French Woman Scammed Out of Nearly $1M by Fake Brad Pitt

A French woman named Anne was scammed out of 830,000 euros (about $850,000) by a con artist pretending to be famous actor Brad Pitt.

The French woman gave her testimony on the program Sept à huit on TF1, recounting the tale of how she blew nearly all of her savings on what she thought was a love affair with the famous Hollywood actor. The scammer took advantage of Pitt’s current dilemma as he is in the midst of divorce proceedings with actress Angelina Jolie by messaging Anne using various accounts and utilizing AI photo editing to deceive her.

“I loved the man I was talking to,” said Anne in her testimony. “He knew how to talk to women.”

The scammer had the French woman convinced he was Brad Pitt for about a year and a half

According to Anne, the faux affair came at just the right time, as she had just settled her divorce. It all started in 2023 after she created social media to post photos and videos from her vacations and she received a message from the scammer pretending to be Brad Pitt’s mother, Jane Etta Pitt, saying “It’s a woman like you that [my] son ​​needs.”

She did not believe the message, and when the next day she received a message from who she thought was Brad Pitt, she still doubted that what was happening to her was real. She made the conman prove to her that the person messaging her was the real deal. The scammer used AI to pass the test, sending her fake photos of his passport and his stunt doubles, messages from acting as Pitt’s daughter, Shiloh, and sharing never-before-seen (AI-generated) photos of the movie star that were, suggesting that Pitt was taking these photos for her.

“And when I was doing research, I didn’t see them,” said Anne on Sept à huit. “So, I said to myself: ‘These are photos that he took for me.’”

Anne believed the con enough to keep pursuing it but still had her doubts. As the weeks went by, however, their conversations became deeper and more meaningful. The fake Brad Pitt was sending her full declarations of love and passionate poems that ultimately won the French woman’s heart.

“There are so few men who write you this kind of thing,” said Anne.

Some of the photos show Pitt in a hospital bed, which is where the demands for money started. The “grazers,” who are the alleged scammers behind the affair, convinced Anne that he had kidney cancer and that he needed an advance because his accounts were frozen as a result of the divorce proceedings with Angelina Jolie.

She would have doubts every so often, but each time the suave conman would dispel her worries about his identity.

“Every time I had doubts, he managed to take them away,” said Anne.

Anne was in a place of financial security at the time, as after receiving $800,000 from her ex-husband following her divorce, money was not an issue. She transferred large amounts of money on a regular basis to the imposter Pitt through an account in Turkey, the total amount of money transferred totals out to roughly $850,000.

After word of the real Brad Pitt’s relationship with Inès de Ramon made headlines, Anne was 100 percent certain she had been scammed. She filed a complaint with the authorities and an investigation into the scam was opened.

Anne is now homeless and staying with a friend of hers. She still has around $41,000 in savings, but has attempted suicide multiple times since her affair with the fake Brad Pitt ended. This is the largest ever scam case in terms of the sum of money ever reported in France. This isn’t the first time a scammer has used AI to successfully con someone, as a Greek woman was defrauded of thousands by a Keanu Reaves imposter.