A travel agent has been accused of scamming Manchester United striker, Cristiano Ronaldo of nearly £250,000.
The 53-year-old person who is named in Portugal as Maria Silva, also scammed the football star’s super-agent, Jorge Mendes out of more than £14,000 and former Man Utd winger, Nani out of more than £1,500.
Her wrongdoing culminated in her getting a four-year suspended prison sentence at a court in Porto, Portuguese daily Jornal de Noticias reported on Sunday.
The newspaper revealed dad-of-four Cristiano, 36, 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.
Jornal de Noticias exposed the scandal about greedy Silva’s breach of the trust Cristiano placed in her by giving her his credit card details and pin codes.
The newspaper stated that the €288,000 she scammed him out of – £245,770 – corresponded to around 200 trips he never made between Portugal and other European countries as well as Europe and Africa and the US.
She reportedly carried out the fraud by getting clients to transfer cash for travel she arranged for them to her personal account instead of the business account of the travel agency she worked for.
She then billed those trips to the accounts of victims like Cristiano Ronaldo, who had given her a ‘virtual’ credit card and pin code, to “fill the hole” in her company’s accounts, the report in Jornal de Noticias said.
