Fideuram, Intesa Sanpaolo’s private banking arm, wired about €95 million abroad in February after fraudsters impersonated Intesa CEO Carlo Messina on WhatsApp and cloned a lawyer’s voice to back him up. More than half was recovered in China and Portugal. Between €36 million and €39.5 million is still missing, depending on the source, and part of it was converted into cryptocurrencies.
Corriere della Sera revealed the case on September 25, 2026, and ANSA, Il Sole 24 Ore, Forbes Italia and Reuters followed the same day. “Intesa Sanpaolo and Fideuram declined to comment,” Reuters wrote. Paypedia found no statement from either bank.
A WhatsApp message about a secret acquisition
The first message reached Paolo Molesini, then Fideuram’s chairman, on February 23 from a number he did not know as Messina’s, according to the judge’s order cited by ANSA. It announced a lawyer’s call to close the purchase of an international bank that Intesa could not buy directly, since a leak would lead Consob, Italy’s market regulator, to block the deal.
The lawyer was presented as Paolo Nastasi, managing partner of A&O Shearman Italia, an acquaintance of Molesini with no part in the scheme. The fraudsters cloned his voice with artificial intelligence tools, sent 11 documents and had Molesini sign a confidentiality agreement and a power of attorney bearing Messina’s apparent signature. Emails styled as the firm’s supplied the accounts to pay.
Both ends of the payment chain were primed
The same day, a caller posing as Fideuram’s chief executive told the bank’s head of treasury and payments that Molesini would soon order “urgent and confidential” transfers, ANSA reports. Fideuram’s finance chief then sent the money on Molesini’s instructions, mostly to China and Hong Kong, according to Corriere della Sera. Open counts 11 transfers.
More than half recovered, and diverging figures on the rest
Fideuram’s internal security systems raised the alarm quickly, and the bank activated international interbank cooperation, Corriere della Sera reports. A bank in China froze part of the funds and returned it. At a Portuguese bank, which had flagged the transactions as suspicious according to Open, Milan prosecutors working with their Lisbon counterparts through Eurojust stopped another tranche, seized on the order of Milan judge Sonia Mancini. Reuters, citing its sources, puts recoveries at roughly €53 million.
| Amount | Corriere della Sera | ANSA | Open |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wired out | About €95M | Nearly €95M | €95M in 11 transfers |
| Blocked in China | €40M, returned | €42M | Not given |
| Frozen in Portugal | €13M | More than €13M | More than €13M |
| Still missing | At least €36M | €39.5M | €39.5M |
Corriere della Sera, followed by Il Sole 24 Ore, Forbes Italia and MF, reports that “at least 36 million are still unaccounted for,” in the words of Il Sole 24 Ore’s English edition. ANSA, La Stampa and Open give €39.5 million, the amount Open attributes to the judge’s order.
The missing money passed through a network of overseas accounts before being converted into cryptocurrencies, Reuters reports, citing its sources. According to Open, more than €36 million went through accounts in Malta, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, then a Canadian money transfer platform, before landing in two Bitcoin wallets linked to a suspect.
A suspect in Milan, and two other banks targeted
That suspect, a 48-year-old Israeli national, is under investigation with unidentified accomplices for aggravated fraud and impersonation, according to Open. Investigators’ analysis of the money flows puts the sum that reached him at nearly €4 million, converted into cryptocurrencies, Open adds. Prosecutors are pursuing the rest of the gang through international letters rogatory, ANSA reports. Molesini “was not under investigation,” Il Sole 24 Ore writes. He resigned as chairman on March 12, citing personal reasons, according to Corriere della Sera.
Milan prosecutors are handling similar frauds at other lenders in separate files. A Banca Ifis manager allegedly authorized about €24 million in transfers in May, routed among Spain, Singapore, Hong Kong and Bahrain; €20 million has been recovered, ANSA reports. A smaller lender, a cooperative bank according to La Stampa, was hit for about €2 million, part of which was traced to Croatia. ANSA adds that a non-bank company of the Bper group suffered an identical fraud, for far smaller sums.