The message often comes from above. A minister, the head of the company, a banker known to everyone. There is a delicate operation to complete, we must act quickly and above all maintain secrecy. Then a lawyer appears, a consultant, someone who seems to confirm that it's all true. And finally comes the request: transfer the money.
It is the scheme that would have led Paolo Molesini, president of Fideuram, to arrange transfers for around 36 million euros after a WhatsApp message apparently coming from Carlo Messina, CEO of Intesa Sanpaolo. But what today appears like an almost science fiction scam, with the use of artificial intelligence to reproduce the voice of a lawyer, has much less technological and equally sensational ancestors.
Over the years, company presidents, CEOs and some of the best-known entrepreneurs in Italy have fallen into the network. And many others have been approached without taking the bait. The names and tools change, but the script almost always remains the same: authority, urgency, secrecy and a story exceptional enough to justify the suspension of normal precautions.
When "Minister Tria" called the president of Rai
In 2019 one of the targets was Marcello Foa, then president of Rai. The name used to make the request credible was that of Giovanni Tria, Minister of Economy at the time.
The attempt was unsuccessful: the transfer was not executed. But years later that contact would resurface in the Milan investigation into a much larger series of frauds attributed to a group of Italian-Israelis.
It wasn't just Rai that was in the sights. According to investigative reconstructions, Mediaset, Loro Piana, Adecco, Banca Popolare di Spoleto and other companies were also targeted. In some cases the attempt failed. In others, however, the money really went away.
The 5.5 million disappeared from Sisal
Among the victims was Sisal. In 2019 the then CEO Emilio Petrone was contacted by someone who introduced himself as Gianpiero Mazza, representative of the parent company CVC Advisers Italia. The request concerned a confidential operation. To strengthen its credibility, an alleged lawyer also entered the scene, using the identity of the real lawyer Francesco Portolano. The result was three wire transfers totaling $5.5 million to an account in Hong Kong.
Maire Tecnimont and the 18.6 million dollars
The blow suffered by Maire Tecnimont was even heavier. Even in that case the scam revolved around an alleged confidential corporate transaction and the impersonation of the company's top management and professionals involved in the deal.
A manager of the Indian subsidiary arranged transfers for $18.6 million. The discovery came only later, when a meeting with the real president revealed that the operation for which millions of dollars had been moved simply did not exist. Maire Tecnimont, Sisal and Mipharm were the successful coups attributed to the same group in the investigation, for a total loot close to 25 million dollars. Foa and other managers, however, had been the targets of unsuccessful attempts.
The fake Crosetto and the phone call to Moratti
If the frauds of 2019 were based above all on social engineering, a few years later technology would have made the mechanism much more sophisticated. In February 2025 it was Massimo Moratti who received the phone call. This time the name used by the scammers was that of Defense Minister Guido Crosetto. The story constructed to convince the former Inter president was based on an emergency: money was needed to free Italians kidnapped abroad. The operation was to remain confidential and the money, he was led to believe, would later be returned by the state.
Moratti made two transfers for a total of 980 thousand euros. The money ended up in a Dutch account but, thanks to the complaint and the intervention of the investigators, it was blocked and recovered.
Even in this case, however, Moratti was only one of the people contacted. The list of potential targets included some of the most important names in Italian business: from Giorgio Armani to Patrizio Bertelli, from Diego Della Valle to Marco Tronchetti Provera, as well as representatives of the Aleotti, Beretta, Del Vecchio and Caltagirone families and managers of Esselunga. According to what emerged at the time, Moratti had been the only one to make the payment.
The same script, with increasingly perfect tools. Seen in sequence, the story above all tells the evolution of a technique. In 2019, a well-constructed email, accompanied by the identity of a minister, a president or a lawyer, might have been enough. In 2025, a credible voice could be added to the false identity. In 2026, artificial intelligence will make it possible to reproduce the very voice of the person who should guarantee that the operation is authentic.
