She woke at 2am and spotted a ‘fraudulent activity’ email in her inbox which said there had been a failed attempt to withdraw $1,318.68 from her Bank of America platinum credit card in Malaga.
She later found $445.06 had been withdrawn from her bank account. She then discovered her cards were missing and said she messaged Abalimba to ask him where he was.
He walked back through the door of their hotel room, ushered her back to bed and told her he would need to fly back to Paris the next day with his friend.
When he fell asleep and began ‘snoring’, Zane crawled out of bed to check her bag as she ‘feared something wasn’t right’, where she discovered her cards had reappeared.
Confused and scared, she looked at his phone to try and find out if he had attempted to use her cards – when she uncovered a photo of a passport that showed a picture of his face and the name ‘Medi Abalimba’.
She googled his name where she finally discovered who he really was.
The terrified nurse contacted her friend in a panic and hurriedly got her stuff together, ran from the hotel barefooted and got in an Uber to the airport.
‘I’m just thinking I’ll buy a flight when I get to the airport because I’m scared and I just want to get out of here,’ she said.
Zhane had a nervous five-hour wait for the next available flight to Gatwick at 10am, fearing he would turn up at any moment.
While sitting in the airport a message pinged up on her phone from Abalimba using another number asking her where she was, which she says she instantly deleted and blocked.
‘It made me feel really scared, even my mum was checking in on me and asking me to send me this guy’s picture,’ Zhane said.
‘I’ve never had that experience like this before but now… I haven’t even told my mum what happened.
‘Even though I know it’s a once in a lifetime thing but it did kind of wake me up.
‘The next time I have a gut feeling that something isn’t right… and maybe I shouldn’t go… I’ll listen to that gut feeling. There was a bunch of red flags I should have just blocked this guy and never talk to him again.
‘I think I was being too nice and giving him the benefit of the doubt.’
Zhane claims Abalimba lied to her about his life in order to manipulate her.
‘I think he’s very good at manipulation and making it seem like he’s a normal person – he dresses like a normal person and speaks like he has a normal life.
‘I don’t know, but it’ll never happen again.’
She briefly heard from him again when she set up an Instagram account to try and warn others about him, but she has since deleted the account.
