"We were engaged and she said she loved me, but that she suffered from a serious congenital heart disease that prevented her from meeting me for years. So she started asking me for money for treatment and, when I put up some resistance, she said that I made her feel bad and threatened to kill herself." Sitting on the witness stand, twice, the volleyball player Roberto Cazzaniga could not hold back the emotion and started to cry, but in the end he confirmed - point by point - the accusations against his former friend Manuela Passero and Valeria Satta, from Capoterra, accused of having defrauded him for years in order to steal all the savings he earned in his seasons as a professional in Serie A and with the national team.

The debate

The trial involving the two women accused of fraud opened yesterday before the judge of the Court of Cagliari, Roberto Cau. The story emerged in the fall of 2021 thanks to the program “Le Iene”. The athlete, 43 years old at the time, publicly revealed his misadventure: for 15 years he was convinced he was having an affair with the Brazilian top model Alessandra Amoroso, even though he had never met her, whose contact (she called herself “Maya”, who in reality was Valeria Satta) was provided to him by her friend Manuela Passero. Through deception, the two women allegedly stole 700 thousand euros from him, including the purchase of a car. Satta and Passero are defended by lawyers Elisabetta Maura, Romina Usai and Greta Maria Marchesi, from the Modena bar. Roberto Cazzaniga has joined the civil action with his lawyer Paola Di Sotto, while the Cagliari lawyer Michele Pilia is assisting a young woman from whom some photos were allegedly stolen. In the pre-trial hearing, the judge had rejected the request for probation of the defendant from Capoterra due to the lack of compensation.

The testimony

And yesterday, once the trial was opened, the volleyball player answered questions from the prosecutor and lawyers for almost four hours. "The requests for money continued from 2008 to 2021," the athlete admitted, "not only on a prepaid card, but also by bank transfer and wire transfer. In the end, I got into debt, asking friends and acquaintances for money. When I asked Maya to give it back, she brought up a lot of problems and went berserk because she needed it for medicine, so I had to give out sums of money so that she could continue to live." The volleyball player then admitted that, despite never having seen her, a relationship had developed with the model (who, according to the prosecution, would be Satta in disguise) that lasted for years, even with some intimacy. All, obviously virtual. It continues in April.