Posted by Alum '04  12/16/2024 9:48 am | #1 |
How on earth does this happen? I'm assuming GMU has been on plenty of off season junkets in the past. What type of minor league outfit allows themselves to get ripped off by a scammer?
Can you imagine if GW's trip to Japan in the late 2010s got cancelled at the last minute and never happened?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/12/13/maurice-smith-travel-fraud-mason-basketball/?carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3ff62a5%2F67601516e179af1b45ebf2c3%2F596b4c369bbc0f403f8ea414%2F41%2F81%2F67601516e179af1b45ebf2c3
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Posted by GW Alum Abroad 12/16/2024 12:29 pm | #2 |
And you thought recruiting and shoe contracts were the sleazy underbelly of college sports? These foreign trips are very loosely regulated and opperators are NOT required to have NCAA certification.
I have seen tours from very good and reputable companies, and tours by people that run shell companies from their suburban stripmall storefront. We hear about group travel scams all the time (the cruise ships that do not exist, the tours that never happen), usually they target inexperienced or elderly travelers, obvioulsy the first one I have heard of involving a DI team. Was this a case of a sub-contractor who ran in to cashflow issues and got snowed under without having the courage to admit to having a problem, or was this the result of predatory actions? Either way, sucks for Mason and its players; oftentimes these trips are the first chance the players ever get to leave the USA and that is a great experience for 18-22 year-olds.
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Posted by Alum '04 12/16/2024 7:23 pm | #3 |
GW Alum Abroad wrote:
And you thought recruiting and shoe contracts were the sleazy underbelly of college sports? These foreign trips are very loosely regulated and opperators are NOT required to have NCAA certification.
I have seen tours from very good and reputable companies, and tours by people that run shell companies from their suburban stripmall storefront. We hear about group travel scams all the time (the cruise ships that do not exist, the tours that never happen), usually they target inexperienced or elderly travelers, obvioulsy the first one I have heard of involving a DI team. Was this a case of a sub-contractor who ran in to cashflow issues and got snowed under without having the courage to admit to having a problem, or was this the result of predatory actions? Either way, sucks for Mason and its players; oftentimes these trips are the first chance the players ever get to leave the USA and that is a great experience for 18-22 year-olds.
The thing that stood out to me was when GMU declined to comment when the Post asked if its contracting policies changed in light of this fiasco.
