In the first of our series about men who want to buy English football clubs, here is the extraordinary story of Chris Kirchner, who was on the verge of taking over County Derby and was later convicted of fraud and money laundering.
This week, we’ll take a look at five potential investors and what their interest in English football shows about their ambitions and the game itself.
It’s Valentine’s Day 2023 and, after dawn, Chris Kirchner’s global is starting to crumble.
A group of FBI agents have arrived at the gates of his family home in Westlake, Texas, less than a mile from the exclusive Vaquero Country Club, and they’re beginning to seize the trappings of his wealth.
A Rolls-Royce Cullinan and a Mercedes-Benz G-Class were among the items confiscated, along with five luxury watches and a Cartier necklace. Nearly $600,000 (£475,000 at current exchange rates) came from private accounts in Kirchner’s name, such as art and 57 bottles of wine.
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The FBI also arrested Kirchner, charging him with wire fraud after alleging he sent millions of dollars from the accounts of Slync, a software startup he founded in 2017, to his private account. A Gulfstream aircraft valued at $16 million, among other things. bought with other people’s money.
Derby County, an English Football League (EFL) club that won the English championship in 1972 with Brian Clough, had almost other of its assets.
Nine months before his arrest in the United States, Kirchner still believed he could pull off a takeover operation to save the club from management. He had been named as the preferred bidder, through Administrator Quantuma as the man most likely to save you from Derthrough bankruptcy. He had been described as the club’s saviour, drawing applause from the fans.
Like much of Kirchner’s life, however, it was destined to fall apart.
He had built himself a “life of luxury” by embezzling the budget of his business. During Kirchner’s four-day trial in January of this year, evidence showed that she had handed over at least $25 million in cash from investors for her use.
A jury found Kirchner guilty of four counts of wire fraud and seven counts of money laundering. The sentence will be known on July 11 and, now without bail, he faces a maximum sentence of 150 years.
Kirchner’s fall is sudden and spectacular. That he has come so close to buying Derby, just months after pulling out of a similar deal to buy Preston North End, another club in the championship, is already fantastic.
Kirchner, however, is part of a larger problem. English football, which is flush with cash, continues to attract all kinds of potential investors. Scammers, fantasies, and charlatans are aligning.
“Years ago, what kind of car or space do you own?”as one user of an EFL club put it: “Nowadays, it’s about more. Football clubs are attractive. It’s the only thing that gives you genuine credibility. English football’s global good fortune makes owning a club a trophy worth owning.
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Kirchner will not be the first or the last. Many others try to take advantage of the selection process to become football club owners, putting pressure on groups that are better off without any interest.
“He followed the path of Walter Mitty and never had any contact with reality,” says a well-placed source in the Derby takeover case who, like others in this article, remains anonymous to protect his connections.
In a Fort Worth courtroom, Kirchner breaks down.
Until the golden walls around her crumble, it may never be said that Kirchner lacked credibility.
He’s an ambitious young American (he’s still 36), the bold CEO of Slync, a tech startup backed by Goldman Sachs. Four years after its launch in San Francisco’s Silicon Valley, thanks to expansion driven by the Covid-19 pandemic, Slync valued $240 million through investors and hired more than a hundred people.
Kirchner intentionally positioned himself as the figurehead of the company and took Slync where he, as a golf obsessive, wanted to go. Justin Rose, the former No. 1 golfer in the world, was one of the company’s first advertising sponsors and earned $2 million a year. year. This path led Slync to one of the main sponsors of the Dubai Desert Classic in 2021 as part of a multi-million dollar deal.
The goal was to expand the Slync brand, but Kirchner appreciated the benefits that came with it. He photographed golf games with Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy and competed in tournaments, including the illustrious JP McManus Pro-Am at Adare Manor in Ireland.
Kirchner was there in 2022 leading the Slync team 3 weeks before he was fired as chief executive and dropped from the company’s board.
Many other people gave the impression that they had been deceived by Kirchner’s façade, including Yasir Al-Rumayyan, governor of the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF), chairman of Newcastle United and some other golf enthusiasts.
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Kirchner visited the Centurion Golf Club in St Albans, a suburb of London, in June 2022, where he had a seat at the pro-am LIV Golf tournament, a debut for the inaugural occasion of the Saudi-backed tour. Sergio Garcia and Ian Poulter, Europe’s leading duo, were among Kirchner’s 18 partners.
“I saw with my own eyes the date he had with Yasir Al-Rumayyan that day at LIV,” said Nigel Owen, a former spokesman for the fan group Black and White Together Derthrough, which invited through Kirchner to the Centurion GC.
“We came off the 5th or 6th green and, between there and the next tee, there were two huge guys, almost gorillas. They broke up and there was a little boy and then I wondered who he was.
“Chris and Al-Rumayyan greeted each other like long-lost friends. It was a bear hug. If you’re in my shoes, as someone looking for someone to buy Derby County, I look at it with other people. I like that and I’m like, “This guy is going to have to be legit. “
A gigantic media presence available to cover up the beginning of golf’s disruptive new era and Kirchner was caught off guard as he made his way to the clubhouse. Updates have been requested on the Derby’s takeover amid reports of its collapse. ” he said.
Tonight, the American businessman withdrew from the purchase procedure of the long-suffering club pic. twitter. com/veuBp8mIls
– Dan Roan (@danroan) June 13, 2022
Owen, however, had a different opinion on the situation.
“Less than an hour after that moment he told me he had done it,” she recalled. “The movement had been made and it was done. I spent the next hour with him in the clubhouse with Phil Mickelson at the next table. He (Kirchner) called other people to tell them it was done. From there I started believing that the cash had been moved. All of this happened.
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Derby, at that point, desperate. It’s been nearly nine months in management after owner Mel Morris ended his monetary support, prompting deductions for problems and the league’s inevitable relegation.
The club’s long-term was at stake, and Kirchner, named the trustees’ preferred bidder in April 2022, presented the only visual promise of salvation. However, Kirchner seemed more interested in the exposition and applause than in achieving that goal.
While one might have expected Kirchner to engage in talks with Morris, the American has shown little interest in sitting around a table with the owner. Morris had become an obnoxious figure to Derby enthusiasts and Kirchner took the opportunity to defend his position, continually criticizing and criticizing. wondering the guy who had the keys to the club.
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Morris was suspicious of Kirchner and resented the American’s hostile and distant approach. It also didn’t go unnoticed that few potential football club owners made comments on social media.
In fact, Kirchner enjoyed being in the spotlight. For several weeks and months, he interacted with enthusiasts on virtual platforms, promising to fix his long-suffering club. There was even an interview with Derby’s internal media. “It’s like a home to me,” he said, comparing the view of the Derby to the “hills” of his hometown of Lexington, Kentucky.
Kirchner attended several home games during the 2021-22 season and waved to fans from his padded seat. He stopped at pubs on the day he was fit, accompanied by his wife Ali, and posed for photographs.
Kirchner also met with players and staff at the club’s Moor Farm educational complex, dressed in Derby-branded clothing. Forward Tom Lawrence photographed visiting Kirchner’s home in Dallas during summer break.
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“Derby were looking for a different guy and he gave that impression,” says Chris Poulter, former leader of Derby City Council, who was photographed with Kirchner at the Peacock pub before a home game at the end of the 2021-22 season. season.
Kirchner had made an effort to ingratiate himself with the council. “I had them absolutely under control,” says one of the key players in the acquisition project. “He had captivated them into believing he was the guy who would take the Derby. Go ahead. “
“It wasn’t up to me, or any of the members, to do the due diligence to find out if I really had the money or where I got it from,” Poulter says. “It was up to the directors and the league. ” He had been proposed as the preferred bidder and we did not yet have any selection to complete the job.
What follows borders on the tragicomic. On a Sunday at 8:45 a. m. m. , Morris won a call from an intermediary, a banker, suggesting that it would be profitable for both parties to start communicating.
Kirchner followed up with a letter introducing himself and explaining that he was looking to buy the club. Morris responded by saying that he found it unexpected that this was his first contact, but made it clear that he was willing to get down to business. happen.
It turned out that Morris and Kirchner were the same bank. But when the move didn’t come from Kirchner’s account, there were many apologies.
In a remarkable exchange, an exasperated Morris ended up telling Kirchner’s camp that, if necessary, it could simply relay commands on how to connect, what page to find, what buttons to press, and how to send evidence of movement attempts.
But the money was never sent, and Morris had the overwhelming feeling that the whole operation had been a waste of time. He and Kirchner had not spoken once during the entire process.
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Quantuma, the club’s manager, wasn’t the only one fooled. Kirchner worked in negotiations with Garry Cook, former chief executive of Manchester City and now Birmingham City, as well as Paul Stretford, the agent of then-Derby manager Wayne Rooney. , who called Kirchner a “very smart businessman” in October 2021.
He had hired the reputed law firm Squire Patton Boggs and his spouse David Hull to act on his behalf in negotiations, and background checks conducted through the EFL indicated there was no explanation for doubting that Kirchner had the funds to proceed. Help from Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs has also helped strengthen the plausibility of the U. S. hypothesis.
Rooney also presented his public support. The manager was popular with fans, which promptly gave Kirchner an extra layer of respectability.
Stretford was so convinced of Kirchner’s credentials that Triple S, a company of which he is listed as a director, stepped in to cover a £1. 6 million monthly payroll in May 2022. This decision has been investigated by the English Football Association, but says no. Additional measures were considered appropriate.
Stretford would then take legal action against Kirchner in an attempt to obtain the £1. 6 million. A liquidation petition against 9CK Sports Holdings, a now-dormant company of which Kirchner is the sole director, was filed two days after the American’s arrest in February 2023. Triple S was on the list of plaintiffs, however, that lawsuit has been unsuccessful so far.
Triple S said in a statement: “In May 2022, the Triple S Group provided a short-term bridge loan to Chris Kirchner and 9CK. At no time did the Triple S Group provide investment directly to Derby. The recovery of this loan is the subject of ongoing legal proceedings in the United Kingdom and the United States. No additional comments can be made.
“The Triple S Group voluntarily disclosed all data to the FA and fully cooperated with them in the process. The Triple S organization has been open and transparent on this factor from the beginning.
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Stretford and Cook had also been involved in Kirchner’s public search for Preston in early 2022. Cook initiated contact between the two sides once initial interest in the Derby waned in the final weeks of 2021 and, in mid-February, Kirchner attended an opposing home game. to the town of Huddersfield in Deepdale.
Then came an offer for Kirchner to take over Preston from the club’s former local owners, the Hemmings family. You had to make a deal at the right price and with a willing seller.
There was even a broad agreement, but Kirchner opted to leave and return to Dervia. “Have you ever bought a car?” Later I would do a Q&A session on social media. “If someone increases the value in the middle of the transaction by 10% more than agreed upon and then wants to force you to buy features and packages you don’t want/need with the car, do you buy it?”
Preston was not amused, and privately saw Kirchner as a tire kicker. The club issued a blunt statement, intentionally making no reference to the American.
“The most important point to make is that, contrary to suggestions in the public domain, we have never raised the asking price compared to the value and conditions included in the agreed offer,” he said.
Kirchner was considered a “lucky man” by some of those who worked on the deal in Preston. An offer had been made but no evidence of the budget was ever presented.
“Then he will go back to Derby and say he knew from the start that it’s a bigger club than Preston,” a club official said. “Cheeky. “
Kirchner has never hidden her ambition to find a path to professional sport. Golf was the most sensitive of his interests, but he followed English football closely. Kirchner claimed it was part of her family’s upbringing.
“When I joined the company, he told me that he was a lifelong Chelsea fan and that he was willing to sponsor a hospitality suite at Chelsea’s stadium,” Matt Gunn, Slync’s former chief marketing officer, told The Athletic.
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Kirchner had her eyes set on much higher spending until the spring of 2022. “When he bought Derthrough County, he told his executives, including myself, that it was a private activity that he was doing outside of the business and that wasn’t the case. It’s not pro-money,” Gunn adds.
“He said his life’s dream was to have a football club. To make it not seem like a distraction, he even communicated a general call to the company to the staff.
Within Slync, there were already fears that Kirchner’s evident commitment to building the company’s logo would cause monetary difficulties. Sponsorship of the Dubai Desert Classic, the flagship event of the European Golf Tour, was announced in September 2021 as part of a multi-year agreement. That would occasionally be discarded 12 months later. There was also an industry deal with the NHL’s Dallas Stars, and Slync wasn’t able to pay his bills until June 2022. The project’s commitments for sports marketing are estimated to have amounted to about $60 million.
“We all knew it was going to be a big expense,” Gunn says. “He was the only one making the decisions when it came to sports sponsorships — hockey, golf, trips to the Masters — and he ran them almost as if it were an independent department of the company.
“It’s their way of making a bet. Software is not sold only through software. His idea was to build wonderful relationships with people.
“Come and play a round of golf with Justin Rose or take them to a big tournament like the Dubai Desert Classic. I don’t think any of their athletic interactions have generated a single dollar in revenue.
Kirchner came to be perceived as a contradiction by the workers; the guy who helped build Slync and the guy whose moves threatened to bring him down. There is no doubt about his short-term successes as the company’s lead executive, raising $57. 2 million in two rounds of investment. Kirchner presented himself as a sympathetic leader on intelligence days but those who spent time with him won’t miss the small spectacles of wealth.
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“The first time I met him as a user was when I was flying to Dallas to meet with executives and Chris to pick us up for lunch in a bright red Ferrari,” says Gunn. “It was pretty uncommon for me. He showed me his Richard Mille watch, which he told me deserved to consult a money advisor before buying it because it was too expensive.
Many of those who crossed paths with Kirchner flaunted it.
“One time, after a lap, there were like 10 of us in the locker room,” said a user close to the Vaquero Club, “and he said, ‘Okay, I have to pick up my friend in Kentucky on my jet. ‘Do you have to come with me, drink bourbon, and play cards?
“He liked to talk about his money, where he was on his jet, the elite personal field he played, names of celebrities and athletes left and right as if they were his most productive friends. “
Tellingly, however, Kirchner also had an enigmatic side. He would claim that his source of wealth was cryptocurrency investments, describing himself as the boy in a working-class circle of relatives who had gotten lucky. Kirchner had attended the University of Kentucky but left without it. a title, for the first time at Best Buy, the American electronics retailer.
Slync, introduced in 2017, has become his path to bigger things. The company’s growth, with DHL and Kuehne Nagel among its first customers, convinced others to sign up and raised millions. Kirchner, for a time, had legitimacy.
The indictment for his arrest, filed on Feb. 5, 2023, claimed that he limited other Slync employees’ access to monetary information, with the executive leader being the “sole decision-maker. “
The entire investor budget raised in rounds A and B for “product progression and other general business goals” was transferred to a Slync Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) account and prior to the first of these, in March 2020, this account had an overdraft of $693. 21.
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Between April and November 2020, the indictment alleges that Kirchner initiated 27 wire transfers from Slync’s SVB account to Slync’s Chase account, of which Kirchner was the sole signatory. These sums amounted to $2. 174 billion, much of which was transferred to Kirchner’s personal accounts.
In December 2020, just under $37 million was sent to Slync’s SVB account through investors, and Kirchner temporarily transferred $20 million to his private account without permission from Slync’s board of directors. It used $16 million of that sum for the deposit and acquisition of its own Gulfstream G550 jet.
The charging documents also describe how Kirchner initiated another 70 cordon transfers between January 2021 and March 2022, totaling $6. 8 million. The latest of these came a fortnight before Quantuma named Kirchner as a bidder for County Derby.
However, cracks were beginning to appear in an empire built on sand. Slync staff were paid in late April, May, and June 2022, and Kirchner attempted to raise money. Convinced 4 teams to inject $850,000 into a Round C fundraiser. Delayed Kirchner sells her personal jet to pay C-round investors.
The finish line is near. Kirchner fired a Slync worker after informing the company’s board that financial functionality had been falsely exaggerated, and in July 2022, Kirchner suspended his position as executive leader. He then “attempted to delete approximately 18 GB of data from Slync, adding emails,” according to the U. S. Attorney’s Office.
“All the precautionary signs were there and I saw, directly and, the user that it was,” Gunn says. “I felt satisfied when I was no longer in a position of strength within that company, but dissatisfied knowing that so many other people were affected by what I had done.
“Chris kept his character until the end. The company went bankrupt when it filed a countersuit for legal fees. That says a lot about who he was. He couldn’t move the money he’d earned without a dozen red flags popping up. I can’t, he can’t show remorse for it, but it’s not completely out of place.
Slync disbanded at the end of last year.
Still, Derby County could regard the failure of negotiations with Kirchner as a blessing. His official withdrawal came on June 14, paving the way for local businessman David Clowes to save his childhood club from the risk of liquidation.
“Now you can look back and it’s almost ridiculous and gloomy,” says one staff member. “Did it happen? But you almost realize how lucky you are now with the owner. If the deal with Chris Kirchner had been closed, what could have happened?
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A spokeswoman for Quantuma, which has selected Kirchner as the preferred bidder to acquire Derthrough, said: “The co-directors can verify that their anti-money laundering testing obligations have been met. Co-directors are in a position to comment on due diligence processes that have been carried out through third parties. There are legal obligations imposed on co-directors and other governments which mean that no additional comments can be made.
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Derby would almost certainly have been in huge trouble. Everything Kirchner owned was seized within a year and he is now awaiting a sentence that could mean he will be jailed for decades.
“I don’t know what their intentions were,” says a senior official concerned about the procurement process. “It was going to explode at some point. He was brought in by other people inside the club and I guess that gave him a safe security. “point of credibility that was beyond what he had had.
Kirchner had the charm and confidence, but also the money, to sustain the life of her dreams.
Additional contributors: Melanie Anzidei, Elias Burke
(Design: Eamonn Dalton; photographs: Richard Sellers/PA Images Getty Images, Robbie Stephenson/PA Images Getty Images, Nathan Stirk/Getty Images)