WhatsApp Message Impersonation of Carlo Messina
According to Milano Finanza, Molesini, who was Fideuram’s chairman at the time, received a WhatsApp message that appeared to come from Carlo Messina, the chief executive of the Intesa Sanpaolo Group. The message set the stage for what followed, establishing a sense of urgency and authority before the next step in the scam.
AI-Generated Voice Call Mimicking Lawyer Paolo Nastasi
Not long after the WhatsApp exchange took place, Molesini got a call featuring an AI-generated voice posing as lawyer Paolo Nastasi. The synthetic voice reinforced the instructions supposedly coming from Messina, giving the fraudulent request an added layer of legitimacy. It was this combination — a familiar messaging channel paired with a convincing cloned voice — that ultimately convinced Molesini to act.
Fraudulent Transfers and Cryptocurrency Conversion
The financial damage from the scam reached approximately €95 million before any of it could be recovered, making this one of the more striking examples of an AI phishing attack hitting a major financial institution. What happened to that money afterward illustrates how quickly stolen funds can move across borders and into digital assets once a transfer clears.
€95 Million Transferred Overseas
Believing he was following legitimate instructions, Molesini directed Fideuram’s finance department to wire approximately €95 million to accounts located in mainland China, Hong Kong and other jurisdictions. The scale of the transfer, and the speed with which it crossed multiple borders, points to a scam built for fast movement of funds rather than a one-off local theft.
Recovery of Funds and Authorities’ Intervention
Fideuram later recovered around €40 million of the stolen total, a significant but partial clawback. Portuguese authorities separately froze an additional €13 million linked to the case, showing how the money had already spread across several financial systems by the time investigators caught up with it. Together, these two recoveries account for roughly €53 million of the approximately €95 million originally transferred.
At Least €36 Million Converted into Cryptocurrency
At least €36 million of the diverted funds was converted into crypto after passing through multiple overseas transfers. This is where the trail becomes harder to follow: once fiat money enters crypto markets after bouncing between jurisdictions, tracing ownership and recovering assets typically becomes slower and more complicated for investigators and banks alike.
This detail matters beyond the Fideuram case itself. It shows why financial institutions dealing with cross-border fraud increasingly face a race against time — the longer stolen money sits in traditional banking channels, the easier it is to freeze; once it shifts into crypto, the window for recovery narrows considerably.
Ongoing Investigations and Leadership Changes
Tracing the remaining funds now depends on cooperation between multiple countries’ judicial systems, while the bank’s leadership has already changed in the aftermath of the scam. Both threads — the money trail and the management fallout — remain active parts of the story.
International Judicial Cooperation to Trace Funds
Investigators are working through international judicial cooperation to track down the funds that moved across China, Hong Kong, Portugal and crypto markets. The involvement of several national authorities underlines how this case of Fideuram crypto theft extends well beyond Italy’s own legal reach, requiring coordinated action across different financial and legal systems to have any chance of recovering what remains unaccounted for.
Resignation of Paolo Molesini as Chairman
Molesini was not investigated in connection with the scam, according to Milano Finanza’s reporting. He resigned as Fideuram’s chairman on March 12, 2026, citing personal reasons. The timing of his departure, roughly a month after the fraudulent transfers, places his exit squarely within the aftermath of the incident even though no wrongdoing was attributed to him.
The episode adds to a growing list of cases where synthetic voice technology has been weaponized against corporate decision-makers, and it raises pointed questions about how private banks verify high-value instructions when the request appears to come from a trusted, familiar voice. For an institution the size of Fideuram, the gap between a convincing fake and a verified command turned out to be worth tens of millions of euros.
Article produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by the editorial team.
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