Unsportsmanlike behavior.
Recently, four families of college football players were targeted in a scam that convinced them their sons were in jail and needed to post bail.
When scammers called the families of four players from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff and asked them to post about $1,000 in bail, three of them figured out the scam, but the fourth wasn’t as lucky.
Senior kicker Dean Sallis’ mother sent money to scammers out of sheer panic.
“This gentleman said, ‘This is Officer Jenkins from campus security. Your son, Dean, is here. He’s been arrested.'” Alison Sallis told Fox 16.
Sallis said he got the call as his family returned home to Ohio from a recent trip to UAPB, a Division I HBCU school in the Southwestern Atlantic Conference, to watch a game. .
“I panicked and sent the money,” Saris added. “I immediately went into mama bear mode and thought, oh my god, my child is sitting in a prison in Arkansas.”
To make matters worse, Dean was sleeping in his dorm when his mother called and was unable to immediately tell her that he was not in jail.
One coach theorized that the scam calls, which were made over several days, targeted soccer players because they had easy access to their information.
“It’s unfortunate that any young kid would be targeted, but obviously I think it’s a little easier to get information,” UAPB special teams coordinator Kyle Kramer told the station. “They have biographies, player profiles and things like that.”
Many schools feature student-athletes’ photos, stats, and personal information such as hometowns and, in Dean’s case, the names of their parents and siblings.
“In a way, I was relieved that they were going after the other players as well,” Sallis said of the other three families who realized it was a scam before they sent money.
“At first I just thought Dean was being targeted. I can’t believe I was scammed,” Sallis said, adding that she reported the scam to her bank and is waiting to get her money back. added.
Sallis is not the only mother who has been defrauded because her child is at risk.
In July, a mother in Georgia nearly had a “heart attack from complete panic” after scammers used artificial intelligence to recreate her daughter’s voice in an attempt to make it appear that she had been abducted.
Debbie Shelton Moore received a phone call saying her daughter Lauren had been taken by three men and demanding a $50,000 ransom.
