Italian Fideuram Bank Executive Falls Victim to AI Voice Scam, €95 Million Illegally Transferred! Over €36 Million Flows into Bitcoin Wallets

Coin Circle (120btc.CoM): In February 2026, Fideuram, a private bank under Italy's Intesa Sanpaolo, was embroiled in a meticulously planned telecom fraud case. The bank's former chairman, Paolo Molesini, became the prime target of the criminals, who induced him to issue illegal transfer instructions totaling approximately €95 million using AI voice alteration technology. Public records indicate that Fideuram has an asset management scale of up to €450 billion. Molesini resigned on March 12 of the same year for personal reasons and is currently not listed as a subject of the prosecutor's investigation, nor has his former employer filed any legal action against him. This incident was first exposed by the Corriere della Sera on September 25, Beijing time, and has since attracted significant attention in the European financial sector.

Restoring the Precise Modus Operandi

According to details released by Milan court judge Sonia Mancini, this series of scams began on February 23. Molesini received a WhatsApp message from someone claiming to be the CEO of the parent company, Carlo Messina, who falsely stated that the group was secretly advancing an international bank acquisition. To avoid early intervention by the Italian Securities and Exchange Commission (Consob), the operation had to be executed secretly through the subsidiary Fideuram, with a promise that a dedicated lawyer would follow up. Given that the group had recently missed an opportunity to acquire Generali due to a leak, this highly misleading statement immediately dispelled Molesini's doubts.

Subsequently, a "lawyer" claiming to be Paolo Nastasi, managing partner of A&O Shearman's Italian office, called Molesini. The criminal gang utilized deepfake technology to perfectly clone the real lawyer's voice. After establishing trust, the fake lawyer sent 11 forged confidentiality agreements and special authorizations, inducing Molesini to complete all confidential communications through a fake mailbox.org email domain, after which all digital traces were completely destroyed.

Alarmingly, the criminals also pressured Fideuram's payment supervisor with similar tactics, causing the operational team to be on standby before the chairman formally issued the order. Ultimately, the finance department transferred large sums in 11 transactions to accounts in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Portugal.

Millions of Euros Disappear into the Crypto Network

The unusual outflow of large sums quickly triggered Fideuram's internal risk control alarms. With the cooperation of police from multiple countries, a Chinese financial institution successfully intercepted and returned over €40 million; simultaneously, Milan prosecutors, in collaboration with Portuguese authorities through Eurojust, froze an additional €13 million, which was ordered to be seized by a judge.

Despite recovering over half of the losses, court documents confirm that as much as €39.5 million remains unaccounted for. The tracing of the funds shows that over €36 million, after passing through a money laundering network in Malta, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, was completely detached from the traditional fiat currency system using a Canadian remittance platform, ultimately settling in two secret Bitcoin wallets.

According to follow-up reports, Italian prosecutors are making every effort to apply for international judicial assistance, attempting to track this batch of digital assets before the illicit funds are liquidated. A 48-year-old Israeli man has been formally investigated for identity theft and serious fraud, with fund flow analysis indicating that approximately €4 million of the crypto assets ultimately ended up in his hands.

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