Salford Red Devils forward Elijah Taylor reveals the shock of being swindled out of £200,000 by ex-manager

Elijah Taylor has made it as a professional rugby league player.

At 32 years of age, the loose-forward has played almost 200 NRL games for New Zealand Warriors, Penrith Panthers and Wests Tigers.

Ahead of the 2021 Super League season, Taylor made the move to the Salford Red Devils where he has thoroughly impressed in his time at the club so far.

However, the Kiwi’s time in the game has been far from straightforward as he explained how he was swindled out of just over £200,000 by a former manager, Ian Miles, who had taken out almost 1000 transactions from Taylor’s bank account.

“I remember him going on holiday to Fiji and he had duplicated my credit card it so he could hide the costs and it looked like me that was spending,” Taylor told BBC 5 Live.

“There were transactions in Fiji and there was some of them where I should have acted, but I was playing for Penrith and my best footy and I was focused on that.

“How I eventually found out about everything was the people that I had a mortgage with sent a letter home saying I was behind in payments.

“And I thought no way.”

But, Taylor’s world soon came crashing down after making a trip to the bank after being contacted by the company he had taken out a mortgage with.

“I went to the bank and then boom you know those days in your life that you’ll never forget, that’s the day I’ll never forget – that was devastating.

“A couple of weeks before the court case he declared bankruptcy.

“He was like my dad, my real dad passed away and Ian kind of moved into that role. It was disbelief.”