From hospital photos and spontaneous conversations, a French woman was convinced she was talking to actor Brad Pitt and scammed her out of 800,000 euros. The suspect messaged her on Instagram and convinced her to help him with medical treatment as his bank accounts were blocked amid his ongoing divorce case with actor Angelina Jolie.
Anne, 53, told the show “Sept à Huet”, broadcast Sunday evening on local news channel TF1, that she received a message from an account posing as Jane Etta Pitt, the actor’s mother, while she was on a ski trip to Tignes. A day later, an account posing as an actor contacted him and the two started talking and soon became friends.
Anne, who was married to a millionaire but was going through bad times, continued to receive poems and declarations of love from the fake account as she was convinced she was in a long distance relationship with Mr Pitt. She said, “There are very few men who write such things. I liked the man I was talking to and he knew how to talk to women.”
Although he always avoided her calls, he sent artificial intelligence-generated videos and photos to Anne to convince her of his love for her. He also asked her to marry him. He also told her that he had sent her luxury gifts and asked her to pay him 9,000 euros, but he received nothing, bfmtv Informed.
Shortly thereafter, Anne’s divorce was finalized and she received compensation of 775,000 euros. This was when he shared more doctored videos and pictures saying that he was about to undergo kidney surgery and was already admitted in a hospital.
The scandal came to light in 2024 when Anne saw news of Brad Pitt’s relationship with jewelry designer Ines de Ramon. He was then admitted to hospital for treatment of severe depression.
A similar scam came to light in September last year when Spanish police arrested five men accused of defrauding two women of 325,000 euros by posing as Brad Pitt through online and WhatsApp messages. Spain’s Guardia Civil police force said in a statement the suspects contacted the women on an Internet page for fans of the Oscar-winning actor and convinced them he “had an emotional relationship with them”. Posing as Pitt, the gang members allegedly proposed to the women to invest in various projects that did not exist.
