I received an email from someone saying they were recruiting football players for the new season. The email says they will pay for my travel expenses to Scotland as well as all my accommodation and living expenses while I’m there. Can this be true?
No. This is all a lie, yet another scam. Not even a very good one. The email you sent us, apparently from “Scots united club” provides so many clues, it’s amazing anyone would fall for it. The first paragraph of the email is so terrible it’s worth quoting in full:
“We are recruiting players for 2009/10 for the new season. If you can play active football well or if you can not play.Mrs Liz Scot the president of Scots united club Scotland., is a non governmental organization that promotes talented/untalented footballers and re-opened early this year. Services of an English coach that has been a former assistant coach in a premiership side in England, services of many technical advisers and assistant coaches I trust that with their services and that of footballers the sky will be the limit for Scots fact.”You can see this is a scam, can’t you? Let’s overlook the barely understandable English and just think about a football team that actively recruits “untalented footballers”? You can make up your own joke here. What about “But my favourite team do that already?”
The email goes on to explain that everything will be paid for and even includes this amazing, hilarious sentence:
“No fee what so ever is required from each player as the royal Scotland government under his majesty the king is sponsoring the camping exercise”Errr… What? Is the author of the email insane?
By now I’m sure you’ll have seen the usual clues. Dreadful spelling and grammar, made up facts about a mythical King of Scotland and a complete absence of sense.
The email gives a web site you can visit to find out more about this fictitious team and it doesn’t make any better reading. It’s full of yet more spelling mistakes and ludicrous claims.
Of course what this is all about is another “advance fee”. I guarantee that at some point just before you think you’re going to get your tickets to fly off and become the next David Beckham, they’ll come up with a last-minute problem that requires cash. From you. Lots of it. It might be a “visa fee”, an up-front hotel reservation or a recently invented tax, it doesn’t matter what. That’s what the whole scam is about, getting your money. It’s then that they’ll either go quiet and never be heard from again or they’ll try to string you along demanding more and more money from you.
This and all other such approaches are scams and you should NOT respond to them. Not if you want to keep your hard-earned money.
Dear Consumer’s Voice #2
I’m in Tanzania and have seen in a news paper that there is a company offer jobs in the UK known as Dalberto Sponsors. Is it true that this company is genuine as there are no physical contacts other than an email address.
Please advise?
Yes, Dalberto Sponsors is a scam, no doubt about it. There’s plenty of coverage on our blog where we show you evidence that they’re crooks running a scam. Luckily we’ve only heard from one person in Botswana who actually lost money to them, I hope this means that everyone else has been more skeptical?
Their scam is a simple one and is currently the most “fashionable” of all the scams around. They say they’ll get you a fancy job abroad, earning vast amounts of money and all you need to do is give them some cash up-front. They’ll keep demanding more and more money until either you finally realise you’ve been scammed or you simply run out of cash.
Take a look at the blog for all the evidence about their scam and even that they stole their staff pictures from other places on the web, including, by coincidence, a picture of convicted corrupt politician from Detroit.
Finally isn’t it nice that Consumer Watchdog and The Voice are providing support to people around the world? In the last few months we’ve had emails from consumers all over the world not knowing that we’re in Botswana but asking for our help in their home countries.
Updates
Several people have been in touch asking for an update on the Uniglobe New Era Travel situation. That’s the travel agency that took P8,000 from a customer for a hotel booking but just kept the money instead of making the booking. So far all they’ve given him is a refund cheque that bounced and a mere P500 in cash, despite the Police getting involved. There’s still no good news unfortunately so all we can suggest is this:
Don’t deal with Uniglobe New Era Travel. Don’t give them any money. If you’ve already paid for something check that your tickets are valid, check the reservations have been made, check you’ve got what you paid for. If not cancel the order right now and demand a refund IN CASH. Don’t hang around, they’re likely to be out of business very soon indeed.
Uniglobe New Era Travel can’t be trusted.
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