A travel agent has been accused of cheating Manchester United striker Cristiano Ronaldo out of nearly ÂŁ250,000.
The 53-year-old, named in Portugal as Maria Silva, also scammed the football starâs super-agent Jorge Mendes out of more than ÂŁ14,000 and former Man Utd winger Nani out of more than ÂŁ1,500.
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 Dâor 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 Silvaâs breach of the trust Cristiano placed in her by giving her his credit card details and pin codes.
The newspaper said the âŹ288,000 she scammed him out of – ÂŁ245,770 – 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 âvirtualâ credit card and pin code, to âfill the holeâ in her companyâs accounts, the report in Jornal de Noticias said.
The newspaper reported she used the same tactic to rip off the likes of Jorge Mendes, his sports agency Gestifute, Nani and former Portsmouth and Everton footballer Manuel Fernandes.
The fraud cost Fernandes ÂŁ2,440 and Gestifute ÂŁ36,000. Silvaâs 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 was targeted between in a three-year period between February 2007 and July 2010 when he was playing for Manchester United first-time round and then Real Madrid following his record ÂŁ80 million transfer to Spain.
The Portuguese footballer gave the Policia Judiciaria in Porto a statement on June 7 2011 according to Jornal de Noticias.
He is said to have entered the police station via a back door so his presence would go unnoticed.
Maria Silva is understood to have been quizzed by police in October 2013, declining to answer questions put to her by cops but making a full confession in court where she was found guilty of fraud and forgery. It was not made clear how her crimes were uncovered.
The 53-year-old from the northern Portuguese city of Vila Nova de Gaia was convicted of on January 10 2017 by a criminal court in Porto, Jornal de Noticias revealed.
Revealing Cristianoâs former Portugal teammate Simao Sabrosa was among clients who unwittingly transferred cash to her private account instead of a company account as part of her fraud, the paper added: âAfterwards the travel agent had to plug the hole in the firmâs accounts.
âShe therefore began to bill those trips to Cristiano Ronaldo, who had an account at Geostar and for practical reasons, handed the agent a virtual credit card and pin code.
