Clear Ferragni appeared in the courtroom in Milan where he appeared as a defendant: he had to answer for gross fraud (from IT media use) in connection with the commercial operations of ‘Pandoro Balocco Pink Christmas’ (Christmas 2022) and ‘Chiara Ferragni Easter Eggs – let’s support the Elf Children’ (Easter 2021 and 2022)’. The influencer arrived very early – and managed to avoid cameras – to attend the hearing behind closed doors. Today judge Ilio Mannucci Pacini will have to decide on the constitution of the civil party (consumers’ association), while the defense will ask for a summary. Apart from Chiara Ferragni, those on trial are her former right-hand man Fabio Maria Damato and the president of Cerealitalia’s board of directors, Francesco Cannillo.
For prosecutor’s office, which could discuss and request a sentence todaythe influencer will deceive consumers and will obtain, through two commercial campaigns, an unfair advantage of around 2.2 million euros, as well as incalculable benefits “from the return of the image”. In particular, the ‘Balocco’ operation allegedly misled “an unspecified number of buyers” who believed that with their purchase of Pink (at a price of 9.37 euros, instead of 3.68 euros for the traditional product) they would finance a fundraiser for the Regina Margherita hospital in Turin.
However, the agreement turned out to be different, according to the prosecutor’s office: Ferragni’s company collected more than one million euros to advertise via Instagram a charity initiative of which Balocco’s company had allocated 50 thousand euros to the hospital, regardless of sales. The alleged “communication error” also occurred in the second disputed case.
