Associated Incidents
Unlock Editor's Digestion for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Italy's business elite has been rocked by a scam that used an artificial intelligence-generated voice imitating Italian defence minister Guido Crosetto to solicit tycoons to transfer millions to overseas bank accounts to help pay ransoms to free Italian journalists kidnapped abroad.
The scam targeted some of Italy's most powerful business barons, including Marco Tronchetti Provera, chairman of Pirelli, fashion designer Giorgio Armani, Prada co-founder Patrizio Bertelli, Tod's owner Diego Della Valle, former Inter Milan owner Massimo Moratti and members of the billionaire Beretta and Menarini families, a person with knowledge of the investigation said.
While many were immediately suspected, at least one was persuaded to transfer €1 million to bank accounts abroad, after being falsely assured that he would be reimbursed by the Bank of Italy later for the payment. So far, three Milanese businessmen have filed formal complaints with 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 played back,” a defense ministry official said. “He was asking for money to pay the ransom for kidnapped Italian journalists around the world. The fake Crosetto said: ‘I can’t pay with ministry money, but you will get the money back from the Bank of Italy. ’ It was a joke. It was not true.”
Investigators said the calls appeared to come from phone numbers belonging to the defense minister’s staff, which they believed had been cloned.
The scammers acted 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 U.S. for a scheme that provided sophisticated U.S. drone technology to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Crosetto sounded the alarm about “a serious scam underway” 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 businessman he had not previously met 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 prominent businessmen who had been contacted by people pretending to be members of his staff trying to arrange the rescue of Italian journalists in the Middle East.
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.
“The Banca d’Italia is in no way connected with any of these requests,” the statement said, while urging people not to respond and to report such offers 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 favors 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 then-French defense minister Jean-Yves Le Drian solicited millions of euros for top-secret government operations, including the release of French journalists held hostage in Syria.
Though most suspected something, the scammers managed to raise $85 million, including nearly $20 million from the late Aga Khan, leader of the world’s Ismaili Muslims. Ringleader Gilbert Chikli, a French-Israeli, was convicted on multiple counts of fraud in 2020 and sentenced to 11 years in prison.
Additional reporting by Giuliana Ricozzi