A French woman was scammed into giving away €830,000 (£700,000) after an AI-generated Brad Pitt convinced her the pair were in love and he needed money for cancer treatment.
The 53-year-old French woman, an interior designer called Anne, said the ‘relationship’ began after she received a message from an account claiming to be Jane Etta Pitt, the ‘Fight Club’ actor’s mother. The account told Anne she was exactly the woman her son needed. The next day, an AI-generated imitation of Brad Pitt messaged her the next day, wanting to know more.
Scammers used fake social media and artificial intelligence image-creating technology to execute a complicated and cruel deception. Over the next year-and-a-half, the fake Pitt would send Anne poems, declarations of love, even going so far to ask her to marry him.
At the time, Anne was going through a divorce with a millionaire entrepreneur. “At first I said to myself that it was fake, that it’s ridiculous,” Anne explained on French TV show Sept à Huit.
“But I’m not used to social media and I didn’t really understand what was happening to me. There are few men who write to you like that,” she told French media. “I loved the man I was talking to. He knew how to talk to women and it was very well put together.”
As the relationship began to grow, the scammers began asking for money. They sent gifts to Anne, but said she needed to pay the customs bill, which for one handbag was $9,000.
Anne’s daughter attempted to warn her that she was the victim of a scam, but Anne wouldn’t listen, saying: “You’ll see when he’s here in person then you’ll say sorry.” Ramping it up, the fake Pitt then revealed he had kidney cancer and needed money for treatment, saying his ex-wife Angelina Jolie had frozen his bank accounts.
When Anne began having doubts, Pitt’s ‘doctor’ emailed her saying the actor was dying and needed treatment quickly. Anne transferred €800,000 to a Turkish bank account.
She said: “It cost me to do it, but I thought that I might be saving a man’s life.” The woman eventually realised she was being scammed last summer, when the real Pitt was seen with his current partner Inès de Ramon.
Police are now investigating the con which left Anne hospitalised with depression.