Frauds posing as Brad Pitt and his mother allegedly scammed a French woman in her fifties out of €830,000.
Police are investigating claims that the fake Pitt managed to convince a woman named only as Anne that he was in love with her, according to TF1, the French television channel.
The woman was targeted after posting photographs of a holiday on Instagram two years ago, TF1 said.
Brad Pitt and his mother, Jane, in 2012
STEVE GRANITZ/WIREIMAGE
First, a person claiming to be Pitt’s mother contacted her with the message: “It’s a woman like you that my son needs.” Anne said that she was sceptical but nevertheless began chatting before being contacted by a person posing as the actor, who said: “My mother told me a lot about you.”
He sent her poems, declarations of love and photos. When she complained that she had never seen him, he sent her a video of Pitt created by artificial intelligence. “He knew how to talk to women,” Anne said, adding that she had also been contacted by accomplices posing as Pitt’s agent and as one of the daughters he had with Angelina Jolie, Shiloh.
Money became involved when the alleged fraudster claimed that she needed to pay more than €9,000 in customs tariffs to receive the presents he had sent her, including Chanel handbags and Hermès watches.
• Fraud, phishing and scams to look out for in 2025
When Anne mentioned that she had recently divorced from her husband and had received a settlement of €775,000, the fake Pitt claimed to have developed kidney cancer. He said he needed expensive treatment but could not pay for it because his bank accounts had been blocked as a result of his divorce proceedings with Jolie.
When he asked Anne for a loan, she sent almost all the money she had received from her divorce.
-Pictures that were sent to Anne, claiming to be Pitt receiving treatment
Anne said she always had doubts about the veracity of the claims, often blocking the conman’s number, but she always went back to him in the end.
When she read, for instance, that Pitt had a girlfriend, the Swiss businesswoman Inés de Ramón, the scammers sent her a fake television report denying that they were together.
Inés de Ramón and Brad Pitt at Silverstone in July last year
KYM ILLMAN/GETTY IMAGES
Anne finally accepted the truth last summer when she read further articles about Pitt and De Ramón. She filed a criminal lawsuit claiming to be the victim of a scam, prompting a police inquiry. TF1 said she had since made three suicide attempts and had been admitted to hospital for severe depression.
The scam was revealed on Sunday by Seven to Eighta documentary programme on TF1, but the report has since been removed from the station’s website. It said it was protecting the woman from a “wave of harassment” she had suffered online since the case was made public.
Last year, police in Spain arrested five people accused of scamming two women out of €325,000 in a separate Pitt-related fraud. The suspects are accused of contacting the victims claiming to be Pitt and saying they wanted to invest in business projects with them.
In France about 12,000 people are believed to have fallen victim to online romance scams last year.
