A longtime Las Vegas lawyer has been disbarred for obtaining and using documents from a cyberhacker to sue soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo.
Leslie Stovall, a Nevada attorney since 1985, was previously suspended while the Nevada Supreme Court considered his case and a disciplinary panel’s recommendation that he lose his license. The high court issued its unanimous disbarment order Wednesday.
In a federal lawsuit, Stovall represented Kathryn Mayorga, who alleged that Ronaldo raped her in Las Vegas in 2009.
Representatives for Ronaldo made a deal in 2010 for Mayorga to receive $375,000. His attorneys have said he and Mayorga had consensual sex.
U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey dismissed Mayorga’s suit in 2022, ruling that Stovall “crossed the border of ethical behavior before he filed this action, and his disregard for the rules of this court has continued unabated.”
A magistrate judge had previously recommended the dismissal, finding that Stovall based the case on leaked and stolen documents that were privileged communications between Ronaldo and his attorneys.
Stovall did not respond to requests for comment Monday.
According to bar disciplinary records, Stovall reached out to Rui Pinto, the person behind a website called Football Leaks, and requested records, including communications of attorneys representing Ronaldo.
Pinto then provided the records.
Stovall previously denied contacting Pinto and said he acted justifiably because he did not steal the confidential documents and it could not be proven that they were stolen.
Multiple judges have disagreed.
The Supreme Court noted that Stovall had a history of 11 prior disciplinary offenses from 1989 to 2020 and was previously suspended following his 2001 conviction for filing a false tax return.
“As the hearing panel found, Stovall’s conduct reflected a continuing pattern of dishonesty and misconduct both in the prior disciplinary matters and throughout the federal litigation,” the court’s disbarment order said. “Stovall has substantial experience — 39 years — practicing law. Further, we agree with the hearing panel that Stovall refused to acknowledge the wrongful nature of the conduct given his insistence that the documents were not privileged and that every court to rule that the documents were privileged was wrong.”
Dorsey in 2023 ordered Stovall to pay more than $330,000 in attorneys fees to Ronaldo’s defense team.
“(W)hen Kathryn Mayorga’s attorney, Leslie Stovall, Esq., sought out and relied on the cyber-hacked, privileged documents of Cristiano Ronaldo’s attorneys to resurrect Mayorga’s long-since-released claims, tainting this case in a way that disqualification could not purge, I unenthusiastically dismissed it as a sanction for that bad-faith lawyering,” she wrote in an order.
State Bar Counsel Daniel Hooge said rules give Stovall time to wind down his practice and that disbarment is permanent in Nevada, though Stovall could file a petition for reconsideration.
Ensuring that communications between attorneys and clients are confidential is key to the legal profession, and Stovall’s disbarment shows that his use of illegally obtained attorney files was unacceptable, Hooge said.
Las Vegas attorney Richard Wright was hired to represent Ronaldo in 2009 regarding Mayorga’s allegation and was one of the lawyers whose records were stolen.
Wright said in a phone interview that his original records were paper files and that his firm itself was not hacked, but that some of his attorney-client communications were included in a hack.
The lawsuit filed by Stovall’s firm alleged that Ronaldo “hired a team of ‘fixers’, known as ‘personal reputation protection specialists’” to stymie criminal prosecution.
Those people were listed in the suit as anonymous defendants, but Wright said the allegations included him and were made using stolen information.
“I was like, ‘What are you thinking?’” he said. “I mean, that was literally my reaction at the time. This goes beyond bending the rules.”
Contact Noble Brigham at nbrigham@reviewjournal.com.
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