An Edinburgh businessman at the centre of a fake Airbnb takeover deal can be revealed as a football fantasist who forged a prestigious licence to get a top coaching job.
Grant MacCusker astonished the Scottish business world last month after concocting a tale about one of his businesses being bought over by Airbnb in a megabucks deal. He followed that up by launching a crowdfunder for a lettings company, which was exposed for inventing a roster of fake executive staff using photos pinched from the internet.
The Record has now revealed that MacCusker forged a UEFA B Licence in 2017, presenting it to Airdrieonians Football Club as he applied for the post of youth coach. They also revealed that MacCusker sparked a security alert after getting himself into a Scotland training base and trying to pass himself off as one of the coaching staff.
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He was rumbled for the fake coaching licence after Airdrie executives routinely did a background security check, which involved checking his credentials with the Scottish Football Association.
Bosses at the SFA were staggered to discover that the man with the fake licence was the same man who had turned up at Scotland’s training base at the Mar Hall Hotel in Bishopton, near Glasgow, earlier that year.
An Airdrie source said: “The chap turned up when we were seeking to set up a youth academy in 2017 and the club was looking for coaches. He came across quite well and seemed to know what he was doing. It was a prerequisite that he had the UEFA B Licence, which involved a lot of rigorous training.
“When the club checked with the SFA they had no record of a Grant MacCusker holding the qualification and it turned out that he’d simply forged one.”
The SFA called in police, who established that the licence was a fake. MacCusker, 38, was charged with an “uttering” fraud, which related to the falsification.
He was fined £300 at Airdrie Sheriff Court after admitting the fraud charge, which stated he had shown the fake licence to then Airdrie FC director Anne-Marie Ballantyne, who was coordinating efforts to form a youth academy.
Prosecutors said he had used the licence to get a position at the club. The court allowed him to pay up the fine at £10 a week.
Another source told how MacCusker caused a security scare by mingling with Scotland players at a training session at Mar Hall Hotel and passed himself off as part of the SFA coaching staff earlier the same year.
The source said: “The guy had rocked up in an SFA tracksuit and was hanging around the Great Hall communal area at the hotel, just waiting for chances to fraternise with the players.
“It was the top team he was interested in and players said he told them he was a coach with the Under 21s. People were starting to ask who the hell he was but he didn’t do himself any favours when he put a photo of himself with Stevie Fletcher and Robert Snodgrass on his social media.
“The message he wrote said that he was chilling out after a hard training session.”
The source added: “People were amazed at the guy’s front and it does sound like a daft story in some ways but it was taken very seriously.
“The players were spoken to and told to be vigilant. It was quite worrying to have some guy wander in off the street and get so close to players.”
Players and staff were all warned to be vigilant against further intruders. MacCusker made the last month after he concocted an elaborate hoax story about global property rental company Airbnb buying his small, Edinburgh-based firm, Letting Cloud.
MacCusker hired a PR company and supplied them with quotes from Airbnb - which he’d made up himself. Airbnb confirmed that they had never heard of MacCusker after the story appeared in newspapers and was run on TV news.
It later emerged that MacCusker and his son Jamie Stewart were facing the threat of legal action after a fundraiser on the Crowdcube website for their Student Rents business was alleged to have made false claims. They were accused of using photographs from the internet as fake company executives at Student Rents.
Crowdcube has demanded that all cash raised via their site is returned. In an email to the Record, Stewart, who was a finalist for the Young Entrepreneur of the Year in Scotland award last year, said: “All investors have been paid.”
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