Maria Timofeeva ‘freaking out’ after more than €10,000 is stolen from her bank account
Russian tennis star Maria Timofeeva has revealed she is ‘freaking out’ after more than €10,000 was taken from her bank account in recent days.
The star who has broken into the top 100 of the WTA rankings made the alarming revelations while she was in Madrid, where she lost in qualifying for this week’s WTA 1000 event in the city.
The 20-year-old took to social media to speak about the trouble she has had in Spain, as she hinted this is not the first time she has been targeted by criminals.
“Here I am back in Spain six months later and I’ve been robbed again,” she stated.
“So I would like to share my story and could really use some advice from the people who might have been in a similar situation before or tell me how it could happen and yeah, let’s get to it.
“So apparently in the past few days, I’m here in Madrid, someone has been spending money from my bank account and spent little more than €10,000 [£8,573]. I’m freaking out because I don’t know how it could happen.
“Physically my card was with me most of the time, except for one episode when I left it in my room while the room was being cleaned by the maids of the hotel I’m staying in. I don’t know what else to tell.
“The circumstances are crazy and I don’t know how it could happen so please share something and be aware of people in Spain and of these situations because it’s happening every f*****g time I’m coming here and this is getting out of control.”
“The purchases were made in Spain in Madrid, around this area. Normally for the online purchase you need a confirmation code which is normally coming to my phone which didn’t happen.”
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Timofeeva confirmed she is planning to report the incident to the Spanish police as she followed up with these points of clarification:
“1. I didn’t receive any SMS about money being spent from my account because the sim connected to the bank is not my main one, so I didn’t install it until today,” she stated.
“2. My card is debit and my bank has very limited communication options so they didn’t contact me as well until €10k was spent in one day and they blocked the card. So for now I was only able to send them an email and hope that they can refund the money.
“3. I didn’t use ATMs during my stay here and the only place where I used a card reader was the official hotel of the tournament while I was paying for my coach’s room.
“4. Physically the card was with me and for online purchases, these frauds would need its details and a confirmation code so the main question is, how the f*** did they do it,” she added with a laughing face emoji.
The young star has enjoyed a breakthrough year on the court, with her run to the Australian Open fourth round in January the finest achievement of her young career so far.
She won her first WTA Tour title in Hungary last summer and is one of the rising stars of the women’s game, but it is clear that she is in need of some help following her traumatic experiences in Madrid.