Italian Citizenship Scams:
9 Warning Signs

9 warning signs

1. They guarantee the result or a date. Recognition is decided by a consulate, a comune or a court, and nobody controls their timing or their decision. A guarantee of approval, a court date or the outcome of the EU Court case is a promise nobody can keep.
2. They say you qualify without asking about dates. Since 2025, eligibility turns on details such as when each ancestor became a U.S. citizen and whether a parent or grandparent held exclusively Italian citizenship. A provider that says "you qualify" before asking is selling, not checking.
3. They sell consulate appointments. Appointments are booked free on Prenot@mi and are tied to the person who books them. An offer to sell you a slot, or to "skip the line", is a red flag: you have no way to know if it is genuine.
4. They offer to sell you citizenship or a passport. Italy has no citizenship-by-investment program, and an Italian passport is issued only to Italian citizens. Investor visas give residence, not citizenship.
5. They push you to pay everything up front. A reputable provider explains the fees in writing, separates its own fees from Italian government fees, and tells you what happens if your case turns out not to be viable.
6. There is no named Italian lawyer. Court cases must be filed by an avvocato registered with an Italian bar. Ask for the lawyer's name and bar (Ordine degli Avvocati), and check it.
7. They want payment by crypto, gift cards or a wire to a personal account. These are hard or impossible to reverse. Pay a business, by a traceable method, against a written agreement.
8. The "official" site or email is not official. Italian consulates' websites and services use esteri.it addresses, such as prenotami.esteri.it and serviziconsolari.esteri.it. Be wary of look-alike sites, and of emails or calls that claim to be from a consulate and ask for payment.
9. Their claims cannot be checked. Be skeptical of "100% success rates", huge client counts or "official partner" badges with no detail behind them. Ask for specifics and see whether they hold up.

How to check a provider

• Ask how they will check your eligibility under the 2025 rules before you pay the main fee
• Ask for the name of the Italian lawyer for any court case and the bar where they are registered, then check it with that bar (Ordine degli Avvocati) or the national bar council
• Get a written agreement with a fee schedule that separates service fees from Italian government fees
• Search the company's name together with words like "complaint" and read what former clients say
• Pay by a traceable method, such as a credit card, and keep every receipt and email

Our guide to choosing a citizenship service has the full list of questions to ask.

What the official steps cost

Private services charge for their work on top of these, and that is legitimate. What matters is that you know which is which. Our cost guide breaks down every item.

If you think you have been scammed

1. Stop paying, and keep every email, contract, receipt and message
2. Call your bank or card issuer and ask about reversing the payment
3. Report it to the Federal Trade Commission at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and, for online fraud, to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center
4. Contact your state attorney general's consumer protection office
5. If someone pretended to be a consulate, tell that consulate

How we work

We publish our prices, name our team and lawyers, and start every case with a free consultation where we check your eligibility before you commit to anything. We do not guarantee outcomes, because nobody can.

Sources

• Prenot@mi, the Foreign Ministry booking portal
• Fast It, the Foreign Ministry consular services portal
• Consiglio Nazionale Forense, the Italian national bar council
• Federal Trade Commission: report fraud
• FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3)

This guide is general information, not legal advice. Rules and consulate practice change; check the official sources or ask us before acting.