Ferragni and the pandoro case, misleading advertising but minor consumer defence excluded

Having dropped the aggravating circumstance of the diminished defence - because Chiara Ferragni's consumers and followers did not establish any "relationship of uncritical adhesion typical of sects" with the influencer - the exoneration from the crime of aggravated fraud is inevitable. But there is no acquittal on the merits because "from the exposition of the acts of investigation, there does not appear to be that framework of evidence in relation to the contested facts and their chargeability to the defendants that would require a formula of acquittal on the merits of the defendants for the non-existence of the fact or for non-attributability to the same of the crimes". The judge of the Court of Milan, Ilio Mannucci Pacini, entrusts to 60 pages the motivations with which, on 14 January, he acquitted Ferragni, and two other defendants, Fabio Damato Francesco Cannillo exonerating the trial for the charge of aggravated fraud in relation to the commercial operations "Pandoro Balocco Pink Christmas" and "Easter Eggs - Supporting the Fairy Children".

The judgement also ruled out the hypothesis that on social media there is an information asymmetry between the disseminator of the advertising message and the user that is more 'penetrating' than in traditional media, which is false insofar as on the latter 'there is no power of verification on the part of consumers'. The minor defence had been hypothesised by the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office, which had compared the case of the campaigns linked to the sales of Pandoro Balocco and Dolci Preziosi Easter eggs to a manipulation of the market, in which 'deception' was allegedly produced on the web and then moved to large-scale organised distribution with the sale of the goods to the public after having induced them to believe, with Instagram posts and stories, that the charitable activity was linked to the number of purchases. A thesis disregarded by the judge, according to whom, the 30 million followers, contested in the indictment, can be considered in the same way as the followers of the gurus of religious or spiritual sects, nor has it been proven that necessarily all of them were recipients of the messages posted or that they were the purchasers of the Pandoro and Easter eggs. In the motivations also a comparison on the level of conditioning by social and TV.

The social network is not the first communication tool that manages to reach such a large number of people, and the television media has been the main channel of information and transmission of advertising messages for decades and, in some cases, even the only one, the judgement states. "And yet," he added, "in the judicial experience of our country, it does not appear that misleading or mendacious advertising carried out through television channels has resulted in the aggravating circumstance of the minor defence, only because of the number of recipients. On the social 'on the contrary' there are 'features that allow users a power of verification of the content of the messages conveyed'.

The compensation also played a role in the acquittal from the crime of aggravated fraud, which is prosecutable ex officio. The defendants have, in fact, suffered pecuniary consequences at various levels, between antitrust interventions and compensation claims. The influencer has in fact compensated damages, in particular to the Codacons, which has withdrawn the lawsuit, as have other offended parties.