A woman has told how she thought she was dating Brad Pitt and parted with nearly £700,000 in what was an AI scam.
Anne, 53, parted with the cash after believing that the Hollywood star needed the money for cancer treatment. She had reportedly become convinced that she was communicating with the real person due to AI-generated images.
The French woman said that she fell for the scammer as her relationship with her millionaire husband hit the rocks and she was taken in by poems and romantic gestures.
While she was dubious at the start, she is understood to have became convinced by speaking to the scammer on a daily basis and she also received AI generated videos and photos.
It all began when Anne was contacted supposedly by the actor’s mum after she had shared on Instagram photos of her ski holiday to Tignes and the following day she was contacted by a fake Brad Pitt account.
She was communicating with the scammer from February, 2023. “There are so few men who write you this kind of thing. I liked the man I was talking to. He knew how to talk to women, it was always very well done,” she said, as reported by BFMTV.
The fake Brad Pitt also made promises of elegant gifts but there was a catch that she had to pay first for custom fees which reached more than £7,500. And clearly the scammer was emboldened after receiving some money to ask for bigger amounts – especially when she told him that she was set to receive a significant amount from a divorce settlement.
The trickster claimed that Pitt needed money for kidney cancer treatment as his money was locked up due to his divorce with Angelina Jolie. There were also AI generated images of the actor in a hospital bed. And in total she parted with £697,000 but tellingly Pitt was never available to speak to him directly.
While Anne began to realise that she had been taken in by a scam when she saw the actor with his new girlfriend Ines de Ramon in the press, and she went to the police. BFMTV is now reporting that Anne is receiving medical treatment in a clinic due to suffering from depression.
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