College football families scammed by phone call saying players were in jail

Unsportsmanlike conduct.

Four families of college football players were recently targeted in a scam, convincing them their sons were in jail and needed their bond paid.

As the scammers called the four families of University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff players, telling them they needed to post approximately $1,000 in bail, three of them figured out the scam while the fourth wasn’t so lucky

The mother of senior kicker Dean Sarris sent money to the scammers out of sheer panic.

“This gentleman says, “It’s Officer Jenkins with campus security, I have your son, Dean here, he’s been arrested,’” Allison Sarris told Fox 16.

Sarris said her family had just gotten back home to Ohio following a trip down to UAPB, a Division I HBCU school out of the Southwestern Atlantic Conference, to catch a recent game when she received the call.

“I panicked like I shouldn’t have and I sent the money,” Sarris added. “I went right into mama bear mode and was like oh my God, I can’t, my kid’s sitting in a jail cell in Arkansas.”

To make matters worse, Dean was sleeping in his dorm when his mother got the call and couldn’t immediately tell her that he was not in jail.

The scam call, which was sent out over several days, targeted the football players because it was easier to access their information, one coach theorized.

“Any young kid, it’s a shame to be targeted but I think obviously they’re a little more easily accessible to get information on,” UAPB Special Teams Coordinator Kyle Kramer told the station. “They have backgrounds and player profiles and things like that.”

Many schools showcase their student-athletes with pictures, stats and personal info including their hometowns and in Dean’s case his parents and brother’s names.

“It’s actually kind of comforting that they went after other players as well,” Sarris said about the other three families, who did figure out it was a scam before sending the money.

“At first we just thought Dean was being targeted. I can’t believe I fell for it,” Sarris said, who added she reported the scam to the bank and is waiting for her money to be returned.

Sarris isn’t the only mother to be scammed over their child being in potential danger.

In July, a Georgia mother “nearly suffered a “heart attack from sheer panic” when scammers used artificial intelligence to recreate her daughter’s voice in an attempt to show she had been kidnapped.

Debbie Shelton Moore received a phone call saying her daughter Lauren was taken by three men and held at ransom for $50,000.