Milan: Italian authorities have successfully frozen nearly € 1 million (£ 870,000) after a prominent businessman fell victim to a sophisticated fraud involving artificial intelligence.
Officials revealed on Wednesday that the funds transferred to a foreign bank account were part of a scheme where scammers used AI to emulate Italy’s defense minister, Guido Crosetto.
Scammers used AI to emulate the minister’s voice, calling calls that claimed to seek urgent financial assistance to release kidnapped Italian journalists in the Middle East.
Some of Italy’s most prominent business figures, including fashion designer Giorgio Armani and Prada co-founder Patrizio Bertelli, were targeted, Milan prosecutors said earlier this week. However, only Massimo Moratti, the former owner of the Football Club Inter Milan, is assumed to have sent the requested funds.
Officials said they thought it would be difficult to pick up the missing funds, but on Wednesday they revealed the cash had been tracked to the Netherlands.
“I am very pleased that the money that is fraudulently taken from an entrepreneur, using my forged voice and name, has been traced to a Dutch account and completely frozen,” Crosetto said at X. “Excellent work by the Magistrates and the police forces.
There was no immediate comment from Moratti, who had transferred two payments of a total of almost a million euros, under the wrong belief that he would be reimbursed by Bank of Italy, sources familiar with the case have said.
Moratti filed a legal complaint last week after he realized he had been dipped. “It all seemed real. They were good. It could happen to anyone,” he told the Italian daily La Repubblica over the weekend.
The scam involved scammers who made up as officials of the Ministry of Defense with calls that seemed to come from government offices in Rome. They then sent the phone to a man they said was Crosetto who asked for money and said the government could not be seen to be behind the transactions.
The Minister of Defense has said they used AI technology to convincingly simulate his voice.
