How AI voices helped fraudsters drain €95 million from Italy’s largest bank
How a cloned voice and a fake WhatsApp from the CEO pulled off a transnational heist of more than $100 million from one of Italy's biggest banks. Inside the three-day scam that sent money racing from Milan to China, Portugal and into Bitcoin, and why nearly half of it is still missing.
On 23 February 2026, Paolo Molesini, chairman of Fideuram – Intesa Sanpaolo Private Banking, a division of Italy’s largest bank Intesa Sanpaolo, received a message on WhatsApp from a strange phone number. The sender claimed to be Intesa CEO Carlo Messina and asked to use Fideuram as an intermediary to purchase a foreign bank.
Unbeknownst to Molesini, this message was the first in a chain of events that led to Fideuram being defrauded to the tune of 95 million euros, as first reported by Italian daily Corriere della Sera on Friday, 25 September, followed by Il Fatto Quotidiano, and confirmed the same day by Reuters.
The fraudsters told Molesini the purchase could not be made directly by Intesa, because a leak could have led Italy’s markets regulator Consob to stop it, Il Fatto reported, citing the court’s seizure decree. Molesini agreed to keep the transaction secret because a previous deal between Intesa and insurance major Generali had fallen through after a leak, so the request did not seem suspicious to him.
Later that day, Molesini allegedly received a phone call from a man who presented himself as a senior lawyer at a top global law firm. Il Fatto said Messina’s voice was cloned for the scheme. However, the court documents cited by ANSA and Open, as well as Reuters’ sources, indicate Molesini received a text message purportedly from Messina and a phone call using an AI clone of the voice of a lawyer, named by Italian media as Paolo Nastasi, managing partner of law firm A&O Shearman in Italy. Nastasi had no involvement in the scheme.
Il Fatto said the fraudsters also sent Molesini eleven forged documents on Shearman’s letterhead, including transfer orders supposedly signed by a Shearman lawyer based in Madrid. Molesini was also asked to sign a confidentiality agreement, together with a power of attorney apparently bearing Messina’s signature, ANSA reported. The fake lawyer then sent the bank details for the transfers and gave Molesini the number of Fideuram’s head of treasury and payments.
The same day, Fideuram’s head of treasury and payments was told by a fraudster pretending to be Fideuram’s chief executive to expect an incoming call from Molesini about urgent and confidential bank transfers, according to ANSA and Il Fatto.
When Molesini called him, both Molesini and the head of treasury and payments thought that they had spoken with their respective boss authorising the transfers and did not call higher-ups at their banks to verify the information. In total, the fraudsters managed to transfer about €95 million (roughly $108 million) from Fideuram’s treasury in eleven transfers between 23–25 February to accounts abroad, mainly in China, Hong Kong and Portugal.
One is naturally moved to ask why the treasurers did not verify the need for the transfers. According to the decree cited by Il Fatto, both men were convinced the operation was sound, urgent and confidential, and felt bound by the confidentiality agreement not to contact top management at Intesa or Fideuram.
According to the decree cited by Il Fatto, Banco BPI in Portugal flagged the transactions as suspicious, which led to the discovery of the scam. The real Fideuram CEO then called Molesini to warn him that a fraud was under way, and Molesini learned of the scam after calling Messina, who confirmed he had not contacted him.
In March, Molesini resigned as chairman citing personal reasons. At the time, Fideuram gave no further explanation for his departure. He is not under investigation and has been heard by investigators as a witness, according to Reuters and Open.
In May, a Milan judge signed a seizure decree that froze more than €13 million at a Portuguese bank, ANSA reported. Around €42 million sent to Bank of China had already been stopped and returned. Reuters’ sources said cooperation between authorities in China, Portugal and Italy recovered roughly €53 million of the total €95 million. ANSA, citing the decree, said €39.5 million is still missing, while Reuters and Corriere put the amount at about €36 million.
According to the decree, as reported by Open, more than €36 million of the missing funds passed through accounts in Malta, then Luxembourg and the Netherlands, and a Canadian money-transfer platform, before ending up in two Bitcoin wallets.
Milan prosecutors Barbara Benzi and Alfonso Serritiello are investigating the fraud with the help of the Carabinieri. Reuters’ sources said the callers used AI to replicate the lawyer’s voice, and the judge’s decree, as reported by ANSA, describes the lawyer’s voice as fake and created with AI.
Authorities have yet to report any arrests in connection with the fraud, which stayed hidden from public view for seven months, but a 48-year-old Israeli national has been placed under investigation, ANSA and Open reported.
According to Italian media, the Israeli, who works in IT and may be using a fake identity, is suspected of aggravated fraud and of pretending to be other people, together with people yet to be identified.
ANSA described the man as one of the members of the syndicate. Open reported that almost €4 million of the stolen money, converted into cryptocurrency, ended up with him.
Intesa Sanpaolo and Fideuram declined to comment to Reuters.