Barcelona reportedly fell victim to a scam during the transfer of Polish striker Robert Lewandowski.
The Spanish club was allegedly tricked into transferring €1 million (£830,000) to a fraudster posing as Lewandowski’s agent. Barcelona signed Lewandowski from Bayern Munich in the summer of 2022 for an initial fee of €45 million (£37 million). Since then, Lewandowski has proven his worth by scoring 71 goals in 106 matches.
According to Spanish outlet Cadena SER, during the transfer, the club received an email, supposedly from the striker’s agent, Pini Zahavi, instructing them to pay a €1 million agent’s commission. The email directed Barcelona to deposit the sum into a lawyer’s bank account rather than Zahavi’s.
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Barcelona transferred the money to a Bank of Cyprus account, but the payment was flagged as suspicious and frozen due to the newly opened account. Soon after, another email arrived pressuring the club to lobby the bank to release the funds or risk being reported to FIFA.
The scam was eventually uncovered when the bank contacted Barcelona, and the account was closed. Club officials later confirmed to Cadena SER that they had been deceived, but the funds were successfully recovered.
Zahavi revealed that Barcelona reached out to him a month after the transfer to confirm whether he had received the payment. He informed them that he was unaware of the lawyer and that the email had not come from him. After further investigation, Barcelona confirmed that the email and account were not connected to Zahavi.