Andreu Camps, used by scammers

The former general secretary of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) Andrew Camps admitted this Tuesday in a trial authorized in 2021 the paying more than 400,000 euros to scammers who posed as the manager of the Athletic Club, with whom he exchanged several emails without realizing the identity theft.

“Along with the treasurer and the financial director, I authorized the payments and “I authorize that at the Athletic Club.”declared by videoconference at the trial in the Provincial Court of Madrid, which was heard this Tuesday for sentencing.

The real scammers they cannot be found and only the woman, RAAY, whose bank account went to them, was prosecuted. 460,242 euros from the RFEF which he then transferred to another account Lithuania.

For this reason, both the Prosecutor’s Office and the private prosecution, carried out by the RFEF, requested that it be sentenced to three years in prison for being a necessary cooperator in a crime of attempted electronic fraud.

In May 2021 The suspected fraudsters were able to access the documents dismissed by Camps – on September 20 for the Rubiales case – stored in the cloud and they stole an invoice that the RFEF has to pay Athletic Bilbao as “Euro 2020 Contract Liquidation”.

The stadium of San Mames It was one of the twelve initial venues for Euro 2020 – postponed to 2021 due to the pandemic – but was eventually replaced by La Cartuja de Sevilla.

After accessing said document, They falsified the email address of Athletic’s general director, Jon Berasategui, changing the place of one letter and deleting another. From there they asked Camps to pay the aforementioned invoice to a new bank account with the German entity N26.

Although they presented a certificate documenting that the account was owned by Athleticit is actually in RAAY’s name

A few days later, RFEF employees and Berasategui himself realized that They fell victim to a scam, Therefore, they filed complaints for fraud and identity theft, respectively. The money was immediately returned by N26 bank.

This type of crime, according to the story of an agent from Madrid’s central economic and fiscal crime brigade who testified, is known as “man in the middle” or man-in-the-middle attack and consists of intercepting communications between two parties, in this case Atheltic and RFEF, and then trying to trick them.

From the cybersecurity report commissioned by the RFEF after the complaint, it is clear Camps cloud is the victim of a cyber attackwhere the material or intellectual authors have never been found.

The woman, a resident of London and that this Tuesday he testified accompanied by an English interpreter, he denied all the accusations in monosyllables and said that the purpose of the account he opened with N26 was to set up a hair salon, never participate in a scam he claims to know nothing about..

However, the Prosecutor’s Office and the prosecution consider that their cooperation is “indispensable” to carry out the scam, as they considered it proven that the said account was opened a few days before the scam and closed after the funds were diverted to another account in their name.

The defense lawyer asked for his acquittal, saying that the accused “lack of technological knowledge” and raised the possibility that the scammers had also hacked his bank account to carry out the transactions.