Hacker Who Revealed Soccer Secrets Is Charged with 147 Crimes | Hacker News Reader

Hacker Who Revealed Soccer Secrets Is Charged with 147 Crimes

nytimes.com

305 pointsfortran7757 comments

Kind of hard to pull of the whistleblower defense with this one:

"The indictment also detailed the hack of Doyen and a subsequent incident in which Pinto is accused of assuming the identity Artem Lobuzov as part of an extortion attempt and contacting the firm’s chief executive, Nelio Lucas, in October 2015 to offer him the chance to prevent the release of the firm’s documents in return for a “generous donation" of between 500,000 and 1 million euros."

Or with this one: he is deeply associated with a portuguese club that despite being cronically linked to corruption during last decades, was 'randomly' spared and its rival teams were strongly persecuted.

"cronically" <- was it intentional? (It's a neat pun regardless).

Probably a non-native-English-speaker.

In many Euro languages, words derived from Kronos (i.e. related to time and recurrence, like chronological and chronically) have a C rather than CH spelling (cronologico, cronicamente, cronico...).

“Crony” has a similar root (“people hanging out together all the time”) but it’s an exception in the English language, where such words use CH; it’s also (ironically) a very English term, that doesn’t really translate. So this is probably a typo.

TIL, thanks :-)

Pinto is paying for having exposed Benfica's (the Portuguese soccer team with the larger number of supporters in Portugal > 60%) corruption. The justice system in Portugal seems to think Benfica is above the law and is willing to crush anyone that gets in its way.

I could argue that that's just your opinion and of an handful of other rival club supporters.

Assuming of course that isn't completely fabricated.

That's a possibility.

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%83%AD%E5%88%A9

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2017-05/19/content_294108...

A case of Chinese toxic baby formula, the company contacted the father after having reached a settlement, to offer him another deal, reportedly 500k dollars, the meeting was recorded, used as evidence in extortion lawsuit against him in the company's local court. The father was jialed for 5 years before exoneration.

Some guy tried to over-settle with my dad the same way once, and he refused it, but also later found out the guy had a reputation for offering these ridiculous deals then suing for usury.

The sum is not small at the time, but it's his baby daughter poisoned along with thousands of others. After their initial settlement of around 60k, the story never ended as other cases came into public attention, so the company wanted to end it as it was at the crucial stage of going public, they can be heard at the beginning of the recording saying "Must get him", but nonetheless, the court in the city where the massive company located ruled him guilty.

> suing for usury

Is this a thing?

Are we in biblical times?

Many states have laws on maximum interest that can be charged, though at this point there are so many loopholes they basically no longer have any effect.

https://statelaws.findlaw.com/consumer-laws/details-on-state...

Obviously it's been a while, but the local business calculation I observed was, it was always better to not be sued than to be sued. And if the suit was unavoidable (e.g. guy is just nutso-litigious) it's better to have declined all business with him in the first place.

> Assuming of course that isn't completely fabricated.

The accused had a long history of stealing money from bank accounts through identity forgery. It's hardly a stretch to go from hacking a bank to steal cash to hacking football teams to blackmail them.

That's true of every crime, if the accusation is completely fabricated then any punishment is of course unjust.

But when one of the two parties is a large group with massive influence, it is more likely to happen.

Why would it be completely fabricated?

Because it's a legal accusation from an incredibly corrupt industry being leveled at someone who makes a habit of airing their dirty laundry.

> someone who makes a habit of airing their dirty laundry.

It was his livelihood: get some dirt, threaten to release it, demand hefty cash payments as danegeld.

It's easy to pass off the last leg of the extorsion campaign as doing public good if you conveniently leave out the long trail of demands for hefty financial gains.

And before this fact is brushed under the carpet, do keep in mind that the same suspect also demanded financial payments from media companies to access the content he was supposedly trying to release to the public.

Was there more extortion attempts besides the one he's being charged with (Doyen)?

Doyen in particular is extremely shady with many of the same people from the scandalous Trump SoHo deal including the man who brought a harem of underaged prostitutes on Atatark's yacht. It's amazing how small the corrupt class actually is and how bad international law enforcement is at stopping the wealthy corrupt.

https://theblacksea.eu/stories/football-leaks/the-football-l...

https://theblacksea.eu/stories/football-leaks/football-leaks...

It's fascinating how many "nationalist" leaders are privately part of a global elite class, hobnobbing with foreign interests

Jean Renoir's 1937 movie The Grand Illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Grande_Illusion treats this issue with subtlety and nuance.

Many consider it one of the greatest movies of all time.

Maybe the reason why they are nationalist is because they see the other global elites and want to avoid them?

That makes absolutely no sense...

Why would that not make sense? They don't want to share control with elites from other countries. If they developed towards a global system then everybody would have to follow the same rules, whereas right now there are different rules, which leads to more opportunities for them to retain their power.

More likely that keeping countries isolated maintains access to tax havens, cheap labour and various other benefits.

Rewording what you wrote. Maybe a dictator can make anyone disappear instantly with no questions asked from within the country. Scrutiny from the outside will only happen if someone is fast enough to leave and open their mouth despite the threat of retaliation/persecution/execution of loved ones (a la North Korea)

I was thinking more broadly than overt dictators. Right-wing nationalists tend to have vested commercial interests that benefit from a lack of global integration. I'm thinking more of Trump, Bolsonaro, Orban, or Morawiecki. These are people that spout faux "anti-elite" rhetoric whilst having strong ties with actual global elites. This level of control might occasionally include disappearing individuals when necessary, but is much more subtle and wide-ranging.

If the Portuguese were fish, football would be the water. The media industry feeds and thrives off the constant hubbub of corruption and intrigue. Of course he’s in big trouble for exposing anything about it.

With that said, to me, he's lucky to be alive. International football makes the USA's NFL look like a toddlers' playdate.

> involving the Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo

No joke, I wonder how vigorously he’d be being prosecuted if he hadn’t caused National Treasure Rinaldo problems.

Convicted tax fraud Cristiano Ronaldo?

In Spain, when he left Real Madrid.

Relevant New Yorker article from this summer

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/06/03/how-football-l...

Can't read the articles on mobile, it hides and asks for login.

Dec 2016: "The Man Behind Football Leaks"

https://www.spiegel.de/international/business/football-leaks...

It sounds like some of his specific crimes could be mitigated as whistleblowing, but it also sounds like the main thing he's being prosecuted for is extortion that, if true, is fairly blatant, not whistleblowing, and clearly a crime.

To prosecute the criminal or the criminal who blew the whistle on the criminal? Portugal? Comments?

In my opinion, which is worth nil: Why not both? Clearly (alleged) evidence of wrongdoing on the part of some organisations was uncovered during this investigation, and this guy also (allegedly) got this information illegally and attempted to extort people with it.

Investigate all crimes uncovered, and prosecute everyone to the full extent of the law.

I have a problem with prosecuting crimes with evidence that is "fruit of the poisonous tree."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree

The incentives become for the state to pony up bitcoin to any hacker that will obtain evidence against alleged criminals and have them "publish" it. Then the state is free to use the evidence without any pesky search warrants or judicial oversight.

> In my opinion, which is worth nil: Why not both?

Because for a start the source is tainted, and nothing ensures that the alleged evidence used to extort Rui Pinto's targets was not entirely made up.

Secondly, although the accusations deserve an investigation, accepting prejudicial info release by criminals following a botched extortion campaign ends up validating extortion as a business model.

Prosecute all the criminals. Whataboutery is not a legal defense.

That's the only absolute thing that makes perfect sense. Soccer is like religion in many countries. Religion is the opium of the people. Soccer is too. It's better to make people argue over who's the best team in kicking a ball than having them keeping the governments accountable of all the crap they do.

Divide, confuse and conquer!!

"Divide, confuse and conquer!!"

Also through bread and circus, where trash TV, social media, sports etc. make the circus.

It's the ancient old [1] way of controlling the enemy land (and today the masses) by keeping people fed, distracted then fueling fights among small groups so that they wouldn't feel the need to unite against the oppressor.

[1] Divide et impera (divide and conquer) and panem et circenses (bread and circus) phrases were coined thousands of years ago.

The darkest years in political scene of Latin America, football fanatisism was thriving. People would be starving, but they would rebel only when their favourite team would lose a game. Not when they were starving. A similar decadance was taking place in Europe in the 70s and 80s. It so happens that soccer fanaticism grew wherever there was incometent to solve problems and heavily corrupted government(s).

Yes football is still being used as tool, even in Europe to distract people that should know better. Combine that with crappy education et voila!

I kindly remind how one of the filthiest and most violent (UK) football scene was cleaned up when true political will was present. And you can see some other European countries (Portugal, Greece) where there only 1-2 teams good enough to be champions, who happen to have massive following, and said following is usually lower class.

Is there a non paywall link?

https://archive.is/pLA50

Reader view in Firefox bypasses the paywall.

So far this is the only way I’ve been able to find to view the article, thanks.

Click “web” at the top?

This does not appear to work any longer.

Honestly what's the point in prosecuting these crimes? Like objectively, in comparison, with precedence, with philosophical consideration to every reasonable extent, there is practically no point in expending the amount of effort that the justice system exerts on these types of crimes.

It almost makes you question why the justice system is motivated or incentivized to prosecute these types of crimes, to expend more judicial insight and energy, to display the overt and given power of government against a crime that has essentially harmed no one to any practical degree.

When you reveal the dirty laundry of the rich and powerful, the tend to fight back hard, and attempt to make an example out of you.

If some of the rich and the powerful got that way by having a getting shit done attitude, then fighting back is just another thing to get done and why not do it well if you have the money?

The indictment says he tried to extort an entity for 1 Million Euros.

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