Jorge Mendes and Nani have also been scammed
Cristiano Ronaldo was scammed out of £250,000 after passing his credit card and pin numbers to a travel agent.
Portuguese daily Jornal de Noticias reported that the scammed money – €288,000 [£250,000] – related to a number of trips between February 2007 and July 2010 that the Portugal captain never actually made, including 200 trips from Portugal and other European countries, as well as flights to Africa and the US.
The report went on to suggest that Maria Silva, 53, had also scammed Ronaldo’s agent Jorge Mendes out of more than £14,000 and former Manchester United winger Nani out of more than £1,500.
Silva was handed a suspended four-year jail sentence for her crime after being convicted in 2017.
Ronaldo, 36, trusted the 53-year-old travel agent and provided her with access to his financial information.
The scam involved Silva getting her clients to transfer money into her personal account, rather than the travel agent’s business one. Following this, she would then ‘fill the holes’ by moving some money from accounts like Ronaldo’s into the company accounts.
The Red Devils star – who handed over a ‘virtual credit card’ – provided the police with a statement after flying to Portugal to meet with his lawyer Carlos Osorio de Castro, but was not present at the trial.
Geostar, the firm Silva was working for at the time, is believed to have repaid the victims the money that was wrongly stolen from them, with Silva agreeing to pay back £7,680 to her ex-employers to avoid going to prison for her crimes.
Whilst it is unclear how her crimes came to light, the report from Portugal revealed that Silva suffered from a compulsive spending disorder and spent all the money she had stolen.
