Blackmail with intimate photos: Italian paparazzi Fabrizio Corona convicted for extorting Trezeguet

The tribunal sentenced Italian paparazzi Fabrizio Corona to three years and four months in prison for extortion against David Trezeguet, the former Juventus and France striker. His collaborator Marco Bonato received the same sentence, while photographer Fabrizio Pensa, who took the original photographs, was sentenced to five months in prison for invasion of privacy.

The facts date back to spring 2006, just weeks before the World Cup in Germany. Corona had obtained photographs showing Trezeguet in the company of a woman who was not his wife. To prevent their publication in the Italian celebrity press, the Franco-Argentine player paid €25,000. The courts ruled this payment to be extortion. As a civil party to the case, Trezeguet was awarded compensation equal to the sum paid.

This affair is part of a long criminal record for Fabrizio Corona. In December 2009, he had already been sentenced to three years and eight months in prison for attempting to extort Inter Milan players Francesco Coco and Adriano, as well as motorcycle racer Marco Melandri — each time by threatening to reveal photographs taken in nightclubs. Before the judges, the paparazzi had declared: “I am ashamed to be Italian. I no longer have faith in the law.”

For Trezeguet, the summer of 2006 would be doubly marked. A World Cup champion in 1998 and hero of Euro 2000 — he scored the golden goal in the final against Italy — he missed his penalty kick in the World Cup final against the Nazionale, hitting the crossbar of his club teammate Gigi Buffon. The Corona affair, which remained discreet at the time, constitutes the lesser-known chapter of this pivotal period in his career.