The former manager of the band Tears for Fears was sentenced to three and a half years in jail Friday for defrauding investors in a purported cure for drunkenness made from volcanic rock.
Paul King, 52, was convicted of fraud at London's Southwark Crown Court. Prosecutors said he took $823,000 US from business partners in Soba International Ltd., a firm set up to market the remedy in Britain.
King told partners he would use his music-industry contacts to help raise money to market the product. Instead, he set up a shadow company with the same name and siphoned off money to start other businesses and maintain a luxury lifestyle.
In addition to the jail sentence, he was banned from being a company director for 10 years.
According to backers of the remedy, crushed volcanic rock, ingested as a powder, filters alcohol from the bloodstream. Marketing the product in Britain was the idea of two British rugby players who saw it for sale in South Africa in 1999.
King managed Tears for Fears in the 1980s, when the British duo topped the charts with hits including Mad World and Everybody Wants to Rule the World.
