A fake Colombian national team participated in a tournament in Russia. Andrei Kirilenko had to explain himself while everything was orchestrated by a student, Christian David Mosquera Duran.
A friendly tournament was held in Russia where four teams played. One of them was not like the others in the most absurd way.
Two national teams - Venezuela and Colombia - were set to participate. The problem is that one of them - Colombia - was fake.
It did not feature any professional basketball players. As such, the games were not competitive at all. The fake national team lost by 102 points to BC Parma (155-53), scoring just two points in the first quarter (41-2).
The lack of an appropriate level of participants became clear immediately, and the president of the Russian Basketball Federation, Andrei Kirilenko, had to face a barrage of questions regarding it.
"We certainly didn't want to fool anyone and bring a team that we'd beat by 100 points. Naturally, after the first game of this team, it became clear that it did not correspond to the level of the tournament," he told the local media in the immediate aftermath.
"There's a standard procedure for interaction between federations, you can find contact information on the official FIBA website. Do you really think that we would take some crooked paths? We invited the Venezuelan national team according to the same scheme, and the leadership of the Venezuelan Basketball Federation arrived," he told TASS news agency.
Upon finding out that the Colombian name is being misrepresented internationally, the Colombian Basketball Federation released an official statement denouncing the participation of the so-called national team.
No team or club was authorized to represent the country, they stated. Additionally, the Colombian Federation promised to take legal action against the illegal use of their logo and name.
The official statement by the Colombian Federation:
The fake answer the Russian Federation received:
The entire process was masterminded by a 25-year-old Colombian student in Russia, Christian David Mosquera Duran (#6 in the title photo), sports.ru has found out. He used his personal email address when directing the Russian Federation to communicate with a fake persona, Sofia Orobio.
Mosquera Duran himself played in the lowest third division of a local 3x3 league in Kazan but wasn't very good at it, losing two of the three games played in a recent tournament and with the team scoring an average of just 4 points per game.
It is still unclear how everything unfolded throughout the entire process, but Mosquera Duran most likely managed to take hold of the email accounts of the Colombian Basketball Federation.
What is clear at this moment is that the local organizers did not bother to check the players on the roster and took the list that was received for granted, ultimately causing an international embarrassment.
The full 102-point difference game:
