USA Rugby has forwarded the following messaging in regards to a professional rugby scam:

We have been made aware of a scam targeted unsuspecting rugby players and coaches.

The fraudsters are posing as a new professional rugby club with bases in various countries including the USA, Canada and Europe.

They are basically inviting players to join a new professional team and are asking for an upfront registration fee to be paid.  Under no circumstances should players pay any club a registration fee in advance of arrival.

The club names that we have seen being used so far are:
ORC
Olen Rugby Club
LUC Rugby Academy
Swiss Rugby Union
Denmark Rugby Union

Ole Neilson and Luc Baatard are names being used fraudently by these people.

Please ensure that you ignore any approaches from clubs with these names and these people and if you are ever asked to pay a registration fee in advance with a club in all reality it is likely to be a scam.  Further if something seems to good to be true then it is likely to be.

If you have any information regarding this please forward it on to me so we can try and locate the people responsible.

Please forward this on to any other players/coaches that you know of.

Kind regards