Famous Italian blogger may be imprisoned for five years

Italy’s biggest influencer Chiara Ferragni could face up to five years in jail if she is found guilty of fraud over allegedly misleading her followers with the sale of limited edition Christmas cakes and Easter eggs.

The 37-year-old was fined more than one million euros (£930,000) by Italy’s anti-trust authority in December 2023 for claiming that the sales would raise money to help children with bone cancer.

She also agreed to pay at least 1.2 million euros to a children’s charity to settle the case, but is now facing a criminal trial in which a definitive conviction could result in a sentence of between one and five years.

The model has called the accusations of fraud ’deeply unfair’, adding that she believed ’sincerely that it was not necessary to hold a trial to prove that I never cheated anyone’. She added that she is ’ready to fight with even greater determination to prove my absolute innocence.’

The Milan public prosecutor issued Ferragni’s lawyers with a summons for September 23, with the influencer’s legal team saying in a statement that their client has ’committed no crime’.

Ferragni’s ex-manager Fabio Damato, along with the boss of major Italian cake maker Balocco, which was behind the cake, and a representative for confectionary company Dolci Preziosi, have also been summoned on charges of aggravated fraud.

The case has attracted significant negative publicity for Ferragni, one of the world’s most famous fashion influencers with nearly 30 million followers on Instagram.

The scandal became known as ’pandoro-gate’ after the star used her platform to promote the pink Christmas edition of a pandoro - a traditional festive cake which is a fruitless alternative to the more famous panettone.

A social media post shows Ferragni, 36, holding the special edition cake she created in a pink box as she kneels in front of a Christmas tree

Her followers were told that the cash raised would go to Turin’s Regina Margherita Hospital for children, and money raised was said to be earmarked for a new scanner to help detect types of bone cancer.

However, after a year-long investigation, Italy’s competition watchdog AGCM announced the fine of 1.075 million euros.

It found that consumers had been duped into thinking that by buying a Ferragni-branded pandoro they were contributing to the charity and hospital.

The AGCM also fined cake maker Balocco 420,000 euros. 

The conspirators had justified the high nine euros (£7.70) price by saying the more cakes they sold, the more the children’s clinic would receive, AGCM found.

But in, fact, the inquiry heard, Ferragni and Balocco had agreed that just 50,000 euros (£43,000) would go to the hospital regardless of how well the cake sold.

The regulator added that Ferragni made no personal payments to the hospital, while her companies received 1 million euros from Balocco for the branding initiative and related promotional activities. 

In a video published on her page in 2023, Ferragni admitted to a ’communications error’ in an apology to her fans.

Sounding contrite and almost tearful, the model said she would donate one million euros to Turin’s Regina Margherita Hospital - the paediatric hospital at the centre of the controversy - to give ’concreteness’ to her apology.

The case has attracted significant negative publicity for Ferragni, one of the world’s most famous fashion influencers with nearly 30 million followers on Instagram

Ferragni’s followers were told that the cash raised would go to Turin’s Regina Margherita Hospital for children, and money raised was said to be earmarked for a new scanner to help detect types of bone cancer

 

She also said that she would challenge the fine, claiming that she had not given sufficient oversight to the communication surrounding the sales of the Balocco-brand pandoro with her logo, and that she would no longer tie in charity with commercial activities.

’I realise I have made a communications error... my error, in good faith, was to link, via communications, a commercial activity with a charity one,’ Ferragni said in an Instagram video. 

Ferragni told local media at the time: ’I’m sorry that, after all my and my family’s commitment in recent years on the charitable activity front, we persist in seeing the negative in an operation in which everything was done in good faith.’

She added: ’The one with Balocco was a commercial operation like many I do every day. In this particular one, I wanted to underline the charitable donation made by Balocco at the Regina Margherita Hospital.

’For me, it was a fundamental point of the agreement. 

She continued: ’Knowing that the machine that allows us to explore new therapeutical treatments for children suffering from osteosarcoma and Ewing’s sarcoma is now there in the hospital is what matters most.’

Consumers believed that they would have been helping to purchase a new machine for the therapeutic treatment of children suffering from Osteosarcoma and Ewing’s Sarcoma

Osteosarcoma is a type of bone cancer while Ewing’s sarcoma describes forms of cancer that can occur in the bone as well as in soft tissue.

Its press release upon launching the cake in 2022 said: ’The historic Piedmontese brand Balocco, recognised and appreciated throughout the world for the excellence of its Christmas offer, presents an exclusive novelty: the Chiara Ferragni pandoro’.

The release said sales of the cake would: ’be used to finance a research path promoted by the Regina Margherita Hospital in Turin, through the purchase of a new machine that will allow us to explore new avenues for the therapeutic treatment of children suffering from osteosarcoma and Ewing’s sarcoma.’

Ferragni’s lawyers said in a statement on the fraud case: ’We remain firmly convinced that this matter has no criminal relevance and that every controversial profile has already been addressed and resolved before the Competition and Market Authority.

’The discussion with the prosecutors did not have the desired outcome and the Public Prosecutor’s Office preferred to defer any decision to the trial judge despite the evident absence of conduct constituting a criminal offence and the lack of the conditions for proceeding. 

’Our defendant’s innocence will certainly be ascertained in court, which we will face calmly,’ they concluded, according to Italian outlet Corriere della Sera.

Sophia Martinez