Unsportsmanlike conduct.
Recently, four families of college football players were targeted by a scam, convincing them that their sons were in jail and needed bail.
When the scammers called the four families of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff players, telling them they had to post bail of approximately $1,000, three of them discovered the scam, while the fourth was not so lucky.
Kicker Dean Sarris’ mother sent money to scammers out of sheer panic.
“This gentleman says, ‘I’m Campus Safety Officer Jenkins, I have your son Dean here, he’s been arrested,'” Allison Sarris told Fox 16.
Sarris said his family had just returned home to Ohio from a trip to UAPB, a Division I HBCU school in the Southwest Atlantic Conference, to watch a recent game when he got the call.
“I panicked like I shouldn’t have and sent the money,” Sarris added. “I went straight into mama bear mode and was like, Oh my God, I can’t, my son is in a cell in Arkansas.”
The family of Dean Sarris, a UAPB senior kicker, fell victim to the scam after receiving a call saying he was in jail. FOX 16 Allison Sarris, Dean Sarris’s mother, says she panicked and went into mama bear mode when she got the call.FOX 16
To make matters worse, Dean was sleeping in his bedroom when his mother got the call and couldn’t immediately tell her that he wasn’t in jail.
The scam call, which was sent over several days, was targeted at football players because their information was easier to access, one coach theorized.
“It’s a shame that any little kid is a target, but I think it’s obviously easier to access them for information,” UAPB special teams coordinator Kyle Kramer told the station. “They have backgrounds and player profiles and things like that.”
UAPB special teams coordinator Kyle Kramer says football players are being targeted because their information is more publicly accessible than others.FOX 16
Many schools showcase their student-athletes with photos, statistics and personal information, including their hometown and, in Dean’s case, the names of their parents and siblings.
“It’s actually comforting that they went after other players as well,” Sarris said of the other three families, who discovered it was a scam before sending the money.
“At first we thought Dean was being targeted. I can’t believe he fell for it,” said Sarris, who added that he reported the scam to the bank and is waiting for his money to be returned.
At least 4 families of UAPB players were called as part of the scam, but only Sarris’ family sent money to the scammers.FOX 16
Sarris is not the only mother who has been scammed because her child was in potential danger.
In July, a Georgia mother “nearly suffered a “panic heart attack” when scammers used artificial intelligence to recreate her daughter’s voice in an attempt to prove she had been kidnapped.
Debbie Shelton Moore received a phone call saying three men took her daughter Lauren and held her for a $50,000 ransom.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn