{"id":30303,"date":"2026-01-25T05:06:57","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T10:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=30303"},"modified":"2026-01-25T05:06:57","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T10:06:57","slug":"italian-influencer-chiara-ferragni-cleared-of-cake-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2026\/01\/25\/italian-influencer-chiara-ferragni-cleared-of-cake-fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"Italian influencer Chiara Ferragni cleared of cake fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"
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An Italian fashion influencer has been acquitted of aggravated fraud, bringing a long-running scandal involving a charity Christmas cake to an end.<\/b><\/p>\n

Chiara Ferragni had been accused of misleading consumers by promoting the sale of a designer pink pandoro as well as Easter eggs that were said to be helping to raise money for a children’s hospital and a charity.<\/p>\n

After a fast-track trial in Milan, a judge found her and two other defendants not guilty. Had she been convicted, she could have faced a jail term.<\/p>\n

Ferragni, 38, told reporters the judgment marked “the end of a nightmare that lasted two years”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The scandal – dubbed “pandorogate” – started with the sale of pink special edition Christmas cakes in 2022.<\/p>\n

Consumers were led to believe that sales of the pandoro would go towards raising funds for a children’s hospital in Turin. But it turned out that the cake’s producer, Balocco, had given a one-off \u20ac50,000 (\u00a343,300) donation to the hospital before the cake’s launch.<\/p>\n

Ferragni has 28 million followers on Instagram and, after her companies made \u20ac1m from the promotion, she pledged to donate the same sum to the hospital.<\/p>\n

The outcry led authorities to initiate a formal investigation and the influencer was handed a \u20ac1m fine in 2023 by Italy’s competition authority over the pandoro cakes, branded with her name and mentioning the children’s hospital.<\/p>\n

Ferragni-branded Easter eggs also became part of the scandal, leading the influencer to agree to pay \u20ac1.2m to a children’s charity to settle complaints that the eggs’ sales allegedly misled consumers.<\/p>\n

She was later indicted on the aggravated fraud charges, along with business associate Fabio Damato.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of one year and eight months in prison for Ferragni but the judge rejected their accusation that the fraud should be seen as aggravated.<\/p>\n

The Milan court found that no aggravation had been involved as a consumer group had withdrawn its original complaint. Ferragni had agreed with consumer organisation Codacons that she would compensate consumers and donate money to a charity for women who had suffered gender violence.<\/p>\n

“We are all moved,” Ferragni told reporters at the end of the trial. “The last two years have been very hard. I had faith in justice, and justice has been done.”<\/p>\n

Despite her acquittal the scandal has proved damaging to Ferragni’s brand and affected her personal life. Her marriage to Italian rapper Fedez fell apart last year.<\/p>\n

It has also led to tighter rules for Italian influencers to show greater transparency in their fund-raising initiatives.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Italian fashion influencer has been acquitted of aggravated fraud, bringing a long-running scandal involving a charity Christmas cake to an end. Chiara Ferragni had been accused of misleading consumers by promoting the sale of […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30304,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[7229,10595,12039,305,7732,3190,1468,4027,12040],"class_list":{"0":"post-30303","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-world","9":"tag-aggravated-fraud","10":"tag-court-of-milan","11":"tag-fashion","12":"tag-fraud","13":"tag-influencer","14":"tag-instagram","15":"tag-italy","16":"tag-milan","17":"tag-turin","18":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30303"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30305,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30303\/revisions\/30305"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}