Found guilty of 114 financial offenses by the Premier League, Manchester City has known itself to be under threat for several years. Accused by the PL from 2023, the Mancunian club was plunged into the “football leaks” scandal long before. Besides, The Athletic reminds us that everything happened on a Wednesday morning in January 2017. It all started with a seemingly innocuous email received by one of the Cityzens leaders that day.
This senior official thought he was receiving an email sent by a UEFA employee. An email containing a link that appeared to be intended to access a financial compliance report. A link that the cityzen manager clicked on. Unfortunately for Manchester City, it was not a UEFA employee behind the maneuver, but Portuguese hacker Rui Pinto, whose protected witness status will soon expire. Author of this successful phishing attempt, Pinto was able to hack Manchester City’s servers and collect all these emails and other documents which were used to explode the “football leaks” scandal.
