World Superbike team Supersonic Racing has picked up a new, but highly controversial sponsor Fabrizio Corona and his magazine Corona Star’s.

Fabrizio Corona, for those of you who are lucky enough not to follow Italian gossip, runs his own agency and is the king of professional paparazzi and second only to Silvio Berlusconi in getting his name in the papers.

Between his highly publized affair with an Argentinian model/showgirl and getting arrested for a number of things that includes drug dealing, and promoting prostitution; Corona was sentenced last year to three-and-a-half year’s jail for extortion, and one of his victims was former MotoGP and now Superbike rider Marco Melandri.

Continue reading: Why Supersonic Racing team's new sponsor will upset Marco Melandri

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This story dates back to 2007 when Fabrizio Corona who runs photo agency Coronàs, with dozens of paparazzi under his wing, tried to extort € 10,000 from MotoGP rider Marco Melandri.

Corona telephoned Melandri’s manager Alberto Vergani, who also the president of Nolan Helmets, asking him € 10,000 in order not to publish photos and videos of Melandri together with porno star Brigitta Bulgari during a private party in a discoteque on the eve of the Mugello GP.

Vergani refused to pay up and taped the conversation and when the scandal broke, because the same Corona extorted and attempted to blackmail several big named soccer players and Fiat’s Lapo Elkan with compromising photos, the enitre story came out in all it’s sordidness.

Corona was sentenced to three years and eight months of prison.

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