Since the broadcast, Sunday evening on the TF1 show Seven to eightfrom the testimony of Anne, a fifty-year-old defrauded of more than 800,000 euros by a fake Brad Pitt, social networks are in a loop, between mockery and compassion, on this incredible scam.
And it all started with social networks when, two years ago, this 53-year-old interior decorator, not very well connected, created an Instagram account to share photos of her family ski vacations.
Trained by Brad Pitt’s “mother”
First contacted on this social network by a person named Jane Etta Pitt and claiming to be the mother of Brad Pitt, she was contacted the next day by someone claiming to be the Hollywood star. If she is initially doubtful, she will end up falling for it with rather crude photo montages and deepfakes, these photos or videos that are faked or created with artificial intelligence (AI).
For a year and a half, she believed she was having a romantic relationship with the American actor while having no other contact than an exchange of written messages.
« Like an idiot, I pay »
Through the screen, the fifty-year-old opens up a lot, talking about her marital problems then her divorce or even the sums of money received on this occasion. So many confessions that the scammer(s) will use to extract tens of thousands of euros.
The fake Brad Pitt manages to make him believe that his accounts are blocked due to his stormy divorce from Angelina Jolie. And when he admits to her that he has kidney cancer (Anne had confessed to having been affected by cancer when she was younger) and that he needs money to pay for treatment, the Frenchwoman is convinced by the star’s doctor who sends him “evidence”. “Like an idiot, I pay,” says the fifty-year-old disillusioned in the TF1 report.
-In total, she paid 830,000 euros to her crooks. If this will not comfort the one who, completely destroyed by this story, has made several suicide attempts, it is far from being an isolated case.
The phenomenon of grazers, these scammers who trap their victims on the Internet, is growing thanks to the development of AI. Five people were arrested in Spain last summer for, again, pretending to be Brad Pitt and extracting 325,000 euros from two “vulnerable” and “depressed” women.
Also this summer, it was a fan of Florent Pagny, thinking of speaking directly with the singer, who was defrauded of several hundred euros. Revolted, the interpreter of Know how to love even came out of his silence on social networks to denounce the practice and warn.
“You cannot imagine for a second that an artist, a public person, could give you through social networks, a telephone number or a contact. If you haven’t met him, it can’t happen. Please stop being so naive, it costs too much,” he emphasizes in this video.
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