The striker Bruno Henrique, from Flamengo, was formally denounced by the Federal District Prosecutor’s Office (MP-DF) for the crimes of fraud in sports competition and estelionato. The prosecution is related to a yellow card received by the player in a match against Santos, valid for the 2023 Brazilian Championship.
🚨 The suspicious card of Bruno Henrique.
The player was expelled in the bid, this card would have been purposeful to benefit from the player in bets.
– Goals of the Brasileirão ⚽️🇧🇷 (@goalsdobrasil1) April 16, 2025
In addition to Bruno Henrique, eight others were also reported, including his brother, Wander Nunes Pinto Junior; his sister -in -law, Ludymilla Araujo Lima; the cousin Poliana Ester Nunes Cardoso; and close friends.
The complaint, filed by the Special Action Group to Combat Organized Crime (Gaeco), was signed by prosecutors Rodrigo de Araújo Bezerra, Luis Henrique Ishihara, Christovao de Moura Varotto Junior and Stephany Nely Lobato. It is based on messages obtained by the Federal Police between the player and his family, as well as the official summary of the match between Flamengo and Santos.
According to MP-DF, Bruno Henrique would have used privileged information to benefit the group in sports bets. The scheme consisted of anticipating that he would receive a yellow card during the game – which, in fact, occurred, as recorded by referee Rafael Klein, who pointed to a “foolish action” as a reason for the warning.
The goal would be to profit from sports betting platforms, using the certainty of punishment as a competitive advantage. According to prosecutors, the action characterizes result manipulation, which constitutes sports fraud, as well as estelionate for obtaining improper financial advantage.
Now, it is up to the Federal District Court to decide whether or not to accept the complaint, which may make Bruno Henrique and the other formally defendants in the process.
Complete list of the accused:
- Bruno Henrique Pinto
- Wander Nunes Pinto Junior
- Ludymilla Araujo Lima
- Poliana Ester Nunes Cardoso
- CLAUDINEI VITOR MOSTEQUATE BASSAN
- Rafaela Cristina Elias Bassan
- HENRIQUE MOSTEQUATE OF BIRTH
- Andry Sales Nascimento dos Reis
- Max Evangelista Amorim
MORE: See the list of players registered by Flamengo to the Club World Cup
Can Bruno Henrique continue playing?
For now Bruno Henrique can continue playing normally, including the Club World Cup. He is not yet a defendant: the DF prosecutor has filed the complaint, but the court has not yet decided whether or not accepted. Only after receiving the complaint would it become a defendant formally.
There is no precautionary measure that removes it from the lawns: so far, no judge has imposed suspension, removal or other restriction on his professional activity as a player.
Flamengo has not officially commented on removal: so far, the club has not announced any internal punishment or preventive removal.
However, if the court accepts the complaint and the proceedings, he may have to respond to court hearings, be tried and even face legal or sports punishments, depending on the outcome. The Superior Court of Sports Justice (STJD) may also act if there is involvement in handling out result, which may lead to temporary suspension of football.
What can the punishment for Bruno Henrique be?
If justice accepts the complaint and Bruno Henrique is convicted, he may face punishments in both the criminal and sports sphere. See below the possible scenarios:
In criminal court (Penal Code and Law to Combat Results Manipulation):
Fraud in Sports Competition
- Law No. 13.155/2015 (Statute of the Fan)
- Penalty: 2 to 6 years imprisonment and fine
- This crime occurs when someone interferes with sports results in order to gain improper advantage, as in the case of bets.
Estelionate (art. 171 of the Penal Code)
- Penalty: 1 to 5 years imprisonment, in addition to a fine
- It is applied if there is proof that there was financial loss to third parties based on fraud.
In Sports Justice (STJD):
If there is a conviction or even solid evidence of results handling, the Superior Court of Sports Justice (STJD) can also punish it based on CBJD (Brazilian Code of Sports Justice):
Art. 243-A (act in order to influence results)
- Penalty: Suspension from 180 to 720 days (or even elimination)
- Fine of up to R $ 100 thousand
Other possible impacts:
- Termination of contract with Flamengo, if the club understands that there was a break of confidence or damage to the image.
- Sponsorship
- Prohibition of acting in other alloys, depending on decisions of international bodies, such as FIFA.
MORE: Who will win the 2025 Club World Cup? Guesses and main favorites to the title
Case Bruno Henrique: What is the accusation
The Federal Police had already indicted Bruno Henrique on April 14. He and ten more people were list of suspects. Investigators found, on Bruno Henrique’s brother’s mobile device, messages that compromise the player and put him directly linked to a betting scheme. The athlete was indicted for estelionato and fraud in sports competition. There is a suspicion of receiving a card purposely.
The investigation started in November last year. Bruno Henrique is suspected of having purposely taken card in the game against Santos, for the 2023 Brazilian Championship, on November 1, 2023, to benefit gamblers who would be close to him.
He received a yellow and then red card in a matter of seconds, 50 minutes into the second half. The yellow happened after a foul in Soteldo. The expulsion was due to a strong complaint with referee Rafael Rodrigo Klein. Rafael explained the whole episode in the Precedent:
“I inform you that I knew, as a result of the direct red card, Mr. Bruno Henrique Pinto, for offending me with the following words:” You are a shit, “with his finger laughing toward my face, after the foul marking and also after being warned with yellow card. After being sent off, the athlete came toward me, being contained by his companions.
Flamengo lost the game 2-1.
Case Bruno Henrique: The messages on WhatsApp
PF analyzed 3,989 conversations at Bruno Henrique’s Whatsapp, many of them empty or deleted. For investigators, this may indicate that the striker deleted part of the records. The agents also seized the player’s brother, Wander Nunes Pinto Júnior, and identified dialogues showing Bruno Henrique’s involvement in the scheme to receive a yellow card against Santos.
Bruno and his brother, Wander, also the target of the operation of the PF in November last year, exchanged messages on August 29, 2023, when Wander questioned his brother about he was hung in the Brasileirão:
“Do you have 2 card in the Brazilian?”
In response, the striker wrote: “Yes”.
Wander follows: “When guys have the 3 league we huh kkkk”
Bruno Henrique replies: “Against Santos”.
Following, Wander writes, “How many weeks?”
Bruno Henrique: “Look at Google”
Wander: “October 29th”, “will you stand to stay there without kkkkkk card”
Bruno Henrique: “I won’t complain,” “Only if I get into someone”
Wander then replies: “Boua will already save the money investment successfully”
Case Bruno Henrique has been to STJD?
On November 5 last year, hours after the Federal Police search operation, the Superior Court of Sports Justice (STJD) revealed that he had received a warning from Conmebol in August 2024 about the episode, but had filed for lack of evidence.
The decision came out after analysis by the company “Sportsradar”, which presented a report with the conclusion that it did not identify irregularities.
“The Attorney’s Office considered that the alert has not pointed to any indication of the athlete’s economic benefit, since any profits of the bets reported on the alert would be tiny when compared to the player’s monthly salary,” said the STJD.
However, even with the indictment by the Federal Police on April 14, the case was not reopened by the STJD.
STJD President Luís Otávio Veríssimo Teixeira explained the reason for the filing in November 2024.
– There was an analysis, very well grounded by the Attorney’s Office, the fact that the game brought – the minute in which it occurred, the type of play, busy volume, eventual earlier alerts of the athlete … of what was brought to the Attorney’s Office until that moment, could not advance. The vast majority of warnings do not become a process or result in acquittal because of this difficulty of persecutory instruments. In a clipping from 2022 to 2024, we have more than 150 alerts in Brazil in 2022, approximately 120 in 2023 and 57 in 2024. Of these all, we had, in the scope of sports justice, more than 30 convicts. All of these convicts are linked to a persecutory performance of the state. At the time when the analysis of those elements brought to the STJD took place, the Attorney’s Office embodied a report with various grounds and the conclusion was by the filing of that procedure and, in fact, there were no elements for the process – said Luís Otávio, in an interview with the site “GE.com”.
Case Bruno Henrique: How were the bets
According to the Federal Police, there were two gamblers. One of them, formed by direct relatives of Bruno Henrique, have three people: his brother, sister -in -law (his brother’s wife) and a player’s cousin. The other consists of six people, most of them with some kind of soccer connection-former amateur team or football players 7. Both groups have no relationship, they are two different nuclei. In common, only the fact that everyone lives in Belo Horizonte or in the metropolitan region of the capital of Minas Gerais.
Everyone made the same kind of bet: that Bruno Henrique would take a card. The PF was able to detect 13 different bets, made in three bookmakers, by nine different gamblers: three from the core of relatives and six from the “core football”. The investigation does not rule out that other bets have been made in other companies.
The amount added to the bets made by family members would have been R $ 1,642.58, with a return of R $ 4,967.01 and profit from R $ 3,324.43, according to the site “Lance!”.
- Wander Nunes Pinto Junior (brother) – bet R $ 380.86 and had a return of R $ 1,180.67 (game against Santos)
- Ludymilla Araújo Lima (sister -in -law) – Ludymilla made the bet on two platforms. In the first one bet R $ 380.86 and had a return of R $ 1,180.67. In the second betting house put and R $ 500,00 and had a return of and R $ 1,425.00 (game against Santos).
- Poliana Ester Nunes Cardoso (cousin) – bet R $ 380.86 and had a return of R $ 1,180.67 (game against Santos).
This does not mean that these are the total of the values involved in the case. At least one of the betting houses, Betano, reported having taken the air the possibility of betting on a card by Bruno Henrique when he noticed unusual movements.
On July 29, 2024, the CBF received an Alert from the International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA), referred by Conmebol, which warned that the movement of bets for the Bruno Henrique card was suspected.
Ibia highlighted the issue of accounts were created the day before or on the day of the game between Flamengo and Santos, as well as the fact that several bets were at the same values, the maximum value allowed by each betting house and concentrated in a short period of time.
The CBF then forwarded the alert to the PF, the Federal District Public Prosecution Service (because the game was in Brasilia) and the STJD. The PF took over the investigation and sought the Ministry of Finance’s Prizes and Betting Secretariat (SPA), responsible for regulating BETs in Brazil. The SPA, at the request of the PF, identified representatives of betting houses in Brazil.
The PF then asked the betting homes for the identities of the gamblers on which the suspicions of the IBIA report were suspected. In possession of this information, the PF formulated the courts for search and seizure.
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