Page 10 - Autumn 2019

Page 10_Layout 1 09/10/2019 07:54 Page 1

A WARNING!
10 A WARNING!
Nothing to do with Bowls
Nothing to do with Bowls
BUT PLEASE read on .......
BUT PLEASE read on .......
Email scammers turn their sights on youth
football teams. A Reading-based club
was duped out of £28,000, but Barclays
was only able to recover £8.90. Other vol-
unteer groups and charities should be-
ware
Laurel Park FC’s treasurer has of-
fered to sell his house to repay the club.
Treasurers of community groups and
small charities have been warned to be extremely wary after a youth football club was conned
out of more than £28,000 by fraudsters using a fake email scam. Laurel Park FC says it has
had to suspend all planned spending, and the treasurer has resigned, after he was duped into
making a series of payments to what he thought were companies undertaking work for the club.
The scam started when he received what looked like a routine email from the chairman
asking him to pay £7,000 to a supplier from the club’s Barclays account. He had expected the
request as the club, which operates 27 youth teams from playing fields on the edge of the town,
was looking to spend money on its facilities. Only after he had made four payments – amounting
to in excess of £28,000 into other Barclays accounts – IT did emerge that the emails he’d re-
ceived were false, and had come from a mocked-up lookalike account. The case will send a
shiver down the spine of anyone who acts as a treasurer for a club or charity.
The conmen, who have previously focused on solicitors and builders, appear to now be
picking on those with perhaps lower security measures. We rely on volunteers to manage the
day-to-day running, and our treasurer was just that – a volunteer doing his best Barclays has
washed its hands of the matter and refused to cover the losses, bar the £8.90 it says it was able
to recover. The police have been similarly uninterested.
Andy Dykes, the club’s secretary, says the episode has been devastating for those in-
volved. He says the unnamed treasurer has even offered to sell his house to allow him to repay
the club, although they are hoping they won’t have to take him up on the offer. Dykes says the
club will survive the loss, albeit on reduced means. The funds that were set to be spent on a
much-need upgrade to the sports facilities and equipment, however, are gone.
“Like thousands of other community football clubs, we rely on volunteers to manage the
day-to-day running, and our treasurer was just that – a volunteer doing his best,” Dykes says.
“He’s a former accountant who, at 82, is still great with figures, although not perhaps the most
technically savvy person. He received what looked like a standard email request from our chair-
man to make a payment, and he did what many of us would have done – he carried it out.”
Laurel Park FC runs nine girls’ teams and 18 boys’ teams. Club officials were staggered
to discover that names used on online payments are completely ignored by the banks, which
only use the account and sort code numbers when
transferring money.
In this case, the treasurer believed he was send-
ing the money to specifically named building contrac-
tors – but it ended up in the fraudster-controlled
personal bank accounts. Dykes, who has seen the
emails sent by the fraudsters, says they were very
convincing. He is also aware that another local foot-
ball club was also targeted by the same group.
“We have asked Barclays to investigate how our
money has been moved from our account into others
at the same bank, and to then disappear.