A WORLD Cup ticket tout who left thousands of football fans heartbroken when his firm went bust owing £2.5m, was last night facing a jail sentence.

David Spanton's victims included North-East travel agents and fans eager to watch the 1998 tournament, in France.

He boasted that his company, Great Portland Entertainments (GPE), could get any amount of tickets.

But of the 38,000 tickets it sold, only 2,000 were actually delivered to fans.

The company, based in Regent Street, London, was eventually wound up days before the start of the World Cup, Blackfriars Crown Court heard yesterday.

Spanton, 32, who founded the firm and was a director, was cleared of fraudulent trading after a two-month trial. But he was remanded in custody "for the protection of the public" after it was revealed he had run GPE while he was an undischarged bankrupt.

A jury also found him guilty of failing to preserve company records.

Judge Deva Pillai warned him to expect a jail sentence.

The conclusion of the case came as this year's showpiece tournament in Japan and South Korea began.

World Cup organiser FIFA has now tightened up regulations on the selling of tickets, and has scrapped the system operated four years ago which allowed companies to bid for an official licence to act as FIFA agents.

Spanton told customers tickets would be sent to them three weeks before the matches began.

Among those which lost out was North-East travel agent Callers Pegasus, which was forced to refund £13,300 to local league football clubs.

Claire Gibson, manager of Hays Travel, at Shildon, County Durham, lost £2,750 she had paid for tickets.

John McGuinness, prosecuting, said: "There was a cataclysmic failure by the company to provide anything more than a small proportion of the tickets it had agreed to sell."

The company was wound up on June 4, 1998, and dissolved a month later.

Spanton told disgruntled customers he had been let down by his suppliers - the Cameroonian Football Association.

Spanton, of St Paul's View, central London, will be sentenced on July 12.