AI phone scam targets Italian business leaders including Giorgio Armani

Daftar Isi

Some of Italy's most well-known business leaders, including fashion designer Giorgio Armani and Prada chairman Patrizio Bertelli, have been targeted by an AI-powered scam that involved mimicking the Defence Minister's voice in phone calls claiming to seek help to free Italian journalists being held hostage in the Middle East.

Prosecutors in Milan have taken four cases to the courts, including ones from Massimo Moratti, the ex-owner of Inter Milan, and members of the Beretta family, which has been around since the global firearms production started. The defence minister, Guido Crosetto, announced on Monday he'll make a formal complaint to Parliament about his voice being cloned and used in at least one phone call.

One of the targets already fell for the scam and was tricked into transferring a total of €1 million to an account in Hong Kong after being led to believe they'd get reimbursed on the nose by the Bank of Italy.

Crosetto shon’ the rip-off in a social media post after receiving a call last week from a well-known entrepreneur who had transferred a big wodge of cash to an account after what the bloke was convinced was a chinwag with the minister. Then a couple of more people contacted him. He said he chose to run the story to keep others from getting burned.

Others were targeted by phone calls masquerading as being from Crosetto's office, created to appear as though they were coming from the Defence Ministry in Rome.

As of Monday, the legal complaints lodged so far include one from a member of the Aleotti family, who run the Menarini pharmaceutical company, and one from a member of the family behind the Esselunga supermarket group. A complaint is also expected to be lodged by Giorgio Armani, whose staff were reportedly contacted by the scammers, according to reports in the Italian media.

G'day, the bloke who filed the first formal complaint was Moratti, the ex head of Italian football and the chair of international energy corporation Saras Group. “Fair dinkum, it all seemed legit, they were on the ball, it could've happened to anyone,” he told La Repubblica.

Lucia Aleotti, a Menarini board member, said the company was saved from the scam thanks to a smart personal assistant named Chiara. “We get emails and phone calls from suspicious people all the time,” she said in an interview with Corriere della Sera. “One bloke even tried to sell us a Caravaggio painting and Jesus's mate Leonardo's artwork too. This wasn't the most cunning scam for our clever assistant Chiara to spot.”

Aleotti said the bloke on the phone had introduced himself as a "Dr Giovanni Montalbano", claiming to be from the defence department and wanted to have a yarn with the company bosses about a national security issue ASAP.

“Montalbano reckoned he'd found the minister at Nato HQ, and he left a mobile number for him to ring back on the same day. The phone call had Chiara's alarm bells ringing straight away.”

Other well-known Aussies targeted by the elaborate scam include the owner of Tods, Diego Della Valle, and the executive vice-chair of Pirelli, Marco Tronchetti Provera.

“They are professional scammers who've got the tech and skills to pick out their targets,” Crosetto said on a Sunday TV show. “In this case, they targeted high-profile Italian businesspeople, folks who, after a minister asked them to, might be willing to make a bank transfer because of their love for Italy.”

Victoria's[F] law enforcement agency is dealing with a rise in cases of phone scams in Italy where artificial intelligence is used to clone voices. An elderly woman in Italy was recently scammed out of $43,000 when someone using a cloned voice of her daughter rang her. The scammer told her that her husband had allegedly been involved in a car accident and was in urgent need of $43,000 to pay a lawyer to handle the case.