Associated Incidents
Italy's business elite has been swept up in a scam that used an intelligence-generated artificial voice imitating Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto to ask tycoons to wire millions to offshore bank accounts to help pay ransoms to Italian journalists who are kidnapped abroad.
The scam targeted some of Italy's most powerful business barons, including Pirelli chairman Marco Tronchetti Provera, fashion designer Giorgio Armani, Prada co-founder Patrizio Bertelli, Tode Della Valle owner, former Inter Milan owner Massimo Moratti, and members of the billionaire Beretta and Masarini families, a person with knowledge of the investigation said.
While many were immediately suspicious, at least one was persuaded to transfer €1 million to offshore bank accounts, after being falsely reassured that the Bank of Italy would later reimburse him for the payment. So far, three Milanese businessmen have filed formal complaints to the city prosecutor’s office, including one who fell victim to the scam.
Authorities familiar with the case say the fraud involved multiple rounds of calls from people posing as Crosetto’s staff and the apparent use of AI to convincingly simulate Crosetto’s voice. The targets were told that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government needed their help to rescue kidnapped Italian journalists in the Middle East.
“The minister’s voice was reproduced,” a Defense Ministry official said. “He was asking for money to pay ransom to kidnapped Italian journalists around the world. The fake Crosetto said, ‘I can’t pay with the ministry’s money, but you will get the money back from the Bank of Italy.’ It was a hoax. It wasn’t true.”
Investigators said the calls appeared to come from phone numbers belonging to the Defense Minister’s staff, who they believed had been cloned.
The scammers moved in just weeks after Meloni’s government brokered a high-profile hostage swap in which a young Italian journalist, Cecilia Sala, was released from Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, in exchange for Rome returning an Iranian engineer wanted in the United States for a scheme that provided sophisticated American drone technology to Iran’s revolutionary guards.
Crosetto first sounded the alarm about “a serious scam” in a social media post last week, saying he wanted to raise public awareness so that “no one risks falling into the trap.”
The minister said he first discovered the fraud after being contacted by a prominent entrepreneur whom he had not previously met and who had transferred a large sum to a bank account listed by a fake “General Giovanni Montalbano” after speaking to someone the businessman was convinced was Crosetto himself.
Crosetto said he then received calls from several other top businessmen who had been contacted by people pretending to be members of their staff trying to organise the rescue of Italian journalists in the Middle East.
The scam targeted some of Italy’s most powerful business barons, including Giorgio Armani © Julien de Rosa/AFP/Getty Images
The Bank of Italy warned on Friday that fraudsters were misusing its name and logo to promise that the central bank would repay money that wealthy businessmen invested as contributions to the fake rescue scheme.
“Banca d’Italia is in no way connected to any of these requests,” the statement said, as it warned people not to respond and to report such proposals to the relevant authorities.
Italy’s business elite is not the first to be targeted by scams that prey on wealthy individuals eager to do discreet favours for a government seeking to rescue hostages.
A decade ago in France, more than 150 corporate chiefs, heads of state, ambassadors and religious leaders were targeted in an audacious scam when a man claiming to be French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian solicited millions of euros for top-secret government operations, including the release of French journalists held hostage in Syria.
Although most felt wrong, the scammers managed to collect $85mn, including nearly $20mn from the late Aga Khan, leader of the world's Ismaili Muslims. Ringleader Gilbert Chikli, a Franco-Israeli, was convicted on multiple counts of fraud in 2020 and sentenced to 11 years in prison.
Additional reporting by Giuliana Ricozzi