Football broker appears today before the criminal court in Antwerp after selling non-existent football players
According to Het Laatste Nieuws, Bram Schrier, football agent, will appear before the criminal court in Antwerp today. Between 2008 and 2016, the man swindled various investments for a total amount of 5 million euros with non-existent football players.
Former assistant coach of Antwerp, Bram Schrier, has been defrauding investors for eight years with transfers of non-existent football players. In exchange for the investments, Bram promised between 15 and 25% interest on top of the investment amount. A sum that have never seen.
About twenty investments from Belgium and the Netherlands were convinced, never their money back. A Dutch couple is no less than 1.4 million euros. Also someone from Brasschaat never saw 1 million euros come back. Problems were reported to the Antwerp police, but the case only gained momentum after the broadcast of three episodes about the Schrier case in the Netherlands. In the SBS program ‘Undercover’, various witnesses have their say, including Gerard Stroobants, a retired Antwerp artist.
He found Bram on the Eilandje and was convinced to win no less than 650,000 euros in ‘footballers’ from Eastern Europe. “It’s also my own fault. I took Schrier at his word. Each time he had a different excuse for not paying me back. Dan said that Mönchengladbach could not pay, because the police there were investigating him and he had the bill again,” says Stroobants in the ‘Undercover’ program.
In addition to Gerard Stroobants, another victim has lost 650,000 euros to Schrier. He also invested in the transfers of four so-called football players. “My client was impressed with all the licenses and documents Bram Schrier presented. He had a UEFA license. He had partnerships with Arsenal and Manchester City. All those documents turn out to be forged. said Frank Impens the victim’s lawyer.
Bram Schrier was even an assistant coach at Antwerp in the 2004-2005 season. Then Schrier said he learned coaching under George Kessler and then worked at MTK Budapest, CSKA Sofia and Lokomotiv Varna. It turned out that Schrier did not have a trainer’s diploma.