Associated Incidents
Giorgio Armani and other Italian billionaire businessmen have been victims of an attempted fraud by a group of scammers who, through Artificial Intelligence, cloned the voice of Guido Crosettol, the Minister of Defense of Giorgia Meloni (https://www.libertaddigital.com/personajes/giorgia-meloni/). Their goal was to raise large sums of money to supposedly free Italian journalists kidnapped in Iran and Syria. In the calls, they were promised that the money would be returned through the Bank of Italy. The Italian businessmen who were scammed are Giorgio Armani, Diego Della Valle, owner of Tod's, and the Caltagirone and Beretta families, among many others.
Another victim of the scam is Massimo Moratti, former president of the oil company Saras and of Inter Milan, who is believed to have been one of the first victims to report the fraud after having sent almost a million euros through wire transfers. Moratti was the first person to report the scam to the Carabinieri and, according to the Italian media, at least three other businessmen have gone to the police to say that they had been victims of this fraud. "They are good, I mean that everything seemed absolutely true. I know that something like this can happen, but I did not expect it," Moratti explained in the newspaper La Repubblica.
The minister reports it
The Minister of Defense himself, Guido Crosetto, has been in charge of warning about a serious scam in progress through social networks. According to him, an organized gang is impersonating him and other senior officials to deceive Italian businessmen.
According to the minister from Meloni, "they tell me that there is a well-known businessman, whom I do not know, who wants to contact me. He calls me and tells me that he was called by me and then by a General and that he made a very large transfer to an account that had been given to him by the General. Later, "I tell him that it is a scam and I notify the police."
The minister has regretted this scam, assuring that "these businessmen are people who, out of love for their country, were willing to make a transfer if a minister asked them to." Therefore, Crosetto has informed Justice and the Carabinieri about the situation, but has decided to make it public to prevent more people from falling into the trap.
"We must launch an alert, because there are people who continue to fall into the trap," warned the minister in an interview for the television channel Rete Quattro. Since the news became known, the list of victims has not stopped growing, which shows the seriousness of the scam.