Brad Pitt fraudster scams French woman out of $800,000 using AI
An AI-generated Brad Pitt scammed a French woman out of over $800,000 after she was convinced that they were in love and he needed money for cancer treatment.
The woman, known as Anne, handed over €830,000 (around £700,000 or $850,000) to the fraudster over the course of a year and a half, after she received a message from someone purporting to be Jane Etta Pitt, the actor’s mother, telling her she was exactly the woman her son needed.
A day later, an AI imitation of the star messaged her, asking to know more about her. The scam artist would then send her poems and declarations of love, before asking her to marry him in a plot to get her to send over money. At the time, the 53-year-old interior designer was in the middle of divorcing her husband, a millionaire entrepreneur.
She told media in France: “There are few men who write to you like that. I loved the man I was talking to. He knew how to talk to women and it was very well put together.”
She continued: “We’re talking about Brad Pitt here and I was stunned. At first, I thought it was fake, but I didn’t really understand what was happening to me.”
A french woman was scammed out of over $800K by someone pretending to be Brad Pitt
• Scammer DM'd her on Instagram and convinced her with AI-generated videos and edited images
• She divorced her husband thinking they would get together
• Scammer convinced her his bank… pic.twitter.com/VWD3RtvIO3
— Culture Crave
(@CultureCrave) January 14, 2025
The scammer used fake social media and WhatsApp accounts and AI image-creating technology to dupe her, sending everything from what appeared to be selfies to a supposed copy of Pitt’s passport.
To get money, he at first claimed that he was sending her luxury handbags, but that she’d have to pay the customs bill – the first was €9,000. He then claimed that he was in hospital with kidney cancer and needed money for treatment, alleging that Pitt’s real-life ex-wife Angelina Jolie had frozen his bank accounts and he had no access to his money.
While she had doubts, she received emails from someone claiming to be Pitt’s doctor who said he was fighting for his life, so she sent around €800,000 to an account in Turkey.
Police are currently investigating the scam, which left Anne in hospital with depression. She realised she was being scammed in the summer of 2024, when the real Pitt was seen with his new partner, jewellery designer Ines de Ramon.
She gave an interview about her ordeal to the Seven to Eight show aired by French broadcaster TF1 on Sunday (January 12), but the programme has been withdrawn from the channel’s replay services due to the online mockery she’s faced as a result.
She was targeted on social media as well as with a satirical sketch on one of France’s biggest radio shows. Football team Toulouse FC, who play in France’s top division, poked fun at her on X before deleting the post and apologising, while Netflix France also made light of the situation, promoting “four films to see with Brad Pitt (really) for free.”
4 films à voir avec Brad Pitt (promis)
c’est cadeau. pic.twitter.com/mpe76GoLOk
— Netflix France (@NetflixFR) January 13, 2025
TF1 presenter Harry Roselmack wrote on social media today (January 14): “For the protection of victims, we have decided to withdraw [the segment] from our platforms.”
As for the real Pitt, meanwhile, he and Jolie reached a divorce settlement at the end of December, eight years after Jolie filed to end their marriage citing irreconcilable differences.
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Adam England
NME
