Last week, the Brazilian media revealed that Nottingham Forest midfielder Gustavo Scarpa lost about £1m in a cryptocurrency investment.
When playing for Palmeiras, the player believed in an investment offered by his former teammate Willian Bigode, which would pay as much as 5% a month.
Now Fantástico, a huge weekly show aired by Globo on Sunday evenings, featured a story with more details of what happened between the players. They had access to audio messages exchanged between them, with the Nottingham Forest midfielder trying to recover his money.
“I’m sad, man, for real. I’m sad because it’s my heritage,” Scarpa told Willian.
“Scarpinha, now you don’t even have a question of trust, brother. Question that is now to pray. Now it’s to wait on the lord,” Willian responded.
Willian Bigode claims to have fallen for it too, losing £2.75m. He’s the owner of WLJC, a broker company, and he had introduced Scarpa to Xland, those actually responsible for the investment. Many times they promised they’d return the investment, claiming they were having issues, but that never happened, until the midfielder realised he wasn’t getting any of it back.
Fantástico showed other messages from Scarpa from the time he realised he had fallen into a scam. Some of them are from the day he won the Brazilian championship, and in others, he blamed himself for it.
“Me, Brazilian champion, almost crying inside. Celebrating, and an emptiness, saying: ‘Bro, where did I get myself?” What a damn regret.’
“I always saw stupid people who fell into pyramid schemes, those swindlers. And to see myself in such a situation, for me, is being horrible.
“I’m feeling dumb, man. Dumb! What investment in the world gives 5% a month? What gives 3% in the month?”
With the report drawing so much attention today, the Nottingham Forest player published a story on Instagram joking about the whole situation. “I’m needing to pray more, really”, he said.
