Drink cure scam pop mogul fined

The ex-manager of 80s band Tears for Fears, jailed for conning people into investing in a cure for drunkenness, has now been fined £6,285.

Paul King, 53, from Berkshire, is serving a three-and-a-half year sentence for defrauding his business partners of £458,000.

He persuaded them to invest in marketing 'Soba' - volcanic ash tablets said to instantly sober up drinkers.

He was ordered to pay up within 18 months at Southwark Crown Court.

Molecular sieve

Now declared bankrupt, King used to drive a Rolls-Royce and lived in a £2,000-a-month farmhouse in Winkfield.

He was jailed in May and disqualified from being a company director for 10 years.

Mr King was recruited to the scheme by Christopher Evans and Andrew Crossman, who discovered Soba being sold in South Africa as an alcohol detoxifier.

Scientific tests found that a "molecular sieve" in the deposits, called zeolite, could quickly remove alcohol from the body.

Convinced it could sell to drinkers who wanted to sober up before driving home, the pair began hunting for backers, including Mr King.

The former pop boss promised his partners that his contacts in the music industry could help him raise £600,000 of an estimated £1.3m needed to launch the Soba International Limited.

But according to the prosecution, Mr King, from Crouch Lane in Winkfield, instead set up a company with the same name and diverted investors' money into its bank account.

When Companies House alerted his partners to the mirror business, he told them it was inactive and promised to change its name.