Invisible Puppies & Fake Popes: How Online Scams Are Draining Millions from Malta

From a pretend Pope to an invisible puppy: Online fraud costing Malta millions
By Hot Malta staff

Ħamrun grandmother Rita Camilleri still keeps the WhatsApp voice-note on her phone. A warm, fatherly voice—complete with Italian accent—thanks her for her “generous tithe to the Holy See” and promises a private blessing once the €3,000 “processing fee” is wired to a Birkirkara IBAN. The voice wasn’t Francis; it was a cloned clip scraped from a Vatican YouTube video. By the time her son dragged her to the police, the money had hopped through three shell companies and vanished into a crypto exchange with no Malta licence.

Rita is not an outlier. Last year alone, cyber-fraud siphoned €17.8 million out of Maltese wallets, according to the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit—enough to fund 120 new nurses or resurface every pothole from Mellieħa to Marsaxlokk. The figure has tripled since 2019, driven by scams that feel almost folkloric in their theatricality: fake knights of the Order of Malta selling “hereditary titles”, Telegram groups flogging €50 iPhones that turn out to be photos of phones, and—most bizarre of all—an “invisible Maltese terrier” marketed to lonely pensioners as a hypo-allergenic support animal detectable only by blockchain.

Island of trust, island of targets
Anthropologist Dr. Maria Grech says Malta’s tight-knit culture is a double-edged sword. “We’re raised to trust the word of a neighbour, to assume every auntie is a reference. Scammers weaponise that intimacy.” They also weaponise geography. A country small enough that “everyone knows everyone” becomes disorienting online: if the Facebook profile says he’s from Żebbuġ and went to Maria Regina College in the 1980s, who double-checks?

Police Commissioner Angelo Gafà admits investigations are “swamped”. The cyber-crime unit has 23 officers—one for every 21,000 internet users. When a Sliema boutique lost €90,000 in a spear-phish last month, the perpetrators routed the cash through 14 countries in the time it took officers to finish their pastizzi breakfast.

From parish to phishing
Traditional Maltese feasts are now plugged into Wi-Fi. Collection buckets carry QR codes; village Facebook groups stream band marches live. Scammers slip into comment threads posing as parish priests, asking for “urgent roof repairs” via Revolut. One Ta’ Xbiex church found its entire donor list cloned; 68 parishioners gave a total of €44,000 to a Revolut account labelled “Monsignor (emoji)”.

Even the Maltese love of dogs is monetised. The “invisible puppy” scheme began on TikTok: users were shown grainy night-vision clips of a translucent terrier allegedly bred in Gozo using “quantum stealth” technology imported by hunters. Price: €800, delivery at night “so sunlight doesn’t destabilise the refraction”. Victims received an empty cardboard box and a note: “Your puppy is inside, but only visible to the pure of heart.” At least 120 people paid; several were too embarrassed to file reports until their children googled the science.

The human cost
At Victim Support Malta, counsellor Clarissa Pace has group sessions where retirees practise saying “No, I will call my son first.” She says shame is corrosive. “One Gozitan farmer sold three cows to buy Bitcoin vouchers after a fake Elon Musk livestream. He hasn’t told his brothers; he pretends the herd died of disease.”

Meanwhile, banks are caught between vigilance and customer convenience. BOV’s new AI flags any transfer above €500 to a first-time crypto recipient, but youngsters complain of cancelled festival-ticket payments. HSBC Malta’s “Scam Breaker” pop-up quiz—obligatory before every online transaction—has cut elderly fraud by 18 %, yet some users find it patronising.

Turning the tide
Education is ramping up. The BeSmartOnline! caravan is touring schools with a VR game where children dodge scam pop-ups like 1990s Pac-Man. At University, law students run a “cyber-clinic” drafting small-claims guides for victims who can’t afford counsel. And in a uniquely Maltese twist, the band club of Qormi staged a satirical operetta, “Il-Papa li Ma Kienx Papa”, with proceeds funding digital-literacy classes for seniors.

Conclusion
From cloned clergy to ghost puppies, the cons may be comic on the surface, but their punchline empties pension pots and fractures the trust that oils Malta’s communal engine. The solutions aren’t rocket science—faster bank recalls, tougher crypto regulation, bigger cyber-police budgets—but they need political will and island-wide solidarity. Until then, the best defence is the oldest Maltese tradition: talking to each other. If Auntie Rita had shown that voice-note to her bridge club before wiring the cash, the only thing disappearing would have been the scammer’s time.