Requests for hundreds of thousands of euros, up to a million, made in the name of the Minister of Defense Guido Crosetto to well-known and wealthy professionals and entrepreneurs who, seeing those phone calls coming from a plausible number, gradually fell into the trap that was well-crafted. Also because that money was requested, exploiting the recent case of Cecilia Sala , to achieve the "liberation", so they said, of journalists kidnapped in the Middle East, in Iran or in Syria.

While the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office has opened an investigation for fraud aggravated by significant damage , Crosetto reconstructed the story in a post to warn potential victims of the risk of falling for the bait and finding their bank account significantly lightened. A story, Crosetto explained, that began two days ago, when the founder of Fratelli d'Italia received a phone call from a friend, a great entrepreneur, "who asked me why my secretary had called his to get his cell phone."

"I told him it was absurd, since I had it, and that it was impossible," he continued. "I checked to be sure and they confirmed that no one had looked for it." An hour later, a second case. The target, this time, was a well-known Milanese businessman who the minister did not know directly and "who would like to get in touch with me. I authorized him to give me my cell phone." The plot was similar: "He told me he had been called by me and then by a general and that he had made a very large transfer to an account. I told him it was a scam and notified the police who went to his house and took the report." This is the case, from what we learned, of the payment of one million euros with multiple transfers, untraceable, to foreign accounts. Investigators are trying to block them, even if it seems very difficult.

And again, as the minister wrote, another businessman "contacted by a self-styled official of the ministry". Yesterday, Crosetto added, "it happened twice more". "The judiciary is informed" of everything and the investigators of the Carabinieri "but I prefer to make the facts public so that no one runs the risk of falling into the trap". There are said to be about ten victims in various parts of Italy, between attempted frauds and successful scams. The pattern was always the same: the topic of kidnapped journalists, an initial call from the secretary, then that of the fake minister with a disguised voice and then contacts with alleged generals and collaborators and gradually the collection of money "because - they said - we have our men in Iran, the negotiations are still ongoing, another effort is needed, they want more money".

And they even said that the money would then be returned through Bankitalia, yet another lie. With the complaint of the Milanese entrepreneur, an investigation coordinated by the prosecutor Giovanni Tarzia and the prosecutor Marcello Viola and conducted by the Carabinieri of the Investigative Unit was immediately opened. At the moment, only that complaint is on file but another one, it seems, is on the way and in the meantime, also through the channels of the central banks, they are trying to freeze that money already transferred abroad, between England, Holland, Hong Kong and elsewhere. The number from which the calls came had a Rome prefix and was "plausible", to use the words of the investigators who are carrying out rapid investigations to precisely reconstruct that system, which seems to have been going on for several days, of requests for money, to understand how widespread it is and to identify those responsible. A "cloned" number that, among other things, could have been activated, hypothetically, also from abroad.

(Online Union)

© Riproduzione riservata