Italy

Scams reach every age group. Among people aged 65 and over the police counted 26,630 fraud victims in 2022, up from 21,480 in 2020. About half were scammed online and half by traditional means, the most affected were aged 65 to 70, and in that band men were hit almost twice as often as women. Investment scams, the police say, are no longer confined to vulnerable people such as the elderly, and men bring 57% of the fraud disputes taken to the banking arbitrator.

Most scams start with phishing by email, phone call or SMS that appears to come from a ministry, a public body or a bank. In the 'false operator' script a caller posing as a bank employee or police officer warns of suspicious access to the account and has the victim move the money to a 'safe' account. In the 'false son' script a message from an unknown number says a child has lost phone and cards and needs money. Fake sale adverts run on social networks, and deepfake videos of politicians and entertainers promote investments in sponsored posts.

Older people are also called at home: a false Carabiniere or lawyer says a relative has caused an accident and an accomplice comes to collect cash or jewellery. Police have traced such calls to flats in Naples, while investment call centres with Italian-speaking teams have been raided in Tirana, Albania. The banks' security body CERTFin says phone calls and SMS triggered 46% of frauds on bank customers, down from 87.5% in 2023, as social media and messaging apps grew.

Most of the money leaves by bank transfer. Payment providers reported about EUR 170 million of fraudulent credit transfers in 2025, EUR 70 million on cards and EUR 23 million on prepaid e-money. In the second half of the year 72% of the value of fraudulent transfers came from manipulation of the payer, meaning the customer was talked into sending the money, and the average fraudulent transfer was EUR 2,784 against EUR 80 for a card payment. The banks' security body CERTFin finds that 96% of fraudulent transactions pass the bank's strong authentication. The money is moved on through money mules, people who pass it through their own accounts for a commission, and through cryptocurrency; the police say much of it goes outside Europe, to China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Several safeguards act before the payment. Since 9 October 2025 banks must check the payee's name against the account number for ordinary and instant transfers and show the result before the customer confirms; the fraud rate on instant transfers by value fell 53% in a year. Customers can set their own daily and per-payment limits. AGCOM's filter blocked about 191 million calls from abroad with fake Italian numbers in the first eight months of 2026, and only registered senders may put a company name on an SMS. Consob has blacked out 1,838 unauthorised investment websites since July 2019. CERTFin puts attempted fraud on bank customers at over EUR 600 million, of which 17% succeeded.

The Polizia Postale, the police cybercrime service, handled 27,085 cases of economic and financial cybercrime in 2025 in which more than €269 million was taken, against €229.1 million in 2024 and €177.4 million in 2023. Fake online trading and investment schemes took 68% of the money; online shopping scams and fraud against firms by fake bosses or false invoices took 5% each, and romance scams 2%.

Payment providers reported about €170 million of fraudulent transfers in 2025, about €70 million on cards and €23 million on prepaid electronic money, according to the Banca d'Italia, the central bank. Transfer fraud is where single payments are large: in the second half of 2025 the average fraudulent transfer was €2,784, and €5,509 for an ordinary transfer, against €80 for a card payment, and 72% of the value of fraudulent transfers came from victims talked into sending the money.

The national crime survey found 3.3% of people aged 14 and over hit by an online scam in the 12 months before interview in 2022 and 2023. It does not record what they lost.

In Italy most money that comes back to victims is refunded by banks for card fraud; little of what victims send by transfer returns. In the second half of 2025 customers bore 40% of card fraud losses and 92% of losses on fraudulent transfers, against 87% in the first half of 2024, according to the Banca d'Italia, the central bank. The bank must refund an unauthorised payment by the end of the next business day, must prove the customer's fraud or gross negligence to refuse, and the customer has 13 months to dispute; for a lost or stolen card the customer bears at most €50. A payment the victim was tricked into making counts as authorised and can be reversed only with the payee's consent.

A customer refused by the bank can go to the banking arbitrator ABF. It received 4,951 fraud complaints in 2025: 30% were upheld and 20% settled, against 42% upheld in 2024, with an average award of €5,200.

Some money is caught on its way out. Banks recovered €35 million by cooperating, up from €23 million, says CERTFin, the banking sector's security body. In 2025 the Polizia Postale, the police cybercrime service, blocked and recovered €7.2 million of the €46.8 million moved in the cases it handled, through OF2CEN, a platform shared with banks.

In ISTAT's crime survey of 2022 to 2023, 24.1% of completed frauds were reported to the police, up from 18.4% in 2015 to 2016: 59.4% of card misuse, but about 10% of online purchase frauds. The police forces reported 286,086 frauds and computer frauds to the judicial authority in 2024, down 5.3% from 302,020 in 2023, and 137,529 in the first half of 2026, down 9.5% from 152,012 a year earlier.

Complaints are made at police and Carabinieri stations or filled in on the Polizia Postale's online office and signed at one of its offices; ordinary fraud is prosecuted only on the victim's complaint. That online office received 100,443 reports and 25,444 requests for information in 2025, and the Polizia Postale handled 19,694 online scam reports.

A disputed payment goes first to the bank as a written complaint, which must come before a claim to the Arbitro Bancario Finanziario, the banking ombudsman set up by the Banca d'Italia. It received 4,951 complaints about fraudulent use of cards, transfers and accounts in 2025, up 21% from 4,100 and 37% of all its complaints, and such complaints rose 52% in the first quarter of 2026 on a year earlier. Consob, the market regulator, received about 3,344 formal complaints in 2025, up from 2,742 in 2024, 2,243 of them about unauthorised firms, against 1,562, and made 258 reports to the judicial authority.

The figure shown is the 27,085 online scam and computer fraud cases handled in 2025 by the Polizia Postale, the State Police's cyber service, counted to 21 December 2025; more than EUR 269 million was taken in them and 4,489 people were investigated. Frauds reported to ordinary police stations, the Carabinieri and the Guardia di Finanza are counted in the national crime statistics, which recorded 286,086 frauds and computer frauds from all police forces in 2024.

The basic offence is fraud (truffa, article 640 of the penal code), punished with six months to three years and prosecuted only if the victim files a complaint within three months. Fraud at a distance by digital means that hide the offender's identity carries one to five years. Fraud that exploits age or another weakness carries two to six years, is prosecuted without a complaint and allows arrest in the act. Computer fraud (article 640-ter) carries six months to three years, and more when money is transferred or a digital identity is stolen. People who pass stolen money through their accounts face money laundering charges of four to twelve years.

Recent operations include 15 people accused in October 2025 of running false Carabiniere calls from Naples, 11 court orders in November 2025 against a group based in Campania, with more than EUR 400,000 returned to victims, and the seizure of an investment website and 95 bank accounts in a scheme that drew about EUR 80 million from some 6,000 investors.

By money, fake investment dominates. Online trading and investment scams took 68% of the sums lost in cases handled by the Polizia Postale in 2025, business email and chief executive fraud 5%, e-commerce scams 5% and romance scams 2%. Fake trading alone produced 5,967 cases and more than EUR 186 million. Victims are drawn in by adverts on social networks, often with deepfake videos of well known people, and are handled by call-centre teams posing as financial intermediaries; some are contacted again with fake offers to recover the money.

By number of cases the order is different: in 2024 e-commerce scams, such as fake sale adverts, were 46% of online scam cases and fake trading 26%. Bank fraud usually begins with phishing: in 2024 identity theft cases started with an SMS in 55% of cases, a phone call in 28% and an email in 13%. In a common script a spoofed SMS is followed by a call from a fake fraud office showing the bank's number, and the victim reads out codes, approves payments or moves money to a 'safe' account. Disputes over phishing, spoofing, smishing and vishing are the largest group of fraud cases before the banking arbitrator.

The 'false son' message asks a parent for money for a new phone. In phone scams on the elderly a false Carabiniere or lawyer demands cash for a relative said to have caused an accident. In business email fraud criminals break into company mailboxes or pose as managers to make staff send payments.

Italy has no single anti-scam strategy and no body that makes banks, phone companies and platforms act together. Where a regulator has ordered an industry to act, results show. AGCOM made carriers block calls from abroad showing fake Italian numbers, fixed from August and mobile from November 2025: about 191 million calls were blocked in the first eight months of 2026 and such calls with Italian mobile numbers fell 95%. As banks brought in the payee name check, compulsory from October 2025, the fraud rate on instant transfers by value fell 53% in a year.

Banks and police share data through CERTFin, run jointly by the central bank and the banking association, and the police platform OF2CEN, and in May 2025 the Interior Ministry signed protocols with the banking association and the post office on fraud against the elderly. Yet losses in Polizia Postale cases rose from EUR 177 million in 2023 to over EUR 269 million in 2025, even as recorded frauds fell, and about 15% of the money moved in its card and computer fraud cases was recovered.

The gaps are in who pays and who must act. Customers bear 92% of losses on fraudulent transfers, and the arbitrator upheld 30% of fraud complaints in 2025. Nothing obliges phone companies or platforms to share the loss. AGCOM says calls with foreign numbers cannot be blocked. Online fraud still needs a victim's complaint within three months. The fund against scams on the elderly is EUR 2 million for 2025 and 2026, across 109 municipalities.