Manchester United and Portuguese star player Cristiano Ronaldo was scammed by a travel agent of nearly £250,000. The 53-year-old travel agent named Maria Silva scammed the football star, and it was not just Cristiano Ronaldo that was scammed. The agent also scammed his agent Jorge Mendes out of more than £14,000 and former Man Utd winger Nani out of more than £1,500.
Following the Portuguese law, she is likely to face a culminated four-year prison sentence at a court in Porto. Reports have it that Cristiano Ronaldo was spared having to attend her trial after she made a full confession. The four-times Ballon D’or winner gave a statement to police after flying to Porto by private jet and meeting up with his lawyer Carlos Osorio de Castro.
The previously unreported scandal was laid bare by Jornal de Noticias in an expose about Maria Silva’s breach of the trust the former Real Madrid and Juventus player placed in her by giving her his credit card details and pin codes. The newspaper said the €288,000 she scammed him out of £245,770 amounted to around 200 trips he never made between Portugal and other European countries as well as Europe and Africa and the US.
How Maria Scammed Cristiano Ronaldo and Other Players
Maria carried out the fraud by getting clients to transfer cash for travel; she arranged for them to her account instead of the business account of the travel agency she worked for. She then billed those trips to the accounts of victims like that of Cristiano Ronaldo, who had given her a ‘virtual credit card and pin code, to “fill the hole” in her company’s accounts.
The newspaper reported she used the same tactic to scam Jorge Mendes, his sports agency Gestifute, Nani and former Everton and Portsmouth player Manuel Fernandes. For Fernandes, he was scammed £2,440 and Gestifute for £36,000. Silva’s firm Geostar is said to have repaid the fraud victims the money wrongly taken from them, and she agreed to pay back monthly compensation to her old employers to avoid going to prison.
Cristiano Ronaldo was targeted in a three-year period between February 2007 and July 2010 when he was still in the English Premier League with United and also when he proved to Spain to join Real Madrid. The Portuguese footballer gave the Policia Judiciaria in Porto a statement on June 7 2011, according to Jornal de Noticias.
It was not made clear how her crimes were uncovered. Cristiano’s former Portugal teammate Simao Sabrosa was also among clients that unwittingly transferred cash to her private account instead of a company account as part of her fraud. According to Geostar’s accounts, Cristiano Ronaldo, his family and friends travelled to countless places. They said they he travelled to Bissau, Milan, Lyon, Sao Paulo, Paris, Brussels, Barcelona, Belgrade, Sao Tome, among many other destinations.
The payment of the trips was all through a virtual terminal the travel agent had access to because of her job specifications. The newspaper revealed Silva suffered from a compulsive spending disorder and went through all the money she defrauded. She agreed to repay her firm £7,680 as part of the court deal she struck, sparing her prison. The fraudster is now said to be working as a cleaner and still compensating her old employers.
