Suspects identified in Italy minister fake voice scam

Italian officials identified two suspects Thursday over a fraud in which scammers reproduced the voice of Defence Minister Guido Crosetto to extort money from leading businessmen.

The two foreign nationals were identified following the freezing of a Dutch bank account into which one victim of the scam paid nearly one million euros, media reports said.

Crosetto raised the alarm earlier this month, saying a businessman had claimed to have been contacted by the minister and then by a "general" who asked him to make a large bank transfer.

It later emerged that Diego Della Valle, chief executive of leather goods company Tod's, Giorgio Armani and Patrizio Bertelli of Prada were all targeted.

The scammers asked for the money for ransoms for the release of journalists held in the Middle East -- a topic that was in the news, just weeks after the release of Italian journalist Cecilia Sala from detention in Iran.

Only Massimo Moratti, former boss of the Inter Milan football club and director of an oil company, paid up, according to media reports.

That payment has now been frozen.

"I'm very pleased that the money obtained by deceit from businessman using my falsified voice and my name has been located in a Dutch account and blocked," Crosetto wrote on X on Wednesday.