Italian volleyball player spends 700,000 euros believing he was dating brazilian supermodel Alessandra Ambrosio for the last 15 years. In reality, he was being catfished by a 50 y.o lady.
Italian volleyball player Roberto Cazzaniga and Brazilian model Alessandra Ambrosio — Photo: Facebook/Reproduction and Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images North America/Getty Images via AFP
Italian volleyball player Roberto Cazzaniga, 42, was the victim of a gang that made him think he was a virtual boyfriend of Brazilian model
Alessandra Ambrósio and lost 700,000 euros.
The story was published in the Italian media on Wednesday (24) after a report from a TV in the country.
Currently, the Brazilian has a relationship with fellow model Richard Lee, with whom she posted photos on a social network traveling to Hawaii on Wednesday.
Alessandra Ambrósio in 2020 image — Photo: Disclosure
Cazzaniga plays for a team from the second division of the Italian volleyball league.
According to him, in 2008, a friend of his named Manuela gave the telephone contact of a woman named Maya who said she would like to meet him.
After the first contacts, the woman states that Maya is a pseudonym, and that she would be the Brazilian model Alessandra Ambrosio, one of the most famous in the world.
In fact, it was a woman who posed as a model. This type of scam, in which an interlocutor pretends to be another person, is known as catfishing.
Scam hunters: women unmasked criminals who promise romance on the web
"No, we've never met. She made a thousand excuses, such as illness and work. And yet I fell in love with that voice, one call after another. The contacts were only by cell phone, almost daily," he said, according to the "Corriere della Sera".
The player appeared in a report on the TV show Le Iene. He said that over the years he transferred 700 thousand euros to the person (by the current price, this sum is equivalent to R$ 4.4 million).
According to the Italian media, the scammer began asking for money initially stating that the ATM had been blocked because of a problem linked to an inheritance, and that she could not see it because of her work routine and because of a heart disease.
The player turned to relatives and friends to raise money.
According to the "Corriere della Sera", Cazzaniga's colleagues describe him as an introverted and naive man, and it was they who felt it was a coup and insisted that the case be investigated.
Three people were involved in the scheme to extort money from the athlete: Manuela, who passed the contact of "Maya", Manuela's boyfriend, and a 50-year-old woman, who lives in Sardinia, named Valeria, and who pretended to be Alessandra Ambrosio in the phone calls.