A strange saga involving football, crypto and fake identity

A deal between the owner of Perth Glory Football Club Tony Sage and the London Football Exchange (LFE) broke down earlier this week after it was revealed that the LFE was being sued for $2.2 million.

In a recent interview on 6PR’s Sports Day, Tony Sage discussed the recently failed sale of the Perth Glory FC and provided details on the negotiations with Jim Aylward—the founder of the London Football Exchange, which wants to bring cryptocurrency to football.

According to Sage, he first met Jim Aylward and Ben Hunt, the two individuals in control over the London Football Exchange back in 2018 at an LFE sponsored game. Following this, a commercial partnership then developed which turned into an offer to purchase an 80% share of Sage's A-League football club Perth Glory.

However, although the deal was several months in the making, negotiations reportedly fell through after The London Football Exchange (LFE), and its CEO Jim Aylward were sued in the UK High Court last week.

Murat Seitnepsov, an oil trader from Turkmenistan, started the lawsuit, which alleges that Jim Aylward and other LFE representatives failed to repay a $2.2 million loan and made several fraudulent misrepresentations.

Suspicious from the beginning

As part of the original deal, Tony Sage was due to relinquish 80% of the club ownership, but would still be kept on as chairman of the LFE Football Group, which would have eventually comprised several different football clubs, including Perth Glory.

However, although Sage did not make an official announcement about the sale or his putative new position, he claims a leak from an unknown source led to the news getting out early.

As a result of this leak, the price of the London Football Exchange (LFE) token shot up, and trade volume multiplied, leading Gareth Parker at Australian radio station 6PR to suspect that the London Football Exchange was likely the source of the leak.

Instead, Parker believes those behind the London Football Exchange are just spinning a "sweet story," that will cause fans to buy their LFE tokens, but have no plans to actually open an LFE marketplace or football group.

Likewise, 6PR also claims it was shown documents that show Jim Aylward was using a fake identity, and was actually known as James Abbass Biniaz—a man convicted to 22 months in prison in 2010 for fraud. It remains unclear if this revelation had any involvement in the breakdown of the deal.