Fraudsters pretending to be Brad Pitt convinced a woman to wire $800,000

French woman reportedly wired more than $800,000 to scammers after being tricked into believing she was dating Brad Pitt.

Prompted to believe that Brad, 61, needed funds to pay for kidney treatment, the 53-year-old woman, identified as Anne, allegedly told French TV channel TF1 about her ordeal. (The original interview was removed on Tuesday, January 14 due to online harassment of Anne, but French news agencies AFP and BFM TV reported fraud as well as subsequent cyberbullying.)

According to BFM TVinterior designer Anne was recently interviewed on TF1’s Seven to eightwhere she explained that in February 2023 she was contacted by a person pretending to be Brad’s mother, Jane Peet. Anne was on a skiing trip to Tinney, France and posted photos from the trip on Instagram when she was contacted by a so-called Jane.

The publication reported that Anne discovered the next day that Jane’s account was “apparently linked to the actor” and that the scammers, posing as Brad, told Anne that his “mother had been talking about her a lot”.

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A relationship quickly developed and Anne, who was allegedly married at the time, received “poems and many declarations”. Anne reportedly told TF1: “There are so few men who text you like that. I liked the person I was talking to. He knew how to talk to women, it was always done very well.”

Fraudsters used AI-generated videos, fake social media accounts and WhatsApp to support the ruse, and alleged examples of these efforts were posted via X and included in BFM TVthe report

According to BFM TVAnne allegedly told TF1: “At first I told myself it was fake, it was funny. But I wasn’t used to social media and didn’t really understand what was happening to me.”

As Ann’s confidence grew, she sent almost €10,000 to the scammers after telling her that customs charges required payment to give her gifts.

Ann then allegedly told the criminals that she had divorced her husband, and after her initial transfer, a further sum was made totaling just under €775,000 – almost the full amount of her divorce settlement.

The second transfer allegedly came as a result of Ann being told that Pete had kidney cancer and needed financial help due to his accounts being frozen during his divorce proceedings from Pete’s real-life ex Angelina Jolie happened.

British newspaper The Times reports that TF1 removed the original news article to protect Anne from the “wave of harassment” received online after she went public with her story.

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Anne allegedly sued and a police investigation was launched, according to several news outlets.

This is not the first time that Brad has been impersonated as a criminal on the Internet. Actor’s publicist Matei Khilzik told Us Weekly in a statement on September 25, 2024 that “it’s appalling that scammers are taking advantage of fans’ strong connection with celebrities,” after Spanish police arrested five people allegedly for playing the part of Brad.

In the September ordeal, two women were ripped off of at least $350,000.