It was pretty amazing to read a story this week of how Cape Town City were tricked into signing a fraudster.
In August, City signed Dutch winger Bernio Jordan Enzo Verhagen.
The winger arrived from Moldova and there was hype around the 24-year-old who had Ajax Amsterdam training on his CV.
Going by the name Jordinhovic, Verhagen was friendly when I interviewed him in the week of his arrival.
We laughed about the time he had in Moldova, where, he said, players of colour are treated like gods.
He told me that in that former Soviet nation, they only saw black players on TV playing for Champions League teams. So when he arrived there, they were expecting him to score two goals a game.
SIGNING: City's Comitis and Verhagen. Picture: Supplied.
“Did that have anything to do with you looking like a mini Mario Balotelli?”, I asked him. He admitted that people say he looks like maltrap Mario all the time.
He was funny and he said that the quality of the football in South Africa was way higher than out in Eastern Europe.
He gave me his number to stay in touch, saying that he was injured and would only be in the first-team reckoning by 2020.
And I thought to myself, wow, City are really banking on this kid since they had already filled their PSL-sanctioned quota of foreign players.
The next time I heard of Bernio, it was in a retweeted Twitter post saying he was signed by a Chilean club.
I didn’t think much of it. I reckoned City had cut their losses and moved on.
LOOKALIKE: Balotelli. Picture: Supplied.
Then three weeks ago, I got an email from a journalist in Denmark, where he had been signed to Viborg, asking me about Verhagen’s time at City and I told all the above.
This week, I saw that Verhagen was arrested in Denmark for robbery.
And the Danes finally unmasked Verhagen as a conman, who had duped all his clubs with forged documents to sign him.
It made me wonder how many countless other frauds there have been around the game.
MOST FAMOUS BOEF: Carlos Kaiser. Picture: File image.
The most footballing frauds of all time was Carlos Kaiser.
This Brazilian striker of the 70s and 80s was signed by Rio de Janiero giants Flamengo, Fluminese, Botafogo and Vasco da Gama.
In a fake career of 20 years, according to Wikipedia, he played just six times and never scored.
In a film about him, he used to hang out with Brazil’s World Cup winning captain Carlos Alberto and people were geflous.
One of the quotes about the Brazilian boef was that “he always wanted to be a footballer, but never wanted to play football”.
Maybe the status of being a baller is just too great for these guys.