Audio deepfakes have been used to imitate Italian defence minister Guido Crosetto in a bid to get tycoons to pay millions of ransom for the release of Italian journalists overseas.
The scam targeted wealthy elite business leaders to place money into overseas bank accounts which fraudsters could then access.
The people affected included designer Giorgio Armani, former Inter Milan owner Massimo Moratti and Prada’s Chair Patrizio Bertelli, among other big names. One victim was conned into transferring one million after being falsely promised the funds would be repaid by the Bank of Italy.
The fraud was convincing with the help of AI to simulate an artificial imitation of Crosetto’s voice by people who purported to be his staff. The multiple calls could even be falsely ‘traced’ back to numbers and IP addresses belonging to the minister’s staff, but this is a common technique and diversion used by fraudsters known as spoofing.
“It was a hoax. It was not true”, a defence ministry official said. As soon as becoming aware of the scam, Crosetto alerted the public via social media. He was contacted by top entrepreneurs to link the dots – some of whom he had never met, but felt they were approached by Crosetto himself and his staff.
The Bank of Italy on Friday announced a concession to the wealthy business elite caught up in the multi-million scam and said the Central Bank would reimburse them. It also warned fraudsters that such schemes would not be tolerated.
