![\"Stock](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1_JS309754558.jpg\")
<\/p>\nBelfast Live understands that a second football team fell victim to the alleged fraud earlier this week<\/p>\n
PSNI logo(Image: Niall Carson\/PA Wire)<\/p>\n
Police are investigating allegations of fraud linked to a Northern Irish coach firm.<\/p>\n
The investigation was launched earlier this month after a coach failed to pick up children from Lisburn<\/a> Rovers FC who were due to travel to Scotland for a football tournament.<\/p>\n Belfast Live<\/a> understands that another children’s football team fell victim to the alleged fraud earlier this week.<\/p>\n Speaking to Belfast Live, Nichola Blamer from Lisburn Rovers<\/a> explained that this was set to be their first trip away with the children.<\/p>\n “This was the first trip that we had organised away with the kids, so the planning was taking place last August, and we decided to book the ESF Festival in Scotland.<\/p>\n “W hen we were discussing arrangements with the parents and how we were going to get across, one of our other parents had previously used this company with other football trips, so the plan was that we were going to just hire the coach off him. We didn’t even require him to come over, and the other parent has a bus licence, so the plan was that we were going to get his bus and she was going to drive the bus for us, then onto the ferry, and then we would have transport over there to take us from the caravan park to the football tournaments.<\/p>\n “I made contact with him, and he said it was no problem, that he would do all the booking with the ferry. He told us we were booked on the P&O ferry at 12 o’clock sailing on the 1st of May and returning at 4 p.m. on the 4th of May. He required an \u00a3800 deposit, which was paid to him in October, because apparently that’s when the ferry listings come out for the following year, so you have to get on early to get booked on.<\/p>\n “I insisted on being given an invoice, and the total was \u00a395 per passenger, and we had 42 passengers going over. So the total invoice was \u00a33990. The invoice clearly showed that an \u00a3800 deposit had been paid, with a balance of \u00a33190 due in March.”<\/p>\n Nichola said that the owner of the coach company had been in touch with her regularly while payments were being made and had offered to take the parent who would be driving the coach on a test drive, but cancelled on the day he was due to meet her.<\/p>\n After the test drive was cancelled, Nichola said that she struggled to get in contact with the owner of the company until her husband contacted him, and he said that everything was going to plan and sent them an itinerary for the trip.<\/p>\n “The night before the trip, I was feeling a wee bit uneasy about it. My husband then texted him again to make sure everything was going to plan, and he said, ‘all good so far’.<\/p>\n “The next morning, I was up getting ready, finalising the packing, and I got a message at 7 am to say that he had gone to collect his bus and the bus was gone, and he didn’t have a bus for the trip.<\/p>\n “I quickly messaged him asking for the booking reference so that we could, as a team, try to organise another coach from somewhere else, and the message didn’t go through. His phone was then switched off and remained off for the whole of the weekend, so nobody could make contact with him.”<\/p>\n Nichola told us that the parents of the children were luckily able to book their cars onto the Stena Line service and made it to Scotland.<\/p>\n A PSNI<\/a> spokesperson said: “Police in Lurgan<\/a> are investigating a report of suspected fraud concerning a coach company reported on Friday, 1st May.<\/p>\n “Enquiries are ongoing at this time.”<\/p>\n For all the latest news, visit the Belfast Live homepage<\/strong> here<\/a> and sign up to our daily newsletter<\/a> here.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Belfast Live understands that a second football team fell victim to the alleged fraud earlier this week PSNI…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":965237,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5011],"tags":[188,18997,86570,1144,1618,16,15],"class_list":["post-965236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-northern-ireland","tag-crime","tag-grassroots-football","tag-lisburn","tag-northern-ireland","tag-psni","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116586260858799604","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=965236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/965237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=965236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=965236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=965236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}