An affiliate of the PR company that represents footballer David Beckham has confirmed that the hacking of Beckham’s email account was the first stage in a plot to blackmail him. According to a report from The Daily Mirror, Beckham’s hacker was asking for money in exchange for not releasing the email conversations between Beckham and Simon Oliveira (his PR guy) that he found during his hack.
Police are investigating the hack
The details of the former England captain’s emails have been released by the British press amid the fallout from the hack. A spokesperson speaking on Beckham’s behalf assures the public that the emails were “private” and that they were “hacked” (and claimed that the hacker has “doctored” them to make them more incriminating and scandalous than they really are).
The general consensus, based on evidence, is that the hacker is Eastern European or possibly a resident of a Soviet republic. The hacker hired a lawyer for protection before making the blackmail bargain to Portugal-based company Doyen Sports, an affiliate of Oliveira’s entertainment and sports PR representation agency Doyen Global. The hacker’s legal representative clearly explained to Doyen Sports that the hacker had infiltrated the information banks of several “other sports agencies and sport accountancy firms,” including the one repping Beckham.
Hacker is linked to Football Leaks
Beckham’s people have confirmed that the hacker who accessed his emails is linked to the website Football Leaks (the sports version of Wikileaks).
Doyen Sports turned the hacker’s deal down and refused to heed his demands, resulting in the publication of the emails. They immediately told Portuguese police of the hacking and subsequent blackmail bid, and they began investigating.
The general assumption is that after the embarrassing collapse of his evil plan, the hacker handed Beckham’s emails over to the journalist network European Investigative Collaborations, who have been mulling over them for a while before finally leaking them to European websites last week.
So what do the emails say?
According to the emails, Beckham is annoyed that he missed his shot at knighthood back in 2013, while other Celebrities have been knighted and left him behind in their dust. In one email, he called the fact that he has yet to be knighted “a disgrace,” adding that “if I was American I would of (sic) got something like this 10 years ago.”
Some telling comments about Beckham’s work with Unicef can be found within these emails, though his spokesperson says that these ones are “taken out of context.” In one email, he vows he will not put up his own money for the charity, but Unicef assured in a statement that Beckham “has given significant funds personally.”
