A message from the CEO. A call from the lawyer. Neither was real.

Audience / at-risk group

Executives, treasury and finance teams, and anyone who can authorise a payment on someone else's instruction

What you can notice

• The first contact came through WhatsApp, a channel outside the bank's own systems, from someone presenting as the group's chief executive.
• The request carried the classic pressure of CEO fraud: urgent help with an overseas transaction.
• A second, apparently independent party then 'confirmed' the instruction by phone: a caller presenting as a senior partner at a prominent law firm, whose voice Reuters says was replicated with AI.
• The victim was himself a senior executive, and the order went through his own finance department: authority inside the organisation carried the fraud past the usual checks.
• The money went mainly to accounts in China and Hong Kong and, according to Reuters, part of it was converted into cryptocurrency.

What the source reports

Reuters reported on 25 September 2026, citing sources, that the fraud began in February 2026, when the then-chairman of Fideuram received a WhatsApp message that appeared to come from Intesa Sanpaolo's CEO asking for urgent help with an overseas transaction, followed by a call from someone posing as a senior partner at a prominent law firm, whose voice was replicated with AI. He instructed the finance department to make a series of transfers, mainly to China and Hong Kong, totalling about €95 million. About €53 million was recovered through cooperation between authorities in China, Portugal and Italy; about €36 million has not been traced after passing through overseas accounts and being converted into cryptocurrency. Milan prosecutors have placed a foreign national living outside Europe under investigation for computer fraud; no Fideuram executive is under investigation. The chairman resigned in March 2026 citing personal reasons. Intesa Sanpaolo and Fideuram declined to comment. Il Sole 24 Ore separately reports the same amounts (€40 million recovered from a Chinese bank and €13 million from a Portuguese one) and the use of AI to replicate the lawyer's voice.

What this evidence cannot tell us

This case rests on press reports based on unnamed sources; Intesa Sanpaolo and Fideuram declined to comment, and no court has ruled. The AI voice cloning is as described by the reporting, not verified here, and neither source publishes the messages or the recording. It is not established how the voice sample was obtained or whether other institutions were targeted. Nothing here suggests that the executives impersonated were involved; they were the identities the fraudsters borrowed.