The former president of Fideuram Paolo Molesini was the victim of a 36 million euro scam triggered by a fake WhatsApp message from the apparent Intesa banker Carlo Messina. The reports it Corsera explaining that the affair could have had worse consequences as a good part of the approximately 95 million that came out of the institute’s coffers was recovered abroad (either on its own or with the Milan prosecutor’s office).
The international scam dates back to last February when Molesini, then president of Fideuram (a subsidiary of Intesa) received – in reality he believed he was receiving, as he realized shortly after – a WhatsApp message from Carlo Messina, director of the parent company Banca Intesa.
The scam and the urgency
In the communication, the apparent Messina indicates to him the urgency of operating a series of bank transfers through Fideuram’s treasury (due to some practical reasons that “would prevent Intesa from doing it alone”) aimed at not losing the opportunity of a financial operation that is of interest to Intesa abroad.
The gang then simulates another coherent communication to the president of Fideuram: this time the one calling him (or, rather, appearing to call him) is a lawyer from an important international firm, Paolo Nastasi, managing partner of A&O Shearman Italia, completely unfamiliar and unaware and used in the scam as an intermediary in the operation supported by the fake Messina. He is a business lawyer that Molesini knows, and if the voice seems exactly that to him it is because the scammers have artfully replicated it with artificial intelligence tools.
The money (partially) recovered
This is how bank transfers start, especially to China and Hong Kong. However, the alarm was raised and Fideuram activated the international interbank collaboration systems which allowed the recovery of a large part of the loot. At least 36 million are missing from the appeal, which evaporated in the conversion into cryptocurrencies which investigators are now trying to track down with letters rogatory all over the world before the scammers manage to monetize them.