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The commercial elite of Italy has been dragged by a scam that used an artificial voice generated by intelligence that mimics the Italian defense minister Guido Crosetto to ask for magnates to cable millions to bank accounts abroad to help pay the rescues to Italian journalists who They drift abroad.
The scam was addressed to some of the most powerful business barons in Italy, including the president of Pirelli, Marco Tronchetti Provera, the fashion designer Giorgio Armani, the co -founder of Prada, Patrizio Bertelli, the owner of Tode della Valle, the former former Owner of Inter Milan, Massimo Moratti, and members of Billonaria Beretta and Masarini families, a person with knowledge of the investigation said.
While many suspects immediately, at least one was persuaded to transfer 1 million euros to bank accounts abroad, after being falsely reassured that the Bank of Italy will refund it later for payment. Until now, three Milanese businessmen have filed formal complaints to the city prosecutor’s office, including one that was a victim of the scam.
Authorities familiar with the case say that fraud involved multiple rounds of calls from people who passed through Crosetto’s staff and the apparent use of AI to convince Crosetto’s voice convincingly. The objectives were told that the government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni needed his help to rescue Italian journalists kidnapped in the Middle East.
“The minister’s voice was reproduced,” said an official of the Ministry of Defense. “I was asking for money to pay the rescue to the kidnapped Italian journalists in the world. The false Crosetto said: “I cannot pay with the money from the ministry, but it will recover the money from the Bank of Italy.” It was a hoax. It wasn’t true. ”
The researchers said the calls seemed to come from the telephone numbers belonging to the staff of the Minister of Defense, who believed it had been cloned.
The scammers moved only a few weeks after the Meloni government negotiated an exchange of high profile hostages in which a young Italian journalist, Cecilia Sala, was released from the notorious prison of Evin de Tehran, in exchange for Rome to return to an Iranian engineer desired in the United States for a scheme that provided sophisticated American drone technology to Iran’s revolutionary guards.
Crosetto first sounded the alarm of “a serious scam” in a publication on social networks last week, saying that he wanted to increase public awareness so that “nobody runs the risk of falling into the trap.”
The minister said that he first discovered fraud after being contacted by an outstanding entrepreneur who had not previously met and had transferred a large sum to a bank account detailed by a false “General Giovanni Montalbano” after talking to someone that the businessman He was convinced was the same Crosetto.
Crosetto said he later received calls from several other main entrepreneurs who had been contacted by people who intended to be members of their staff trying to organize the rescue of Italian journalists in the Middle East.
The Bank of Italy warned Friday that the scammers were incorrectly using their name and logo to promise that the Central Bank would reimburse the money that rich entrepreneurs invested as contributions to the false rescue scheme.
“Banking of Italy is in no way related to any of these applications,” said the statement, since he warned people who do not respond and inform such proposals to the relevant authorities.
Italy’s commercial elite is not the first to be attacked by scams who take advantage of rich people anxious for discrete favors for a government that seeks to rescue hostages.
A decade ago in France, more than 150 corporate bosses, heads of state, ambassadors and religious leaders were contacted in a bold scam when a man who claims to be the French defense minister Jean-Yves Le Drian requested millions of euros for the government of High secret. Operations, including the release of French journalists retained as hostages in Syria.
Although most felt something wrong, the scammers managed to collect $ 85mn, including almost $ 20mn of the late Aga Khan, leader of the world’s Muslims of the world. The leader Gilbert Chikli, a Franco-Israeli, was sentenced for multiple fraud positions in 2020 and sentenced to 11 years in prison.
Additional reports by Giuliana Ricozzi
