Italian Bank Fideuram Lost €36 Million After AI Voice Clone Scam Diverted €95 Million Overseas

A single fake WhatsApp message and one cloned voice cost Italy's biggest bank tens of millions of euros. Fideuram, the private banking arm of Intesa Sanpaolo, confirmed through reporting from Corriere della Sera and Reuters that fraudsters stole €95 million ($108 million) in an elaborate AI-driven impersonation scheme that played out over February 2026 and is only now fully surfacing publicly, as of a September 25, 2026 disclosure.

How the scam worked

Paolo Molesini, then chairman of Fideuram, received a WhatsApp message that looked like it came from Carlo Messina, the actual CEO of parent company Intesa Sanpaolo. The message pressed him to move fast: Fideuram needed to handle a series of overseas transfers because Intesa couldn't process them directly for unspecified practical reasons, tied to a time-sensitive foreign financial opportunity, according to Reuters and Milano Finanza.

To close the loop, the scammers arranged a phone call that sounded exactly like Paolo Nastasi, the managing partner of law firm A&O Shearman Italia and a lawyer Molesini actually knew. It wasn't him. Investigators say the callers used AI tools to clone Nastasi's voice convincingly enough to confirm the fake instructions, according to Il Fatto Quotidiano and Sky TG24. Nastasi had no involvement and no knowledge his voice was used.

Fake follow-up emails supplied the account details. Molesini directed Fideuram's treasury to send roughly €95 million to accounts mostly in China and Hong Kong.

The recovery effort

Fideuram's internal fraud-detection systems flagged the transfers as irregular quickly, and the bank alerted foreign banking and law enforcement counterparts, according to Reuters. Chinese banks froze more than €40 million. A separate seizure order signed by Milan investigating judge Sonia Mancini in May 2026 froze another €13 million at a Portuguese bank, coordinated through the EU's Eurojust agency, per L'Unione Sarda and Il Fatto Quotidiano.

That puts recovered funds at roughly €53 million. The remaining €36 million had already moved through the Portuguese account and into bitcoin before authorities could intervene, according to L'Unione Sarda. Crypto Briefing's write-up frames the total loss as €95 million in its headline, which overstates the current exposure. Every other outlet in this reporting, including Reuters via Euronext and KSL, and the Italian outlets closest to the case, puts the unrecovered amount at €36 million after the recoveries in China and Portugal.

Milan prosecutors Alfonso Serritiello and Barbara Benzi, working with deputy prosecutor Eugenio Fusco, are pursuing the case through international rogatory letters. One foreign national has been listed in the investigation registry on suspicion of computer fraud, though sources caution the identity attached to that name may itself be fabricated, according to Reuters and Milano Finanza. No charges have been filed as of this reporting, and this remains an open investigation, not a conviction.

Molesini's position

Molesini resigned as Fideuram's chairman on March 16, 2026, citing personal reasons. Neither Reuters' sources nor Milano Finanza indicate he is under investigation or facing legal action from Intesa Sanpaolo. He was the target of a sophisticated, layered deception involving a real bank CEO's identity and a real lawyer's cloned voice. Fideuram itself has not disclosed whether any internal verification protocol was skipped or whether the scam succeeded despite normal procedures being followed. Intesa Sanpaolo and Fideuram declined to comment when Reuters asked directly.

A bigger pattern

Similar schemes have occurred. Antonio De Vita, Intesa Sanpaolo's chief security officer, said the bank has blocked roughly 5,000 AI-generated deepfake attempts since the start of 2026, the majority of them impersonating CEO Messina himself, according to Il Fatto Quotidiano. The Association for Financial Professionals found 74% of organizations were targeted by CEO impersonation fraud in 2025, up from 63% the year before, per the same report.

A similar scheme last year used an AI-cloned voice of an Italian government minister to convince businessman Massimo Moratti to wire nearly €1 million abroad. That money was eventually recovered, according to Reuters.

Milano Finanza notes Fideuram's own computer systems were never breached. This was pure social engineering, and the bank's overall financial exposure, given its size, was described as contained. The unresolved question is whether the remaining €36 million, now sitting somewhere in crypto markets, can be traced and clawed back before it gets laundered through mixers or exchanges the way similar stolen funds routinely disappear for good.