A WhatsApp message from the CEO, a cloned lawyer's voice, and €95 million gone from Fideuram in two days

Between 23 and 25 February 2026, Paolo Molesini, then chairman of Fideuram, received a WhatsApp message that appeared to come from Carlo Messina, chief executive of Intesa Sanpaolo. The message described an urgent, confidential acquisition and asked for funds to be moved quickly. Fraudsters reinforced the story with documents that looked legitimate, and the instruction arrived in the voice of the one person Molesini would not question.

The attack was built across channels. Molesini then took a phone call from someone presenting as Paolo Nastasi, managing partner of the Italian office of the law firm A&O Shearman, confirming that the earlier instructions were genuine. Investigators believe that voice was synthetically replicated using AI. Separately, the bank's payments officer was contacted by a caller impersonating Lino Mainolfi, Fideuram's chief executive, preparing him to expect and carry out the chairman's instructions. When Molesini tried to verify the request, the confirmation came back through channels the attackers controlled.

Eleven transfers were initiated, totalling €95 million. Reporting indicates around €42.5 million was stopped at Bank of China and €13.1 million was frozen in Portugal, with figures from other outlets putting recoveries at roughly €53 million. Between €36 million and €39.5 million is reported as unrecovered, with some of it converted to cryptocurrency. One foreign national is reportedly under investigation. Molesini resigned on 4 March 2026, about a week after the transfers. The case was widely reported on 29 September 2026.

The defences that failed here were not weak by conventional standards. A major European banking group had payment authorisation processes, dual approval, and a habit of verifying unusual instructions by phone. FinTelegram's analysis notes that four-eyes controls offer limited protection when attackers socially engineer both pairs of eyes. Every check in the chain depended on a voice, a message, or a document, and each of those can now be manufactured. The verification step was itself inside the attacker's reach.

The release of funds is an execution event. Under GoFirm, before the payments officer can release any of the eleven transfers, a confirmation request goes to the named authority on their registered device, requiring biometric confirmation in real time. The chairman cannot approve a transfer by WhatsApp, by phone, or by a convincing document. The named authority confirms the specific payment, to the specific beneficiary, for the specific amount, on a device the attackers do not hold, through a channel entirely separate from the one they are working.

If no confirmation arrives, the transfer is blocked. Impersonating the group chief executive, cloning a lawyer's voice, and priming the payments officer all produce a credible instruction, and none of them produces a biometric confirmation on the real authority's registered device. A cloned voice, however convincing, cannot produce that confirmation. The execution boundary holds regardless of how credible the impersonation appears.

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In association with Osinto.ai, the collective intelligence and governance network for Security, Resilience & Defence teams.

References

1. Lensburg, C. 2026. Fideuram €95M AI fraud: how deepfakes defeated bank controls. FinTelegram, 29 September 2026.
2. BigGo Finance. 2026. AI deepfake fraud at Fideuram: chairman instructed by cloned voice. BigGo Finance, 29 September 2026.