French woman loses €830,000 after falling for fake Brad Pitt profile
A woman was scammed by an impostor who posed as Brad Pitt, tricking her into a fake online relationship with the actor
Anne, a 53-year-old French woman, was the victim of a devastating scam in which an impostor posed as actor Brad Pitt for a year and a half, tricking her into transferring a total of €830,000. The scammer contacted her in February 2023 via Instagram, starting a fake relationship at a time of vulnerability for Anne, who was going through marital problems.
The impostor used a carefully crafted identity, including doctored photos of Brad Pitt in everyday situations and videos generated by artificial intelligence (AI).
These fake images and recordings helped convince Anne that she was in direct contact with the Hollywood star. “He would send me photos and when I searched online, I couldn’t see them. So he would tell me: ‘these are photos he took for me,’” Anne recounted on TF1’s French television show Sept à Huit.
Throughout the relationship, the alleged Brad Pitt claimed to face personal difficulties, including a serious kidney disease that required an expensive operation and legal problems related to a messy divorce with Angelina Jolie, which supposedly left him without access to his bank accounts, something similar to the case of Daddy Yankee and Mireddys González.
These touching and well-crafted stories led Anne to transfer all her assets, including 775,000 euros obtained after her own divorce.
Anne publicly explained that she had “fallen in love” with the person behind the fake messages and video calls.
The relationship began to fall apart when, after a year and a half, Anne discovered in the media that the real Brad Pitt had started a relationship with Inés de Ramón, which led her to question the authenticity of the bond she had formed.
Today, Anne is in a deep depression, temporarily living at a friend's house after losing her fortune, her car and her emotional stability.
In her testimony, she lamented: “I wonder why they chose me to hurt me to such an extent. I have never hurt anyone in my life. Those people deserve hell.”