Woman says she lost $850,000 to scammers posing as Brad Pitt

A French woman who revealed on TV how she lost all her savings to scammers posing as Brad Pitt has faced a wave of harassment and mockery online, leading to her interview being withdrawn Tuesday.

The woman, named Anne, told the show “Seven to Eight” on the TF1 channel that she believed she was having a romantic relationship with the Hollywood star, which led her to divorce her husband and transfer him to him. $850,000.

The scammers used fake social media and WhatsApp accounts, as well as AI imaging technology to send Anne what appeared to be selfies and messages from Pitt.

To extract money, they claimed the 61-year-old actor needed money to pay for his kidney treatments, with his bank accounts allegedly frozen due to divorce proceedings with his ex-wife Angelina Jolie.

Anne, a 53-year-old interior designer with mental health issues, spent a year and a half believing she was communicating with Pitt and only realized she had been scammed when news broke. of Pitt’s real-life relationship with his girlfriend Ines de Ramon has emerged.

“The story broadcast this Sunday gave rise to a wave of harassment against the witness,” TF1 presenter Harry Roselmack wrote on Tuesday on his X account. “For the protection of the victims, we have decided to remove it from our platforms .”

Anne was stated by the channel at the time of its broadcast that she was suffering from severe depression and had been hospitalized.

The interview, in which she was openly filmed and even shared family photos with reporters, went viral on Monday.

It sparked a deluge of mocking comments and jokes, but some online critics accused TF1 of failing to protect a vulnerable person who may have been unaware of the consequences of public disclosure.

Toulouse Football Club tweeted that “Brad told us he would be at the stadium on Wednesday” for the team’s next match, before removing the message and apologizing.

Netflix France also published on social networks the promotion of “four films to watch with Brad Pitt (really) for free”.

Romance scams have been a feature of the Internet since the advent of email, but experts say artificial intelligence has increased the risk of identity theft, hoaxes and online fraud.

“These people deserve hell”

Anne told TF1 she was first contacted by someone posing as Pitt’s mother shortly after she first started using Instagram while on a ski trip with her family In France.

“She told me her son needed someone like me,” Anne said.

The scammers messaged her again several days later, this time pretending to be Pitt.

“At first I told myself that it was false, that it was ridiculous,” Anne explained to TF1. “But I’m not used to social media and I didn’t really understand what was happening to me.”

“I wonder why they chose me to do so much harm?” she continued. “I’ve never hurt anyone. These people deserve hell.”

More than 64,000 Americans were victims of romance scams worth more than $1 billion in 2023, double the $500 million four years earlier, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

In 2023, seniors were defrauded out of an estimated $3.4 billion in a series of financial crimes, according to FBI data. The agency recently warned that AI has increased the “credibility” of criminal scams given that they “assist in content creation and can correct human errors that might otherwise serve as warning signs of fraud.”

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