{"id":33548,"date":"2026-07-19T10:23:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T10:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/33548\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T10:23:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T10:23:07","slug":"virginia-travel-soccer-coach-charged-in-italy-training-camp-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/33548\/","title":{"rendered":"Virginia travel soccer coach charged in Italy training camp fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fraud<\/a> is as least as old as the Trojan War, when Zeus, in a dream, promised swift victory to Agamemnon were he to blitz Troy that day. This was a promise Zeus had no intention of honoring, which kind of set the fraudulent tone for the rest of the war.<\/p>\n

These days, the gods of Olympus are a lot less active, and nobody falls for the really large wooden horse as a gift thing. Fraud persists, though. The fraudsters just adapt to their time and place<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In America\u2019s wealthy suburbs in A.D. 2026, it is fitting that the schemers would promise not victory in war, but travel soccer<\/a> training.<\/p>\n

\"AhmedAhmed Mohamed was a top coach at the Alexandria Soccer Association in Northern Virginia. (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Ahmed Mohamed was a top coach at the Alexandria Soccer Association in Northern Virginia<\/a>. Alexandria, with a median household income over $120,000, is one of the wealthiest counties in America. It\u2019s not as wealthy as neighboring Arlington, but it is close.<\/p>\n

If you drive around the D.C. area, you\u2019ve seen hundreds of parents proudly sporting the bumper stickers featuring a soccer ball and a wingless gryphon (sort of Germanic) on a red shield-shaped crest (sort of English), a prim hodgepodge of European heraldry.<\/p>\n

The Alexandria Soccer Association is not the local rec league of your youth, and that European imagery hints towards its aspirations. The association runs soccer academies and elite teams for all ages with dozens of professional coaches. This summer, they even brought in German coaches.<\/p>\n

In that Europhile context, Mohamed sold 13 families on a soccer trip to Italy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Families paid between $2,000 and $12,000 for their families to travel to Italy, police say, with the price tag covering flights, lodging, and, of course, elite soccer training. Allegedly, there was no training session awaiting these kids over there, nor were there even flights.<\/p>\n

Apparently, some parents started to sniff out something suspicious and called the Financial Crimes<\/a> Unit\u2019s hotline.<\/p>\n

DUGOUT DAYS<\/a><\/p>\n

Mohamed was, if the cops are right, monetizing the credibility lent to him by that Alexandria Soccer Association crest.<\/p>\n

The most surprising thing is that this travel soccer coach didn\u2019t plan his allegedly fictional training trip to a country that could qualify<\/a> for the World Cup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fraud is as least as old as the Trojan War, when Zeus, in a dream, promised swift victory…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[436,802,3606,1302,5,22811,59,129,19225],"class_list":["post-33548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-italy","tag-crime","tag-culture","tag-family","tag-fraud","tag-italy","tag-magazine-your-land","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-virginia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}