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A French woman was defrauded out of €830,000 (£700,000) by a scammer using AI-generated images of Brad Pitt who said they needed the money for cancer treatment.
The woman, Anne, aged 53, was scammed out of the money in a scam where the Hollywood A-lister’s images were faked to make it look like he was seriously ill, French media reported.
She uncovered the fraud after reading media reports of his separation from Angelia Jolie and seeing reports of his romance with a new partner.
The interior designer told a French documentary show that she believed she and Pitt had fallen in love online - with the fraudster even persuading her to divorce her husband so that they could be together.
Anne has since started a crowdfunding page to cover her legal costs in a bid to recover the funds she sent to the scammer.
She told French programme Sept à huit that the ordeal began in February 2023 after she created an Instagram account to share pictures of her Alps skiing holiday.
A woman who went under the name of Jane Etta Pitt – the real name of Brad Pitt’s mother – then allegedly messaged her, saying: “My son needs a woman like you.”
The ‘son’, the scammer using Brad Pitt’s photos, then also reportedly messaged her the next day, asking her for more information about herself.
She told the documentary: “We’re talking about Brad Pitt here and I was stunned. At first, I thought it was fake, but I didn’t really understand what was happening to me. After that, we got in touch every day and became buddies.”
The 53-year-old asked the scammer for proof of identity, and was sent images purportedly of his passport, as well as AI-generated photos appearing to show Pitt seriously ill and in hospital.
She said: “I thought he had taken these photos for me.”
Over the course of more than a year, she was then hoodwinked into believing that ‘Pitt’ was seriously ill and in need of funds for cancer treatment, after being wooed with declarations of love.
She then wired huge sums of money to pay for his alleged treatment, disregarding relatives’ warnings that the person was not the real Brad Pitt.
The ordeal left her almost penniless and forced her to sell all of her furniture and move in with a friend, French outlet TF1 reported.
She also needed mental health care as a result of the scam.
Pitt’s likelihood has previously been used in scams, with five people arrested in Spain last year for pretending to be the star and defrauding two “vulnerable” women out of €325,000 (£275,000) in a another romance scam.
Oscar-winner Pitt, 57, is best known for starring roles in major blockbusters such as Se7en and Ocean’s 11.
