Goshen police investigating youth basketball team solicitation scam

Goshen police are investigating claims that two individuals were soliciting fraudulent donations for youth basketball teams outside the local CVS.

“We received a complaint on April 8 from individual who said she made a donation to a subject who was soliciting outside of the CVS here in Goshen for the Goshen JV basketball team,” said Village of Goshen Chief of Police Ryan Rich. “The victim then went home and spoke to her son, who is actually on the JV basketball team, and found out that her son had never heard of [the solicitor].”

Rich said that upon further investigation, his department determined that several people had made donations in the form of cash and via Zelle to the 20-year-old male suspect, who has no connection to Goshen.

“We are not releasing information on the individual as he has not been arrested,” Rich said. “We are in the process of identifying as many possible victims as we can because that number can determine the severity of a charge. We also want to get some money back to the victims.”

Rich said he could not say how much money the suspect took in that day, but that one victim said the suspect appeared to have hundreds of dollars in cash in his hand.

A few days later, another young man was in front of CVS attempting to solicit donations for a basketball team.

“On Saturday, April 11, we arrested an individual outside of CVS for doing the same thing,” Rich said. “This time, being aware of the last incident, CVS called us and said there is a subject soliciting out front. We got there before he was able to get money from anybody. This person is from New York City, he is 18 years old and had a flyer with a fake basketball team name, logo and QR code. He was charged with attempted scheme to defraud.”

Rich said since his department is in the process of determining if these incidents are linked as part of an organized crime or just a trending scam, he wouldn’t be releasing the name of the arrestee at this time.

Upon being made aware of the April 8 incident, Goshen Central School District released a “donation scam alert.”

“The Goshen Central School District Athletic Department and district administration have confirmed that this incident is not affiliated with the district or any school club or organization,” said a portion of the April 9 alert. “As a reminder, to help distinguish [district]-affiliated donations, events, and initiatives, please avoid sending money via online payment apps such as Zelle, Cash App, Venmo, or PayPal.”

The school district and Goshen police encourage anyone who may have been directly affected by the scam to call the department at 845-294-7988.

“We can’t find any affiliation with Goshen here at all and people need to be aware of it,” Rich said.