Victims of the $4 billion Omegapro cryptocurrency pyramid scheme are suing famous footballers for their promotional involvement, including Vinicius Jr., Ronaldhino, and Luis Figo.

Omegapro was a crypto investment firm based in Dubai that promised investors stunning returns of up to 300% within 14 months. Through aggressive marketing tactics and celebrity endorsements, the firm attracted almost 3 million customers and their collective $4 billion.

However, regulators across the globe soon caught on. France, Belgium, Spain, and Peru were among the countries that issued fraud warnings for Omegapro. The Spanish Securities Market Commission added the company to its list of non-transparent financial businesses.

Somehow, this didn’t stop renowned football players from participating in its promo. Around 20 current and former footballers are named in the lawsuit, which also includes Kaká, Carles Puyol, Roberto Carlos, and Fernando Hierro. They’re accused of promoting and perpetuating a fraudulent investment scheme despite the explicit warning signs.

“All football players who have been seen at Omegapro events will be sued by us in London,” said lawyer and investigator Lars Olofsson (via el Diario). Spain will also be suing the players, though it remains unclear whether the lawsuit will hold up in local court.

Read more: CHART: Every crypto sponsor for the 2024/25 Champions League

In November 2022, around the time FTX was going under, the company halted withdrawals and shut down user accounts. In a flash, it had made off with victims’ entire life savings.

According to some victims, their endorsements convinced them to keep their money in the scheme, even when they had their doubts.

“How was it supposed to be a scam?” asked one victim named Dolores, who lost all of her savings, €18,000 ($19,000), to Omegapro. “If even the footballers were involved and the company’s logo was projected on a skyscraper in Dubai!” (translated from Spanish via La Vanguardia).

“I just wanted to live like them,” said another victim, 51-year-old Marta, to el Diario. “I thought: Why not me?” Marta has also lost thousands of euros in the crypto pyramid scheme.

In July, Omegapro cofounder Andreas Szakacs was arrested in Turkey. The Swede had reportedly fled to the country and had changed his name to Emre Avci. By September, Dutch managing director Robert V. was also arrested in Turkey.

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Premier League crypto partner Sorare has been accused of unlicensed gambling by the UK’s Gambling Commission. 

The commission said today, “Sorare is charged with providing facilities for gambling without holding an operating license,” contrary to the Gambling Act 2005. A court hearing is scheduled for October 4.

However, Sorare, a fantasy league football game that utilizes the Ethereum blockchain to allow players to trade football cards, disputes this allegation and says that the law has been wrongly applied. It told the Guardian, “The commission has misunderstood our business and wrongly determined that gambling laws apply to Sorare.” 

“We are aware of the claims made by the Gambling Commission and have instructed our UK counsel to challenge them. We firmly deny any claims that Sorare is a gambling product under UK laws,” it added.

The commission began its investigation into the $4.3 billion firm back in 2021.

Read more: New Chelsea FC sponsor BingX accused of holding 215K USDT ‘hostage’

Champions League football teams Atlético de Madrid, Sturm Graz, and AC Milan are all sponsored by Sorare and are just three of the 23 teams in the competition that are sponsored by a crypto firm. 

The Guardian reports that the gambling commission has only used its powers once before to charge a man who was drugging dogs to fix greyhound races, reflecting the rarity of today’s charge. In this case, the prosecution was successful and the man was jailed. 

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The revamped UEFA Champions League kicked off this week and it’s already the most crypto-friendly iteration in the competition’s history.

Not only was Crypto.com recently announced as the tournament’s first-ever official crypto partner, 23 of the 36 participating teams have some kind of crypto sponsorship.

These deals include trading websites, crypto exchanges, and fan token platforms. Some of these deals can reach mind-boggling prices as Crypto.com’s scrapped 2022 $495 million sponsorship deal with UEFA proves. The details of this year’s partnership remain undisclosed.

Here’s a chart of all the teams and crypto sponsors you can see in this year’s Champions League. 

Another crypto sponsorship was inked this week between crypto exchange Bitget and the Spain’s La Liga. The deal was reportedly worth millions.

Previous Protos research revealed that football is one of the most popular sports for crypto firms to sponsor, along with motorsports and eSports.

Read more: CHART: Listing every crypto sponsor for the 2024/25 Premier League

The 2024/25 Premier League was also popular for crypto sponsorships, with 70% of teams having one. In the case of the Champions League, almost 64% of participating teams have a crypto sponsorship.  

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Fan tokens based on members of England’s Euro 2024 team, including Jude Bellingham, manager Gareth Southgate, and captain Harry Kane, have all tanked in price ahead of the make-or-break quarter-final clash against Switzerland on Saturday. 

The tokens were created to cash in on the hype around the quadrennial tournament. However, it didn’t take long for them to be labeled as scams. Indeed, speaking about Captain Harry Kane token ($CHK), Russian cybersecurity provider Kaspersky said:

“Hackers are taking advantage of the popularity of Euro 2024 to sell personalized coins featuring the most popular players, promising impressive returns.”

The coin has dropped almost 99.9% since its all-time high on June 6.

Other tokens based on the squad, including $JUDE (Jude Bellingham) and $GARETH (Gareth Southgate) haven’t faired well either. Bellingham managed to save England from an embarrassing tournament exit with a spectacular last-minute bicycle kick goal on Sunday.

The goal caused a spike in the price of $JUDE, increasing it by almost 77% to $0.00004237, however, it dropped back down to $0.00001885 just an hour later. 

Read more: Nigel Farage said shady alleged crypto ATM owner is ‘like a son to me’

Overall, the token has crashed by roughly 98% from a high of $0.00062392 to $0.00001344 today, with a current 24-hour trading volume of $54. The Gareth Southgate token has also crashed by 95% since its all-time high on June 10. 

Another token has taken the likeness of Pepe the Frog and combined it with a football to supposedly ‘Bridge the gap between football & web3 one meme at a time.’ This project has also crashed 95% from its May 19 all-time high of $0.059475. 

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Real Bedford FC investors the Winklevoss twins say they’re confident the football club can “defy the odds,” “upset the establishment” and reach the Premier League — despite needing club owner Peter McCormack to explain what it is.

The twins invested $4.5 million worth of bitcoin into the non-league team, becoming co-owners alongside bitcoin podcaster and suer of Craig Wright, Peter McCormack. 

However, in an interview with the BBC, McCormack revealed that he needed to explain how football works to the Winklevoss twins back in 2021 when he first acquired the UK club. 

Read more: Winklevii band Mars Junction on hiatus as Gemini bank loss rumors swirl

He said, “Tyler and Cameron didn’t know the difference between the Football League and the Premier League,” and one of their first questions was, “’How do you get a team into the Premier League?”

McCormack compared Real Bedford FC to Wrexham, a similar underdog club that has received substantial investment and support from celebrity owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.

He explained to the BBC how he wants the team to move up from the Spartan South Midlands League (the ninth tier of English football) into the National League, a move that he says would require a new ground to be built along with additional investment.

“If I require more investment for ground and infrastructure, they’ll be willing to listen to the proposal,” he said of the Winklevii.

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Patrick O’Connor, the personal pilot to billionaire Joe Lewis, has pleaded guilty to securities fraud charges related to insider trading.

A press release from the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York details how O’Connor “received material, non-public information from Lewis and then traded on the basis of that information.” This information enabled O’Connor to profit from biotech investments, including Mirati. 

Lewis, who is the former owner of Premier League football club Tottenham Hotspur, has himself previously pleaded guilty to securities fraud charges related to insider trading.  Lewis made a significant portion of his fortune by shorting the British pound alongside George Soros in 1992. 

Lewis is also connected to Bahamian banker Jean Chalopin, who sold him the famous ‘Albany House’ that was featured in the Bond movie Casino Royale. Chalopin’s bank, Deltec Bank and Trust has since been accused in a civil suit of being complicit in the misappropriation of customer funds from FTX by Alameda Research.

Chalopin was a crusader for cryptocurrency in the Bahamas, advocating for the DARE Act, which lightly regulated cryptocurrency firms in the country.

Lewis’ firm, Tavistock Group, was also the developer of the Albany luxury resort in the Bahamas, and he reportedly maintained his principal residence here. Sam Bankman-Fried, the convicted fraudster behind Alameda Research and FTX, also owned multiple properties at the Albany. 

Reuters previously reported that FTX-related entities purchased a total of seven properties in the resort. However, the bankruptcy process would eventually reveal that FTX-linked firms had purchased a total of 16 units there. 

Read more: Deltec, SBF-linked billionaire Joe Lewis set for guilty plea to insider trading

The FTX debtors-in-possession are looking to liquidate the 35 different real estate properties owned in the Bahamas as part of the bankruptcy process.

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Former Spanish football president Luis Rubiales has launched an NFT collection apparently aimed at supporting ‘real equality’ just months after he was accused of sexual assault at the Women’s World Cup.

Rubiales came under fire after appearing to grab and kiss Spanish player Jenni Hermoso following the country’s success in the tournament’s final in Australia. He claims the kiss was consensual, however, Hermoso claims this isn’t the case. 

Hermoso reportedly filed an official complaint and Spanish state prosecutors have subsequently accused Rubiales of sexual assault and coercion after he allegedly pressured her into defending him amid the global backlash. 

Now, Rubiales has launched his own NFT collection alongside Korean web3 firm Moon Labs. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Rubiales said, “This message is for those who support real equality and not radicalism or media manipulations.”

According to OpenSea, “This NFT combines Luis Rubiales’ achievements as a professional athlete and his experiences from his childhood, effectively portraying his story. It offers fans and collectors a unique and meaningful digital asset that holds value.”

In a shared statement, Moon Labs said that Rubiales “made a small mistake” at the World Cup while arguing his actions shouldn’t be considered sexual assault. 

Read more: New Chelsea FC sponsor BingX accused of holding 215K USDT ‘hostage’

At the time of writing, four NFTs have been sold, three of which were sold to the same wallet. The highest NFT is currently listed for 0.36 ETH ($914).

Another football figure currently embroiled in legal issues relating to the NFT space is former Real Madrid legend Christiano Ronaldo. Ronaldo is facing a class action lawsuit concerning his ‘CR7’ NFT collection launched in partnership with Binance.

Claimants in the case state that Ronaldo promoted Binance and caused a “500% increase in searches” for the exchange. This, they say, led people to invest in unregistered securities, including Binance’s own BNB.

Ronaldo has also been accused of sexual offenses, specifically of raping Kathryn Mayorga in 2009. The case was settled out of court last November. 

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Top-tier Spanish football club Atletico Madrid is reportedly preparing to sue Singapore-based crypto exchange WhaleFin over the non-payment of €40 million ($44 million) in sponsorship revenue.

The club agreed a five-year deal with WhaleFin ahead of the 2022/23 season that would see the exchange installed as one of its main sponsors. However, it now claims that the company breached the terms of the contract by failing to pay up and is seeking €20 million ($22 million) in compensation.

Back in December 2022, it was reported that WhaleFin owner Amber Group was experiencing financial difficulty and had decided to terminate its $25 million-a-year sponsorship deal with English Premier League club Chelsea just seven months after it was agreed.

Read more: UK watchdog fouls Arsenal FC for promoting crypto token

As reported by Calcio Finanza, the situation is similar to that affecting Italian clubs Inter Milan and Roma. Blockchain firm DigitalBits was dropped as sponsor by the two clubs after it failed to pay more than €16 million ($17 million) to Inter and €11 million ($12 million) to Roma.

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Regardless of what happens in this weekend’s Champions League final, it looks like a case of ‘what could have been’ for open-source blockchain DigitalBits, which will miss out on the chance to have its logo seen by a global audience of up to 400 million after it failed to keep up payments to Italian club Inter Milan.

Inter inked an €85 million ($100 million) sponsorship deal with DigitalBits developer Zytara Labs in September 2021 that made DigitalBits its sleeve sponsor. This was subsequently upgraded to the team’s main shirt sponsor.

However, waning revenues for the Netherlands-based firm — last August, it was reported that it had shed 98% of its value amid the market-wide downturn — have seen it unable to keep up with payments, and as of last October, it reportedly owed Inter somewhere in the region of €17 million (18.3 million).

As a result, back in November last year, Inter announced at the club’s annual shareholders’ meeting that it would sever ties with DigitalBits and begin the search for a new sponsor. The company’s logo was eventually removed from Inter Milan’s kit in April.

It was therefore feared that the team may have to go into this weekend’s showpiece fixture without a shirt sponsor. However, last week, it was announced that streaming service Paramount+ would present its logo on the team’s shirts for the final against England’s Manchester City.

The club was also courted by an adult subscription website called My.Club, which reportedly offered the team a $100 million, six-year deal.

Inter Milan and DigitalBits prove football and crypto don’t mix

The Inter Milan sponsorship snafu is just the latest in a long line of crypto-related controversies to dog the world’s favorite sport.

In September last year, English Premier League team West Ham faced criticism over its partnership with DeFi crypto platform PEAKDEFI, which was actively promoting its services to Russian users, causing concern about skirting sanctions.

Prior to this, another English top-flight club, Arsenal FC, was reprimanded by the UK’s advertising watchdog after it failed to warn fans of the risks associated with crypto investments in its “fan token” promos.

Read more: FIFA finally gets into crypto — what could possibly go wrong?

A number of prominent football clubs across Europe have also been heavily criticized for raking in more than $200 million by offloading so-called ‘fan tokens’ onto supporters.

The likes of Manchester City, Barcelona, Juventus, Arsenal, Leeds United, and Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) sold fan tokens created by Malta-based blockchain company Socios. These tokens reportedly gave supporters the chance to vote on minor club matters, including the music played in the stadium before matches and the decor in certain parts of the ground.

However, supporters’ clubs weren’t happy, saying that the tokens were exploiting fans without providing the necessary support to help them properly understand the volatility and potential risks of crypto markets.

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