Calls to Students Offering Scholarships Are Actually Harassment Scams
By Joe Robertson
Originally published in The Kansas City Star, May 22, 2002
Their phones rang with the calls that teen-age athletes yearn for: A university coach was offering a chance at an athletic scholarship.
But for many teens, perhaps even hundreds, the promise went horribly awry, police said. The caller turned out to be a prankster who led the youths into conversations about peculiar discipline and spanking.
"These young people have the desire to do anything to be a college athlete," said Mitzi Clayton, an assistant director in the University of Missouri-Columbia athletic department. "He was using that."
Lafayette County officials say James O. Riccardi III, 42, of Leawood, has made such calls to three Higginsville, Mo., youths. Riccardi is charged with three counts of harassment and two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, all misdemeanors.
Investigators in Kansas and Missouri, including the Missouri attorney general's office, are continuing an investigation that authorities say extends across several state lines.
According to an affidavit by Higginsville Police Officer Heidi Morgan, police are specifically investigating complaints involving calls made to four basketball players in Chilhowee, Mo., and other calls made to students in Sweet Springs, Mo.
Leawood officials have been tracking suspicious calls made through telephone cards, Morgan said in her affidavit. Student athletes living in homes reached by some of those phone calls also reported similar harassing calls.
Riccardi, who was free on bond, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
For more than a year, Clayton said, MU officials have been receiving reports of prank calls made by a man who said he was an MU coach.
The school has a record of 86 complaints from students, parents or coaches saying that students had been harassed. And many victims said they knew of other students who had been victimized, Clayton said.
"I would say there have been hundreds."
Authorities said one victim, who thought he was talking to a genuine MU coach, agreed over the phone to cut a tree branch, drop his pants and whip himself 100 times. The victim was told it would prove his dedication to be an MU athlete.
In an unrelated Missouri case, Saline County officials last week charged Gregory Parsons, 41, of Marshall, Mo., with four counts each of harassment and endangering a child. Authorities said Parsons contacted female students outside Marshall and falsely claimed to be conducting a school survey.
Authorities allege that Parsons led the callers into inappropriate, harassing conversations.
Marshall Police Chief James Simmerman said that Marshall authorities were alerted earlier this year by the Missouri attorney general's office. That office has been piecing together complaints of similar harassing phone calls from throughout Missouri, various officials said.
A spokesman for Attorney General Jay Nixon said investigators did not want to provide details of the ongoing inquiry.
Investigators said the scope continued to expand as more people called police to report harassing calls.
"Oh my gosh, I'm getting calls daily," said Morgan, of the Higginsville police. "Everything is just snowballing."
Officials said that some complaints of prank calls have been received in other states, including Iowa, Nebraska, Texas and Oklahoma. In many of those cases, the caller falsely identified himself as a coach from other universities closer to the victims' homes.
But most of the complaints apparently have involved MU.
The university has published warnings in newsletters and sent letters to all high school athletic directors in the state, alerting them to the harassing calls, said Sarah Reesman, MU's associate director of athletics.
"Parents especially need to be involved," Reesman said. "A parent can say that's not something a coach would say. A child (who wants a scholarship) might get caught up in not wanting to take the chance of getting off the phone."
Seeking solutions:
If you have received a harassing telephone call from someone purporting to represent a school or college, law enforcement officials say you should contact your local police department.
If you have any doubt that a coach on the phone is real, ask for a telephone number and offer to call him back, said Sarah Reesman, associate director of athletics at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
