flash on Nostr: ⚡️🚨 NEW - An AI-cloned voice was all it took to trigger the transfer of 95 ...

⚡️🚨 NEW - An AI-cloned voice was all it took to trigger the transfer of 95 million euros from the accounts of a major Italian bank.

In February, Paolo Molesini, then president of Fideuram, a private banking subsidiary of Intesa Sanpaolo, first received a fake WhatsApp message that appeared to come from the group’s CEO, Carlo Messina.
This was followed by a call featuring an AI-generated voice imitating a lawyer Molesini knew.

Convinced the transaction was legitimate, Molesini then instructed his teams to make several transfers, mainly to China and Hong Kong, totaling approximately 95 million euros.

Thanks to the response from banks and authorities, a large portion of the funds was recovered, including approximately €40 million via a Chinese bank and an additional €13 million intercepted in Portugal.

However, approximately €36 million is believed to have been converted into cryptocurrencies and remains untraceable.

Most concerning is that the attack did not require directly hacking the bank. The scammers used social engineering by combining WhatsApp, identity theft, and AI-powered voice cloning.