A lady thought she was helping Brad Pitt out but she was actually falling victim to a shocking romance scam.
The 53-year-old victim, who gave her name as Anne, forked out 830,000 euros ($851,355) to help with what she believed was cancer treatment for the Hollywood legend.
A scammer managed to do so by convincing Anne they were Brad Pitt with a series of AI-generated images.
The interior designer told French channel TF1 that the ordeal started when she received a message on social media from someone claiming to be Brad’s mother after sharing photos of her fancy ski trip to Tignes on Instagram.
A day later, another account posing as the Hollywood heartthrob sent a second message, saying his mother had spoken a lot about her already.
The victim, who noted she was going through a difficult period with her millionaire husband, said she struck up an unlikely friendship with the account from February 2023, receiving poems and sweet affirmations.
“There are so few men who write you this kind of thing. I liked the man I was talking to. He knew how to talk to women, it was always very well done,” she said, as reported by BFMTV.
While Anne admitted she did have her suspicions that the account was fake, after messaging every day and receiving AI-generated photos and videos of the star, she became more at ease.
Soon Anne’s online relationship with ‘Bad Pitt’ went to the next level when the person behind the account proposed to her and overwhelmed her with the promise of fancy gifts.
The only catch was that she would need to pay customs fees to receive them, which quickly added up to 9,000 euros ($9231).
With Anne already showing a willingness to part with large sums of money, the scammer went on to make increasingly absurd requests.
When the victim told ‘Bad Pitt’ that she was expecting a hefty divorce settlement from her husband, the scammer saw this as the perfect opportunity to up the ante with their requests.
The Brad Pitt account went on to appeal for help in funding urgent kidney cancer treatment, claiming that they could not access funds due to their ongoing divorce from Angelina Jolie.
The scammer reportedly then began sending AI-generated photos of the World War X star from the confines of a hospital bed.
Anne pointed out that while she and the scammer communicated by text and with photos, she said he was never free for a call – a common motif among online scammers.
In the end, she parted ways with nearly one million euros throughout the relationship until her suspicions were confirmed when she saw pics of the actor with his new girlfriend, Ines de Ramon.
