A prolific football fraudster who once dated Thierry Henry’s ex-wife and swindled a Love Island star out of thousands of pounds is back behind bars after being busted in the US.
Medi Abalimba, 35, became known as ‘The Football Fraudster’ after targeting high-profile victims while posing as a Premier League player.
The failed-sportsman-turned-catfisher was once a promising £1.2million player. But when his career dried up, he turned to duping women so he could live a lavish life.
The ex-Liverpool and Manchester City trialist swindled thousands out of his victims by tricking them into believing he could fund a champagne lifestyle of luxury hotels, helicopter trips and travelling the globe.
He became a worldwide name last year after a Netflix documentary in which the Arsenal striker’s former wife Claire Merry and ITV reality show star Georgia Steel revealed how they had been duped.
Abalimba put on the charm and spoke with a smooth American accent as he weaved his way into Love Island star Georgia Steel’s life by posing as a US Government agent ‘Miguel Johnson’ when he met her at a London nightclub in April 2019.
Over the next six weeks he wined and dined Georgia by taking her to swanky restaurants in his chauffeur-driven Range Rover, and the shameless swindler even met her family at her 21st birthday party.
But their six-week relationship came to an abrupt end when Abalimba’s 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 convicted of a string of fraud offences and was jailed for four years and two months following his most recent conviction in early 2023.
However he breached the conditions of his licence by fleeing the UK sparking an international manhunt.
Derbyshire Constabulary worked alongside forces around the world including Homeland Security in the USA in a bid to track down the fraudster – before he was found hiding out in the States.
PC Sarah Baker, who works in the force’s International Liaison Office, discovered he had changed his name to Michi Jordan and was travelling on a new passport
Abalimba, previously of Derby, was arrested in the USA and extradited back to Britain on January 28.
He was detained by UK police the following day and recalled to prison where he will now remain until October 2026.
PC Baker said: ‘Given his extensive offending there was a real concern that, armed with a new name, he could begin targeting new victims.
‘However, the USA takes seriously foreign nationals who have not declared their criminal convictions, and he was quickly located and arrested by US authorities.
‘Abalimba lives a life filled with deception and even after serving prison sentences, his fraudulent activities have continued.
‘It has been a lengthy process to track him down and ensure he is brought back to the UK but I am pleased that we have now managed to achieve this thanks to work with a number of international law enforcement agencies.
‘I’m grateful to all those who have helped with tracking him down and ensuring that he is once again behind bars and cannot cause further misery to unsuspecting victims.’
Abalimba was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and moved to the UK at the age of five.
The promising footballer joined Derby County and also played for clubs including Crystal Palace, Fulham, Oldham Athletic and Southend United.
He also had trials at Manchester United, Manchester City, and Liverpool.
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.
When his career started to decline in 2012, he worked part-time at a taxi firm but began pretending to be Chelsea player Gael Kakuta.
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.
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.’
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 told 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 carried out 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, after he plundered Ms Merry’s bank account, claiming to be a US Navy Seal in a £160,000 scam.
At the time the Netflix documentary ‘The Footballer Fraudster’ first aired in July last year his whereabouts had remained unknown.