The Danish Sailing Association (Dansk Sejlunion) has not disclosed which clubs are involved. It only announced that they are located on both sides of the Great Belt and have suffered losses of DKK 420,000 (56,300 euros) and DKK 100,000 (13,400 euros) respectively.
"That's many years of savings that have simply disappeared within 24 hours. It's a disaster," says Anders Kristensen, director of the Danish Sailing Association, to DR Sporten. When the club, which he describes as "the big case", informed the Sailing Association about the financial fraud, an information campaign was immediately launched to warn other clubs.
Tragic chain of errors
"We write to all our clubs to warn them and then another club writes back that it was already too late. They had already lost DKK 100,000," says Kristensen.
Tragically, the association with the "big case" only informed the Dansk Sejlunion about the fraud a week later. In the meantime, the fraudsters managed to deceive yet another association. As the perpetrators used a method in which they obtained voluntarily transferred access to the accounts, the chances of a refund are slim.
"The money is lost. It's not a case of hacking, but a human error, which the clubs are not insured against," explains Anders Kristensen.
Systematic financial fraud
This is not the first time that Danish sports clubs have been defrauded of substantial sums of money. In March, a fitness club in Aarhus fell victim to a similar scam, and a few days later the Danish Sports Confederation warned its professional organisations to be particularly vigilant against this type of crime.
"Of course we passed the information on to our clubs, and there was also advice from the NSK (National Special Crime Unit)," explained the director of the Danish Sailing Association. "However, there is a tendency to think that such incidents probably only happen elsewhere. But if these recommendations had been followed, this might not have happened."
Psychological help is offered
The mistakes made not only affect the finances of the organisations, but also hit the volunteers who made them hard. "This person has been hit hard personally. This also applies to the board and especially to the organisation, which has DKK 420,000 at stake," explains Anders Kristensen.
For this reason, psychological counselling has been offered and will most likely be accepted. Psychological help is offered by Idrættens Forsikringer, an insurance scheme that covers the Danish professional organisations, which also includes the Dansk Sejlunion.
"But we also have to remember that nobody died here. Even though there is a lot of money involved and it is absolutely terrible, nobody has been injured," says Kristensen. Both cases have been reported to the police, but it has not been confirmed that they are the same perpetrators.
