Former Darlington chairman George Reynolds completed a Reginald Perrin style rise and fall today as he was sentenced to three years for cheating the Inland Revenue out of £650,000.
Reynolds, 59, was a safecracker in the 1960's but reformed his ways to become owner of one of the UK's largest kitchen manufacturers. His wealth was once estimated at £260m, and he famously paid off the mortgages of seven employees in 1999 who worked round the clock to keep the firm from going under in the 1990's.
He purchased Darlington in May 1999 and claims to have pumped nearly £30m into the club, but the League Two side entered Administration in late 2003, with Reynolds quitting as Chairman a month later, shortly after the opening of the Reynolds Stadium - a 27,500 seat arena for a club with an average attendance of less than 5,000. The Sterling Consortium initially bought the stadium after loaning £4m to Reynolds to complete construction, and agreed a deal with Reynolds for the club itself when Reynolds became unable to repay the loan and bankruptcy proceedings began.