For many months, an individual posed as the American actor in order to extract thousands, then tens of thousands of euros from a 53-year-old woman who thought she was having a romantic relationship with the star.
“These people deserve hell. These crooks must be found.” A woman, now 53 years old and named Anne, was fooled by a scammer who posed as the American actor Brad Pitt and who took from him the large sum of 830,000 euros. She testified in the program “Sept à quatre” broadcast Sunday evening on TF1.
The story begins in February 2023, when this interior designer is on a ski trip to Tignes. After registering on the social network Instagram to post photos of her trip, she was quickly contacted by the so-called account of Jane Etta Pitt, the actor’s mother. The next day, an account apparently linked to the actor contacted her, telling her that her mother had spoken to him a lot about her.
“In fact, we’re talking about Brad Pitt, I’m amazed. At first, I tell myself that it’s fakebut I don’t really understand what’s happening to me. Afterwards, we will contact each other every day and we become friends,” she says.
“He knew how to talk to women”
As the days go by, a real epistolary relationship develops between the fake Brad Pitt and Anne, then married to a millionaire 19 years her senior but whose couple is going through a rough patch. As reported by TF1, she then received poems and numerous declarations.
“There are so few men who write you this kind of thing. I liked the man I spoke with. He knew how to talk to women, it was always very well spoken,” she adds.
If the scammer always finds a way to avoid phone calls with Anne, he does however manage to send her a video generated by artificial intelligence which reassures the fifty-year-old. A few days later, the fake Brad Pitt proposed to Anne.
Gifts and cancer
It is at this precise moment that the financial trap closes on Anne. The scammer lets the latter know that he has bought her valuable gifts from luxury brands such as Chanel or Hermès, and asks Anne to pay customs fees in order to receive them. She will pay 9,000 euros and ultimately receive nothing.
As TF1 points out, Anne decides to divorce her husband and pockets a compensatory benefit of 775,000 euros, which she will report to the scammer. The latter, who indicates that his accounts are currently blocked due to his divorce from Angelina Jolie, is asking for this sum in order to treat alleged kidney cancer.
“It costs me to do it, but I tell myself that maybe I will save a man’s life,” she says. At the same time, the scammer sends him several photos, always taken by artificial intelligence, of the actor on his hospital bed.
It was only many months after the start of the scam that Anne understood the situation, seeing the real actor accompanied by his new companion in the columns of the celebrity press. In the summer of 2024, she filed a complaint and an investigation is currently underway. Anne is currently hospitalized in a clinic specializing in severe depression.
This is not the first time that the figure of the American artist has been used in such scams. Last September, five people were arrested in Spain for having taken 325,000 euros from two “vulnerable” and “depressed” women by pretending to be the star, online and on Whatsapp.
