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Lazio football club fell for a €2 million email scam: report

Lazio have reportedly fallen for an email scam and paid €2 million of the final instalment for defender Stefan de Vrij's transfer from Dutch club Feyenoord to fraudsters.

Published: 28 March 2018 17:07 CEST
Lazio football club fell for a €2 million email scam: report
Lazio defender Stefan de Vrij. Photo: Filippo Monteforte/AFP

Italian newspaper Il Tempo reported on Wednesday that hackers with knowledge of the deal tricked the Serie A club into paying the money into the wrong bank account in the Netherlands.

Lazio received an email that appeared to be from the Dutch champions asking for the €2 million along with bank account details, and duly sent the money.

But Feyenoord never received the cash and claim to have no knowledge of the email.

READ ALSO: Italy's Serie A turns a profit for the first time in 17 years

Il Tempo said that the prosecutor looking into the case has tracked down the money to a Dutch bank account, which doesn't belong to Feyenoord.

The 26-year-old joined Lazio in 2014 for €7.7 million after a successful World Cup with the Netherlands but will leave for nothing this summer after failing to extend his contract.

De Vrij has reportedly been targeted by six-time defending champions Juventus with interest also from English clubs Manchester City and Manchester United.

But Gazzetta dello Sport reported the centre-back is ready to sign for Inter Milan on a free transfer this summer.

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ROME

‘Bank robber’ rescued in Rome after tunnel collapses

Four people were arrested in Rome after a suspected would-be bank robber was rescued from a tunnel under a road, police said on Friday.

Published: 12 August 2022 12:39 CEST
'Bank robber' rescued in Rome after tunnel collapses

An Italian man had to be rescued after becoming trapped in a collapsed tunnel near the Vatican, suspected of being part of a gang burrowing its way to a nearby bank.

Firefighters spent eight hours digging him out from under a road in the west of Rome, before he was finally freed on Thursday evening and taken to hospital.

“Two people from Naples were arrested for resisting a public official and two, from Rome, for damage” to public property, a police spokesman told AFP.

The rescued man, one of the two Romans, remains in hospital, he said without giving an update on his condition.

“We are still investigating, we do not exclude that they are thieves, it is one of the theories,” he said.

For Italian newspapers, however, the motive was clear, with reports noting the tunnel was found near a bank ahead of the August 15th long weekend, when residents traditionally head out of town and much of Rome is left empty.

“The hole gang,” headlined newspapers Repubblica and Corriere della Sera, while La Stampa said: “They dig a tunnel to rob a bank, and one of them is buried underground.”

Other reports referred to the suspected burglar as l’uomo-talpa, or ‘mole man’.

An AFP reporter at the scene on Thursday saw the man brought out alive on a stretcher, after a day-long operation involving dozens of emergency service workers using mechanical diggers.

The tunnel began underneath an empty shop that had recently been rented.

“We all thought that the people there were renovating the place. So we had no suspicions and we did not hear noises either,” a resident, Michele, who lives in the same building told AFP.

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