Background: Rise and fall of Leeds Utd whizzkid Simon Morris

And then it all went wrong. His business collapsed, he found himself at the centre of a Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigation, and bankruptcy followed.

Now, he has been convicted of a blackmail plot and stands on the verge of going to jail.

Morris has already known enough highs and lows to last a long lifetime. In June 2010 the SFO announced that it was ending a three-year investigation into his affairs, on the grounds of insufficient evidence, over allegations that his company had sold buy-to-let properties at inflated prices that left buyers unable to cover mortgage payments out of rental income, accusations that Morris has always denied.

His rise to the top had been spectacular. The ex-Leeds Grammar School boy dropped out of a law degree course to go into business, selling coats on a market stall, which rapidly gave way to bricks and mortar as he bought his first flat, refurbished it and sold it at a profit. That pointed the way to a business specialising at first in properties for students and young professionals. The company went on to develop 20/20 House – a £36m residential scheme in the centre of Leeds – and as property prices in the city soared, so did Mr Morris’s fortunes.

By 2006, his company’s turnover was more than £80m and it moved into a purpose-built £8m headquarters in Brewery Wharf. Success also brought him a newly-built luxury home in the affluent village of Scarcroft, north of Leeds.

By the age of 30, Morris had amassed a fortune estimated at £69m and was number eight on the Sunday Times Young Rich List, missing out on inclusion in the main list by £1m.

It all started to fall away in the autumn of 2007 with a BBC Panorama documentary, which examined claims by investors that they had paid too much for properties, the price of which had been inflated with the collusion of valuers.

Morris told the Yorkshire Post last year that the publicity wrecked his reputation and led directly to his downfall.

He said: “Our stakeholders, our banks, withdrew from our business. That same week we lost two financing facilities, which were circa £50m in cash. It looked bad to everyone else, because if your main stakeholders, your main lawyers and your main accounts are dropping you, you’re guilty straight away. October 2007 was a real hard time for us because we lost our lawyers, lost our accountants and lost support from the banks, so that next 12 months we were scrambling away just to stabilise the business, because as soon as we were getting any cash in, the banks wanted it back.

“Which meant we had to make over 80 people redundant in a four-month period, some people who had been employed by the business for several years.”

He added: “I was fairly naive when I started off in business and what I did was raise my profile to such a level with the involvement in Leeds United, the Rich List, I was a much more identifiable candidate to shake a stick at than the big faceless corporations, who were doing exactly the same thing on a much bigger scale.

“I’m born and bred in Leeds, I’ve been involved with Leeds United, so a lot of people know my face, and because of the way things were reported, people assumed I was guilty until proven innocent, so from a business perspective it was incredibly difficult to get anybody to take me seriously.”

Morris and bodyguard Johnathon Ashworth will be sentenced on October 24. They have already been warned that a jail sentence is “inevitable”.