A 53-year-old woman gave $850,000 to a scammer who convinced her she was dating actor Brad Pitt. She received personalized photos of the actor generated by artificial intelligence, but realized something was wrong when the real Brad Pitt appeared on her TV screen with a new girlfriend.
This isn’t the first time Brad Pitt’s identity has been used in an online scam. According to Newsweek, the scam began in 2023 when a 53-year-old French woman who identified herself as Anne received a Facebook message from a scammer.
At first, the scammer introduced himself as Pitt’s mother. Later, he began sending messages supposedly on behalf of the actor himself, and started an «affair» with her. At the time of the scam, Anne was already married to a millionaire. Later, the scammer proposed to Anne to marry him, and she divorced her millionaire husband.
She reportedly initially sent the scammer $9,000 when he said he bought her gifts. According to the fake Brad Pitt, he needed the money to send the gifts through customs.
The woman was then tricked into sending over $800,000 she had received after her divorce. The scammer asked for money for alleged cancer treatment and sent AI-generated images and videos of Brad Pitt in a hospital bed to convince the woman that he needed treatment.
The woman communicated with the scammer only through text messages because he said he was unavailable for phone calls. The attacker convinced the woman that he could not use his own money because of his divorce from actress Angelina Jolie.
The 53-year-old woman finally realized she had been scammed when she saw a photo of Brad Pitt with his current girlfriend, Ines de Ramon. In 2024, the scammed woman reported the incident to the police and has been in a clinic for severe depression ever since.
Some social media users expressed their sympathy for the victim, with one writing: «This is so sad. It’s actually cruel.» Another user noted that «romance scams are the cruelest.»
However, some believe that such scams are «natural selection,» while another user pointed out that «there are better AI-generated images available for free.»
This is not the first time that fraudsters have used Brad Pitt’s image — five criminals were previously arrested in Spain for forcing two women to pay over $330,000 in a fraudulent scam involving the actor.
According to online marketing firm Authority Hacker, Americans lost more than $108 million to AI fraud last year, and 45% of AI frauds resulted in financial losses, with an average loss of $14,600.
Recall that last year, a South Korean woman lost $50,000 after falling in love with a scammer who pretended to be Elon Musk. He befriended her on Instagram, where he said that he sometimes «accidentally contacts fans.»
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