Coach Warns of Scammers Posing as High School Athletes

Edmond (Okla.) Memorial High School head baseball coach is warning his community of a group scamming locals by posing as high school student-athletes. 

According to the local ABC affiliate, the group poses as high school athletes doing a fundraiser, but none of them are on the team and they aren't getting their products through the district. 

"I get a phone call from our school resource officer, and he asks me if our program was selling [prepaid gift] cards at the time, I told him we weren’t," said JP Holman, head baseball coach at Edmond Memorial High School. 

Holman said someone had bought a card from a youth claiming to be a baseball player at Edmond Memorial. 

In Edmond, Holman said a group of children are trying to sell discount cards for local shops and restaurants. They’re doing it in front of big box stores and sometimes selling door-to-door.

"We’re not selling cards, no other program at our school is selling cards, so if someone claims to be an athlete from Memorial, they’re not," Holman said.

Players from Edmond apparently never sell gift cards in front of big box stores, according to Holman, who noted that he knew someone who had bought one of the cards and it didn't work. 

"She tried to use the card and it didn’t work, so that’s when she started asking questions and called the police," Holman said.

Holman said that he's concerned about the athletes' reputation. 

"They take a lot of pride in playing for their school, and they’re the ones that are getting cheated, as well as the people in the community," Holman said.

Legitimate team fundraiser cards will have the school’s logo on it, sometimes a team schedule, and when you take it to a local shop, it will actually work. 

"It hurts us raising money, it hurts the companies that help us, it hurts the community, it’s just a bad look for everybody and it’s not fair," Holman said.