Report: Allegations of fraud arise in pipeline between Australian players, college football

A seven-month investigation by a San Antonio-based TV station has reportedly found alleged immigration fraud potentially involving Australian punters and kickers that have permeated college football rosters over the last decade.

An exclusive from FOX-29 out of San Antonio investigated allegations that suggested some of the many Australian kickers and punters on college football rosters in the U.S. were potentially inelligible to receive not only a college scholarship but also a student visa, a potential violation of NCAA regulations.

“The injustice is there are players that are doing it the right way, Australian and international players, American players that are doing it the right way, that have legit transcripts,” an anonymous college coach told FOX-29.

FOX-29 reported that the aforementioned anonymous college coach first learned of this potential issue when an Australian player he had previously recruited “was re-represented as a four-year eligible freshman by the Australian company Prokick.”

“He had started working with Prokick, and they were these coaches that I was talking to who were under the impression that he had four years to play,” the anonymous coach told FOX-29. “He had never been to college, and I said, that’s not what I discovered when I was recruiting him, he had three years to play.”

Prokick Australia’s website lists seven current NFL punters that it has helped get into major U.S. colleges, including Texas alum Michael Dickson of the Seattle Seahawks, Ohio State alum Cameron Johnston of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and Utah alum Mitch Wishnowsky of the San Francisco 49ers.

FOX-29 partnered with Ken Gamble, chairman of IFW International, to verify the authenticity of the documents it had obtained, including academic records of several Australian players that received scholarships in the U.S.

“These students that we’ve investigated have attended university full-time, and we don’t believe that it was disclosed,” Gamble told FOX-29. “If there has been a misrepresentation of their educational standards, then this is not only a violation of the NCAA eligibility rules, but it’s also fraud. in their visa documents.”

FOX-29 cited an instance where one Australian student-athlete had a transcript from an Australian school that indicated failing grades. But the same student-athlete’s NCAA-submitted transcript featured “significantly higher grades allegedly altered to meet academic requirements,” according the station.

An anonymous Australian trainer and recruiter provided FOX-29 with several transcripts that he claimed Prokick altered to help their players secure scholarships at U.S. colleges.

“There was a kid that actually outed himself,” the anonymous trainer told FOX-29. “They sat down. He sat down with his advisor and said, ‘Oh, you need to take these classes and these classes.’ And then he was like, ‘No, no, I already took that in university.’ And they said, ‘What?’ They did some research. And they said, ‘You’ve already gone to uni? You’ve got, you know, two weeks to pack your bags and get out of here.'”

FOX-29 said it reached out to Prokick Australia but did not receive a response as of Tuesday’s publishing.

The influx of Australian punters and kickers have reportedly led to a 54-percent decrease in American-born punters, according to Mike McCabe, the owner and founder of One-On-One Kicking, which operates out of Alabama, Florida and Georgia.

“I think the whole country pretty much knows, in our industry and kicking, what is going on,” McCabe told FOX-29. “When you see a certain company that guarantees that you are going to have a full scholarship no matter where you go or if you come there to train there, that’s a big red flag.”

And if the Australian-based student-athlete’s eligibility records are altered or falsified, there’s potential their student visas allowing them to go to college in the U.S. also contains false information, which raises concern about possible immigraton fraud.

“If you’re coming from a different country, you’d have to alter your visa just to be able to get into the United States,” McCabe said. “So you know that there is, is, is a big no-no.”