Olympian Caught in Alleged Crypto Scam Denies Involvement in Six-Figure Crime

CJ Ujah has already lived through one Olympic scandal. Now, he’s facing something far more serious. The British sprinter, once part of a British relay team stripped of an Olympic silver medal, appeared in court this week charged as part of an alleged organized crime group accused of running a cryptocurrency fraud scheme.

Ujah appeared at Chelmsford Crown Court on July 24 alongside nine other defendants. Eight of them, including Ujah, pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to defraud; a ninth defendant, Joseph Umoru, is due to enter his plea at a later date. Ujah faces a second charge too, being concerned in the supply of cannabis, tied to the same date as the rest of the investigation.

That investigation began earlier this year. Coordinated search warrants were executed across Kent, Essex, and London on April 29, carried out by the Eastern Region Special Operations Unit as part of a wider inquiry into suspected organized crime.

Prosecutors allege the group ran a scam in which callers posed as police officers or representatives of cryptocurrency companies, tricking victims into handing over sensitive security details that were then used to drain their digital wallets. One victim is alleged to have lost more than £300,000. Ujah was among six defendants granted bail; four others were remanded in custody.

A 12-week trial has now been set for May 24, 2027, with the next hearing scheduled for September 9, 2026. This isn’t the first time Ujah’s name has been tied to a scandal that split opinion around him, the last one played out very publicly among his own Olympic teammates.

CJ Ujah’s Tokyo scandal still divides the teammates he let down

Ujah’s career had been building toward exactly this kind of moment for years. He broke through in 2014, running 9.96 seconds to become the fifth British man ever under 10 seconds, reached his first Olympics in Rio in 2016, and anchored Britain’s relay team to European gold at the 2018 Berlin Championships. At the 2017 World Championships, he ran the opening leg of Britain’s gold-medal 4x100m relay.

Tokyo 2021 was supposed to be the high point. Ujah led off Britain’s quartet to a silver medal with a national record leg of 37.51 seconds, the country’s first Olympic relay medal in the event since 1924. Days later, he tested positive for two banned substances, ostarine and S-23. He said at the time he was “completely shocked and devastated,” insisting, “To be absolutely clear, I am not a cheat. I have never and would never knowingly take a banned substance.”

The Court of Arbitration for Sport didn’t accept his explanation that the substances came from a contaminated supplement, and Britain’s team was formally stripped of the medal months later. Ujah apologized directly to his teammates once the ruling came down.

“I’m sorry that this situation has cost my teammates the medals they worked so hard and so long for, and which they richly deserved,” he said. “That is something I will regret for the rest of my life.”

His three relay teammates didn’t respond the same way. Richard Kilty was blunt about how personally he took it, saying he’d never forgive Ujah for what he called “sloppy and reckless” behavior that cost the team everything.

“It’s officially gone and it’s utterly devastating,” Kilty said at the time. “As a team-mate I feel let down. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive him.” Zharnel Hughes went the opposite direction, saying he’d spoken to Ujah, accepted his apology, and moved on. “CJ is a great guy, regardless,” Hughes said. “I forgive him.”

It wasn’t until a later investigation by the Athletics Integrity Unit and WADA, separate from the CAS ruling on the medal itself, that Ujah’s account was at least partly vindicated. That panel found his positive test was not intentional, tracing it to the contaminated supplement he had described from the start, and cut his suspension down from a possible four years to 22 months.

None of that history changes what he’s facing now. His next scheduled court date is September 9, 2026, ahead of a trial currently set to begin the following May.

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