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Former UFC strawweight champion Jessica Andrade filed a lawsuit in the United States against her former coach and manager Gilliard Parana.
Andrade, 32, who trained with Parana from 2012 to 2024, is accusing him of embezzling $2 million from her over the course of their time working together.
The Brazilian fighter, who now lives and trains in Las Vegas, told MMA Fighting, “We have a lawsuit going about TransferWise and the money that was transferred to other people I’ve never seen in my life. That happened when he was taking care of my finances, and I had no access to anything.
“At one point he said, ‘Jessica, look, let me handle this for you, you don’t have to worry about any of this.’ And as always, I trusted him. He removed my access to the account. He said, ‘You don’t need to look at your accounts, you’ll have a monthly salary.’ I was making good money in the beginning, but in the end I don’t know how [that money ran out].
“He said I was shopping too much on Amazon, but with the investigation and all that, [we saw that] I made $2 million and spent $10,000 on Amazon,” she continued. “Where did the rest of the money go? It makes no sense, and it’s being investigated now, and we’ll find out where every penny went. I’ll just wait for now.”
She will be taking on Natalia Silva at UFC Vegas 97 on Sept. 7. After that fight, Andrade says she will get back to dealing with the lawsuit against Parana.
Parana, who is currently in Brazil after announcing his retirement as a MMA coach and manager, denies that he did anything wrong.
“Anyone who has a brain and knows how to do math will see that she really doesn’t spend her money on just a few purchases on Amazon,” Parana said in a statement to MMA Fighting. “She has a lot of expenses, and there are so many that she even gets lost in the calculations. Jessica is not incapable. Jessica is not a 15-year-old girl. And Jessica is not illiterate. Jessica was never forbidden from going to the bank, from calling the bank and from finding out how her accounts were.
“Jessica always had full access to her things and was always intelligent enough to know everything that happened in her financial life. And I was never the guy who took care of her financial life. I was just her advisor when she needed it and asked for it. But all of this will be proven if there is a coherent investigation. May justice be served and may the wrongdoer pay, because lying to the authorities and lying to have a trial go your favor is also a crime. Let’s wait and see what happens.”
Andrade won the UFC strawweight title when she defeated Rose Namajunas on May 11, 2019 via knockout slam in the second round at UFC 237, a card in which she headlined at Jeunesse Arena in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
She would then lose the belt in her next fight against Zhang Weili on August 31, 2019 by first-round technical knockout at UFC on ESPN+ 15.