How “Brad Pitt” scammed a woman

With hospital photos and smooth conversations, a French woman was convinced she was talking to actor Brad Pitt and scammed out of 800,000 euros. The suspect messaged her on Instagram and convinced her to help him get medical treatment while her bank accounts were frozen in connection with an ongoing divorce case from actress Angelina Jolie.

Anne, 53, said on the show “Sept à quatre” broadcast on Sunday evening on local news channel TF1 that she had received a message while she was on a ski trip to Tignes, from a account posing as the actor’s mother, Jane Etta Pitt. A day later, an account posing as the actor contacted her and the duo started talking and quickly became friends.

Anne, who was married to a millionaire but going through a difficult time, continued to receive poems and declarations of love from the fake account as she remained convinced she was in a long-distance relationship with Mr Pitt. “There are so few men who write such things. I liked the man I was talking to and he knew how to talk to women,” she said.

Although he still avoided her calls, he sent videos and images generated by artificial intelligence to convince Anne of his love for her. At the same time, he also asked her to marry him. He also told her that he sent her a luxury gift and asked her to pay 9,000 euros, but she received nothing, BFMTV reported.

Shortly after, Anne’s divorce was finalized and she received compensation of 775,000 euros. That’s when he shared more doctored videos and photos to say he was scheduled to have kidney surgery and was already admitted to the hospital.

The scam was exposed in 2024 when Anne saw reports of Brad Pitt’s relationship with jewelry designer Ines De Ramon. She was then hospitalized to treat severe depression.

A similar scam was reported in September last year when Spanish police arrested five people accused of defrauding two women of 325,000 euros by posing as Brad Pitt via online messages and WhatsApp. The suspects made contact with the women on a web page aimed at fans of the Oscar-winning actor and led them to believe “that they were in a romantic relationship with him”, Spain’s Guardia Civil said in a statement. Posing as Pitt, the gang members then suggested that the women invest in various projects that did not exist.