Ticket scam, robbery rock Rollers
Boitumelo Khutsafalo | Wednesday April 19, 2017 15:14
The club was dealt a blow when robbers tailed a vehicle transporting gate takings to the team’s offices at CA Sales on the same night.
Rollers spokesperson, Bafana Pheto said the vehicle, with two occupants was robbed at the CA Sales gate.
Pheto said upon arrival at the gate, while awaiting the security officers to open the gate, another vehicle approached and forced the victims out of the car.
The alleged robbers then fled the scene with the vehicle, which was found dumped in Phase Four the following day. Everything in that vehicle was found inside the car except the tickets and the money.
The matter is before the Old Naledi police, so we are still waiting for them to conclude their investigations,” Pheto said.
He revealed that they usually transport the money to CA Sales after their home games since the safes are kept there.
He said a second vehicle transporting proceeds from club merchandise was following behind, but luckily it was not robbed.
Before the robbery incident, there was a ticket scam at the National Stadium.
Pheto said Rollers members caught some people selling duplicate tickets.
He said the suspects were reported to the police where upon questioning revealed that they got the tickets from ‘someone’ at the Botswana Premier League (BPL).
The two incidents marred the big encounter against the two giants of Botswana football. Pheto said they have always suspected that something was not in order regarding the selling of tickets.
He said they were at times surprised that they would find that their matches attracted large crowds, but the proceeds would not match the attendance.
He said the norm is that the BPL office distributes all the tickets to the teams to sell but wonders where the duplicated tickets come from.
Meanwhile, the acting BPL chief executive officer Thabo Ntshinogang said his office is still carrying out investigations on what transpired.
He said the host teams are responsible for selling tickets and therefore is waiting for Rollers to brief them on what exactly happened.
Ntshinogang also refused to shed light on the status of a BPL employee who was reportedly arrested and questioned over the distribution of duplicate tickets.