President of Stratford Soccer Club warns someone is sending scam emails in her name
Emails went out to P.E.I. parents asking for gift cards to be given to board members
The president of the Stratford Soccer Club in central P.E.I. is warning parents of players that scammers are emailing requests for them to buy gift cards.
"It's frustrating to know that someone's trying to take advantage or use our club to gain means that are not related to the club," Tara Ferguson told CBC News in an interview.
Ferguson said emails were sent out using her name and a fake email address, asking that parents purchase gift cards for board members. She sent out her own email to the more than 900 members of the club after learning about the request.
"We would never ask for that... it was not from us [but] someone impersonating myself," Ferguson said.
This isn't the first time that club members have gotten mysterious emails. Last year, Ferguson said another scam email went out asking that parents reach out to the sender to talk about something.
"I would want parents to know that we would never do a generic e-mail about that," she said.
It's frustrating to know that someone's trying to take advantage or use our club to gain means that are not related to the club.— Tara Ferguson, president of the Stratford Soccer Club
"If we're emailing, it would be about a specific issue... We would give, like, our contact information for them to call us, and not do something significant via email."
Ferguson said the scammers are likely taking her name from the soccer club's website and creating an email address that seems plausible. Real emails from the club would come from its long-established email address, not a generic one including the word president with letters and numbers afterward, she pointed out.
"We would use our registration system-generated email database because it's so big and can get everybody in one e-mail. That's the route that we would use to communicate anything related to fundraising," she said.
Ferguson said they don't know where the emails are coming from, so there's not much the club can do, other than ask anyone who does get the suspicious email to contact her personally, the club or police.