Gainsborough Trinity Condemns Impostor Targeting Players
Gainsborough Trinity have condemned a serial impostor who has been approaching players across non-league football with fake transfer and wage offers while claiming to be the club’s manager.
The Northern Premier League Premier Division side, seventh tier of the English game, say the individual has contacted “a number of players” at different levels of the non-league pyramid, attempting to open talks over moves that simply do not exist.
Chief executive Matt Boles moved quickly to shut it down – and to distance both the club and boss Russ Wilcox from the bogus approaches.
He stressed he wanted to make it “categorically clear” that any communication about potential deals had not come from Wilcox or anyone acting on Gainsborough’s behalf.
“We strongly condemn the actions of the individual responsible,” Boles said on the club’s website. “Impersonating a football manager and making false representations to players is completely unacceptable and has the potential to cause unnecessary disruption and reputational damage to players, managers and clubs.”
The scam only came to light because the non-league network did its job. Managers and officials at other clubs, suspicious of the tone and content of the messages, went straight to the source and contacted Wilcox personally.
Their instincts told them something was off.
“Many have done so precisely because they know Russ, know the professional standards by which he conducts himself, and immediately recognised that this is not the manner in which he would approach or attempt to recruit a player,” Boles explained.
That professional reputation has effectively exposed the hoax. It has also sharpened the club’s response.
Boles delivered a blunt message to the person behind it all.
“Enough is enough,” he said. “Stop impersonating our manager, stop wasting the time of players and clubs across the non-league game and, quite frankly, get a life.”
Gainsborough have reported the incidents to the Northern Premier League and the Football Association, underlining how seriously they view the matter in a landscape where word of mouth, trust and personal relationships still underpin most business.
Wilcox, appointed in 2023 after previous spells in charge of Scunthorpe United and York City, has been steadily building something at the Northolme. Under his watch, Trinity reached the FA Cup first round last season and went one better in 2024-25, pushing on to the second round.
His own playing career – with Northampton Town, Hull City, Doncaster Rovers, Preston North End and Scunthorpe – forged a reputation for professionalism that now stands in stark contrast to the behaviour of the impersonator.
In a tight-knit non-league world that relies on integrity as much as ambition, Gainsborough’s stance is clear: their manager will be judged on his work on the pitch and in honest conversations off it, not on the empty promises of someone hiding behind his name.
