The South African Rugby Union (SARU) has asked media to assist in alerting local businesses to the activities of a Western Cape-based conman who has been attempting to defraud local restaurants.
At least two Cape Town establishments have been approached to take bookings for large groups from someone purporting to be “Chair, Organising Committee, SARU”.
In one instance a Cape Town restaurant received a booking for a meal for 27 people on the strength of an apparently forged “proof of payment”. In the other a booking was made for 36 people.
The “proof of payment” is then used to claim overpayment for the forthcoming booking. The fraudster requests reimbursement into his account in order to ensure his party is able to pay for transport to fulfil the booking.
Businesses are advised to beware of a person calling himself Craig Adams, claiming to be “Chair, Organising Committee, SARU”. He uses the email address theboks@therugby.co.za in an attempt to lend credibility to his scam. SARU has no such employee and does not operate such an email domain.
SARU is making further inquiries with a view to referring the matter to the South African Police Services.
“A brilliant new initiative put into action by the board to raise money for the coffers,” said one insider, “We know that JFK and his mates won’t be paying for their season tickets this year as we are such a crap bunch of administrators, and have driven away any decent players, coaches, etc., but that isn’t how we see it. We look at it from the other side. As long as the club is wealthy it means in the very important meetings that we have, we can afford decent tea and cake, and this keeps the members tummies full, which in turn makes them happy. This, therefore is a wonderful scheme that we have put into operation to keep the piggy bank full and making us look rich, who needs rugby! But for obvious reasons, this is off the record, and I will deny ever having met you if it comes out.”
From this we can certainly extrapolate the reason why so many people have been allowed to slip through the loop. All the administrators are asleep in the meetings after gorging themselves on on the trappings of a certain young ‘Craig Adams’