Notorious football fraudster's SPFL impact revealed as former Hibs and Hamilton star admits £14k loss to conman

A fraudulent footballer's impact in the SPFL has been revealed, after Mickael Antoine-Curier admitted to losses in the region of £14k.

The now 40-year-old had an array of clubs before finishing his career in 2018 at FC Mullhouse. He arrived in Scottish football in 2007 at Hibs and went on to play for Dundee, Hamilton over three spells and later Dunfermline. It was in his third Accies spell did he become acquainted with Medi Abalimba, who had come on trial in South Lanarkshire.

Running some of his schemes under the name of former Chelsea player Gael Kakuta, according to The Athletic, a pattern of fraudulent behaviour emerged, having failed to make the grade as a professional and entering lower league football. His schemes originally started in England, including one in West Yorkshire, where a woman "had been duped into paying a £4,633 spa bill and £2,397 for the hire of a Range Rover because Abalimba (or as she believed, Kakuta) said he did not have his credit card to hand."

Abalimba had 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 and was tracked down to a mansion in Berkshire. He was surrounded by bags of designer goods as he was arrested and later charged with a series of fraud offences.

In October 2014, he admitted 12 charges of fraud, as per the report. Another 19 offences "were taken into consideration, taking the total amount of money defrauded to £163,000."

In 2021, according to the Daily Mail, he "conned Claire Henry out of more than £50,000 after raiding her Coutts and HSBC accounts to stay at the Corinthia Hotel in Westminster." He was jailed for four years and two months