Alexandre Villaplane was the captain of the French national team in the first FIFA World Cup in 1930. He was a promising player, and earned a boatload of money before football was even professionalised in the country. However, his interest and skill in football lasted only a few years.

But in 1935, his name came up again, this time for fixing horse races in Paris, and he was put in prison.

During World War II, he teamed up with local criminal Henri Lafont, and they set up a gang called the French Gestapo. The gang wanted to get rich, and so they provided the Nazis with whatever they wanted. In June 1944, for example, they shot 11 resistance fighters dead.

While this went on for a while, in August 1944, the French Army got hold of the gang, and they were put on trial and sentenced to death. In December the same year, the gang members, including Villaplane, were taken to the outskirts of Paris and shot to death.