An interior designer was scammed out of a small fortune. She thought she was in a long-distance relationship with the Hollywood star who needed money for emergency medical operations.
Internet scams where transfixed lovers part with all their savings for a distant Don Juan are legion. But the story of Anne, a 53-year-old interior designer, stands out for its magnitude, as recounted by our colleagues at RTL France.
This woman parted with 830,000 euros thinking she was doing her new lover a favor…
Brad Pitt.
It is in front of the TF1 cameras, in the show Sept à Huit, that Anne recounts her ordeal.
A manipulation which began in February 2023. While in Tignes on vacation with her husband and daughter, the decorator decided to register on Instagram to share some family photos. A woman, who poses as Brad Pitt’s mother, then comes into contact with the Frenchwoman. Anne’s couple was struggling and for this Jane Etta Pitt, the fifty-year-old would be the ideal woman for her actor son. The trap closes.
-In order not to frighten his prey, the scammer chooses patience and building trust. This person on the other side of the screen speaks to Anne daily, asks for news, listens to secrets. “I had someone in front of me who was interested in me and my work because my own husband wasn’t even interested in my work (…) It’s as if I lived alone“, she tells TF1.
To raise the decorator’s suspicions, the scammer provides a mess of forgeries: his passport, the identity documents of those around him… It is impossible to verify the authenticity of these documents for Anne but this evidence is convincing. And then, it’s time for the images…
Misleading photos and videos
The scammer poses as members of the Pitt family and increases his influence over Anne. To avoid simply remaining in writing, he sent the Frenchwoman images and videos of Brad Pitt crudely edited or generated by artificial intelligence. He promises marriage and his upcoming arrival in France…
But, of course, those were all lies. To get Anne to start giving him her savings, the scammer decides to increase the number of requests. First, it’s about paying customs fees for promised luxury gifts, then, the fake Brad Pitt talks about increasingly serious health problems. Anne, touched, will give up hundreds of thousands of euros to save her new love.
