The founder of the Football Leaks site, Rui Pinto, has been sentenced by the Lisbon Court for his involvement in illegal activities related to the site. The 34-year-old Portuguese has received a four-year conditional imprisonment for attempting to extort, illegal access to data, and violation of the secret of correspondence.
Rui Pinto, a former student of the Faculty of History and self-taught in the field of information technology, established the Football Leaks site in 2015. The portal gained fame for its disclosure of confidential information, including details of transfers and transactions within the sports industry. According to Reuters, the site published over 70 million documents regarding the football industry.
While Pinto claimed to be an informant working in the public interest, the judge, Alves, emphasized that Pinto cannot be considered an informant because he committed crimes to obtain the information without knowing its content.
The hacker’s targets included the Sporting football club, Portuguese football federation, Doyen Sports investment fund, and PLMJ Law Firm. Furthermore, the court found evidence that Pinto and his lawyer attempted to extort between 500,000 to 1 million euros from Doyen Sports in exchange for not disclosing incriminating information.
Initially, Pinto faced 90 charges, but 77 of them were dropped as part of a youth amnesty declared in June.
Pinto’s lawyer, Francisco Tyisher da Mota, expressed satisfaction with the conditional sentence, acknowledging that a complete acquittal was impossible after Pinto’s admission of guilt. He also speculated that Pinto’s cooperation with the authorities may have influenced the sentencing decision.