It was October 2023 when the police broke into the headquarters of the national football team in Coverciano where the withdrawal of the Azzurri was underway.
Objective: to listen to Sandro Tonali at the time Milan, (today at Newcastle) and Nicolò Fagioli at the time Juventus (today at Fiorentina) and ensure the investigators the contents of the chats left in intermediaries, of the players who entered the strip, as a customers, inside an investigation by the district anti -mafia direction of Turin who aimed at managers and intermediaries of the betting on the subject of recycling and illegal bets.
Exactly the point from which the investigation we are talking about now started. The businessmen were sought, the players returned to the strip, as customers. Cases of professional players with problems of pathological gambled addiction then came out. The survey that emerged in Milan on April 11, 2025 is a rib of that there: neither were there then nor was there players suspected of selling games or putting on them for money. They were and are involved only as customers of non -legal betting sites.
Customer players, game debts, illegal sites, recycling
In the viewfinder, now as then, there are the sharks: two managers of illegal online betting platforms (Tommaso De Giacomo and Patrick Fizarera), and the administrators of a Milanese jewelery (Antonio Scinocca, Antonio Parise and Andrea Piccini) used as a “ingenious bank” (copyright Luigi Ferrarella Corriere della Sera) to clean up the money coming from illegal bets.
As he had explained at the time of that survey of 2023 beans, in fact, in certain illegal sites you enter credit, chatting with a natural person, who will surely have a cloned mobile phone, but which to those who investigate can be useful to know: according to what emerged from the Milan investigation, that initial credit once became significant would have been repaid simulating the purchase of luxury watches at the Gioilelleria who emitted Keeping the watches and collecting the money cleaned with the purchases that were not there as a bank.
What pushes to choose illegal platforms
Of all the criminal architecture that underlies the illegal bets, customers, a role played in this case by the players, are the chicken (consenting obtorto neck) to be plucked, which often does not even know the upstream mechanisms: The concept is that those who have players of the game, try to return (pious illusion!) By playing, and a certain point, in the absence of liquidity, can no longer do it for legal ways because they ask for identification and do not allow to episodes to credit.
What are the players who are under investigation risk
In Italy it is not a crime to be ruined on the game and in fact customers risk only if they bet on non -legal platforms: A 500 euro pecuniary sanction, remedied with 250 euros as an oblation, much lower than you risk indebted in trying to compulsively recover the lost money, as at the time had admitted to having made beans, slipping into the vile of the pathological game.
But things get complicated when the footballer is made by profession. The result is several names among the suspects in Milan: in addition to beans and toners, there are the Milan midfielder Alessandro Florenzi, the then striker of Rome Nicolò Zaniolo, now at Fiorentina, the Juventusians Mattia Perin and Weston McKennie, the former Argentine Juventusians Leandro Paredes and Angel Di Maria, the defender of Atalanta Raoul Bellanova, then at Inter and Al Torino, the Turin midfielder Samuele Samuele Ricci At the time in Empoli, the Padova striker, at the time at the Cremonese, Cristian Buoniuto, the Lazio and Empoli striker (today at Parma) Matteo Cancellieri, the defender Dominican Firpo (Leeds United), the tennis player Matteo Gigante, and another dozen non -sportsmen, all just for having bet or played online poker on non -legal platforms.
Beans and toners
In the case of beans and toners, although they have already paid the accounts with criminal and sporting justice for what emerged from the previous investigation, the question is a little more complex: they risk being called to answer criminally with a 500 euro fine as well as for the accusation of playing on the illegal sites identified with bets and poker, even in part, because they would have advertised them with other players, obtaining in exchange for credit bonuses for other games or discounts on debts.
The front of sports justice
For those who are registered with the Football Federation, a sports front also opens up: the members of football clubs are in fact subject to the Code of Sports Justice of the FIGC which prohibits them to bet, without distinguishing between legal or illegal sites, on the sport they are part of.
Who, from inside, bets on football – the only thing relevant for sports law – runs into a disqualification of not less than three yearsI, who further tightens in the event that he has bet on games of his team, for the evident conflict of interest that is created.
Hence the convenience for those who have focused on the ball to admit and negotiate with the Federal Prosecutor’s Office to have lighter sporting penalties: discount of punishment and commitment to cure the dependence on play and devote themselves to socially useful activities as evidenced in schools, as they did in 2023 beans and tonals. On a sporting level, the question could also be widen because, in the event of betting on football, even those who, having part of the world of football, knew and did not report.
