New jury for fake sports stars autograph trial

Feb 20 2008 by Clare Hickie, Liverpool Daily Post

New jury for fake sports stars autograph trial

THE trial of Graeme Walker and Faisal Madani, who are accused of faking auto-graphs of famous sports men, re-opened with a new jury at Chester Crown Court yesterday.

Signatures of England rugby player Jonny Wilkin-son, and footballers David Beckham, Steven Gerrard, Michael Owen, and Man-chester United manager Alex Ferguson, were “systemati-cally” forged and sold by the businessmen, the jury heard.

Sports fans were conned into spending thousands of pounds on faked autographs of their heroes.

Other counterfeit goods, it was heard, included replicas of England international Caps and Worthington and European Cup final shirts which were sold as genuine.

Walker, 45, of Mountain View Close, Connah’s Quay, Deeside, is accused of more than 50 counts of cheating the customers of his shop, Sporting Icons Limited, which has a store in Chester city centre and also operates on the internet site eBay.

Madani, 43, of Grange Road, Bramhall, Stockport, Greater Manchester, describ-ed in court as the ’middle man’, faces 20 counts of supplying the forgeries.

They deny the charge.

Both men claim that the goods were bought in good faith and from reputable sources.