Associated Incidents
The rule always applies: follow the money. To try to freeze the loot of the fake Crosetto gang. To understand who the accounts are registered to. To trace the perpetrators of the scam in the name of the head of Defense. And to find out how they managed to make calls to entrepreneurs as if they were coming from the ministry, to make the deception more credible. Did they have reserved numbers?
To the three VIP complaints contacted by scammers who were impersonating the minister -- asking for money to free alleged journalists kidnapped in the Middle East -- others will soon be added. Starting from the complaint that Crosetto is about to deliver: «My complaint is already ready», he explains, hypothesizing the crime of impersonation, and it will be understood if the Milan prosecutor's office, led by Marcello Viola, will also need to hear him. It was he who revealed «the absurd story». Now he says: «I sent the carabinieri to the home of the first person who notified me and I reported» the incident «to the judicial authority and the services».
On the desk of the prosecutor Giovanni Tarzia, who coordinates the work of the investigative unit of the carabinieri led by colonels Antonio Coppola and Fabio Rufino, will also arrive the complaint of EssilorLuxottica, of the Del Vecchio family. The gang also tried to contact the giant, as security manager Stefano Orsini told *Tg1: «A person who introduced himself as the secretary of Minister Crosetto, Montalbano, asked to speak to the company's top management and to be urgently called back on a Belgian number, where the minister was for a delicate NATO meeting». The attack was repelled. They have already reported Massimo Moratti (so far the only confirmed victim), the Beretta and Aleotti families. The cyber pirates tried to hit, among others, Esselunga, Giorgio Armani, Marco Tronchetti Provera, Patrizio Bertelli, the Caltagirone family. Other complaints could arrive in the coming days.
The same prosecutor's office has drawn up a list of well-known names, considered possible targets of the scam, to contact to see if they can provide useful information. The gang, according to those working on the case, is made up of experts. "Scam professionals", the Minister of Defense defines them. Based on the testimonies collected, at least two speak "perfect Italian". Each with a role: the fake Crosetto, the self-styled official Montalbano, the fake general, certainly someone who manages the accounts. They made phone calls by relying on multiple servers, like in a hall of mirrors, to hide the origin of the calls. In doing so, they left traces that are now being tried to follow by mapping the different points through which the signal passed.
They used software that allows, in simple terms, to do this: the scammer calls the entrepreneur, but the number of the ministry actually appears on the victim's cell phone. These could be easily found numbers, they will try to understand if they were confidential because this second hypothesis would open up new scenarios. Other numbers used were actually foreign. Again, the scammers may have used software to disguise their voices (while not much is being done on the artificial intelligence trail).
The only two transfers that the pirates managed to obtain (at least from what we know so far) ended up abroad. Between Europe and Hong Kong. For days, magistrates have been working to freeze the accounts and the road, although uphill, could lead to results. In a cascade, they will try to understand whose accounts they belong to. The protagonists of the scam «have both the technology and the ability to identify the subjects. In this case, they identified the major Italian entrepreneurs, people who perhaps at the request of a minister were also available for Italy to make a transfer», Crosetto tells Zona Bianca. To play down the situation, he publishes messages from friends on X. Like that of the Minister of Economy Giancarlo Giorgetti: «At least you could have asked to buy BTPs! Now if I call, no one will believe me anymore...».