Wild amount woman lost in Brad Pitt scam

A woman has been pilloried when she revealed she lost an astonishing amount of cash after being contacted by a fake Brad Pitt pleading for money.

A Brad Pitt fan was scammed out of $1.4 million after she believed she was dating the Hollywood star.

The French woman was sent AI generated pictures of Pitt undergoing surgery to convince her to send him the cash to pay for medical bills.

The scammer, posing as Pitt, said ex-wife Angelina Jolie had left him penniless and begging for cash for his supposed cancer treatment.

“I liked the man I was talking to. He knew how to talk to women, it was always very well done,” Anne, 53, told programSept a Huit (“Seven to Eight”) on French TV station TF1.

The woman, who TFI said had mental health issues, is only the latest victim of the so-called “Fake Brad Pitt” scam.

Further compounding the woman’s anguish, she has now become a victim on online trolling after revealing she was duped.

One of these is not the real Brad Pitt. Picture: Annalisa Ranzoni/Getty Images/TF1.

The ruse began in September 2023 when Anne was contacted on Instagram by a woman claiming to be Jane Etta Pitt, the Fight Club star’s mother.

After engaging, the fake Jane Pitt began talking about Brad.

“It is a woman like you that my son needs,” Anne, an interior designer, was told.

The next day, Anne received a message from another account that claimed to be from Brad Pitt himself.

“Hello Anne, my mother told me a lot about you. I would like to know more”.

Anne, who was having problems with her marriage to her wealthy husband, said she was initially concerned but het doubts evaporated.

“At first, I thought it was fake, but I could not understand what was happening to me.

“After that, we would contact each other every day and we became friends”.

The fake Brad Pitt would send Anne poems and love songs.

Then came the fake images of Pitt. Some AI images had messages including “Anne, I love you,” and “I love you so much my wife”.

Many of the fake images were from a hospital bed. Picture: TF1.

Some contained love messages. Picture: TF1.

Anne communicated via text and messages but never had a call with the fake Pitt, which – likely – would have destroyed the ruse.

Then came the first request for money with the fake Pitt asking Anne for 9000 euros ($15,000) to pay “customs fees” on gifts he wanted to send to her. The gifts never arrived despite Anne sending the cash.

Anne then divulged to the scammers that she was expecting a large divorce settlement from her wealthy husband.

Later a request came for 775,000 euros ($1.3 million)) to treat a fictitious kidney cancer. These were accompanied by numerous AI images of the World War Z actor apparently in hospital.

The scammers said that Jolie has frozen his accounts after the couple’s divorce.

It was only when Anne saw images of Pitt in a newspaper with a new partner that she began to suspect she had been scammed and alerted the French authorities,

In total she had sent the scammers around 830,000 euros ($1.37 million).

The scam used Pitt’s divorce from Angelina Jolie as a reason he needed money. (Photo by MARK RALSTON / AFP)

Victim pilloried

The Sept a Huit program said that Anne was has now been hospitalised after suffering from severe depression.

The program went viral leading Anne to be pilloried in France for falling for the scam.

On social media, Toulouse Football Club posted that “Brad told us that he would be at the stadium on Wednesday”.

It then deleted the message and posted an apology.

Sept a Huit presenter Harry Roselmack said TFI had decided to remove the show due to the mocking of Anne.

“For the protection of victims, we have decided to withdraw [the segment] from our platforms.”

Originally published as Wild amount woman lost in Brad Pitt scam