Brad Pitt condemned scammers after a French woman was duped out of $855,000 by an AI-generated version of the actor, which led her to believe they were in a relationship that lasted over a year.
"It's awful that scammers take advantage of fans' strong connection with celebrities," Pitt said in a statement to Entertainment Weekly. "But this is an important reminder to not respond to unsolicited online outreach, especially from actors who have no social media presence."
The 53-year-old French interior designer, identified as Anne, originally opened up about the ordeal in an interview with Seven to Eight on France's TF1 channel.
The scam, she said, began when an account claiming to be Pitt's mother contacted her on Instagram, claiming her son needed someone like her, France 24 reported. Soon after, an account posing as Pitt reached out.
"At first I said to myself that it was fake, that it's ridiculous," Anne told TF1, according to France 24. "But I'm not used to social media, and I didn't really understand what was happening to me."
The scammers convinced Anne that Pitt needed money for kidney treatment, claiming his bank accounts were frozen due to his divorce. To make the scam more believable, they sent doctored, AI-generated images of the actor in a hospital bed.
Believing she was in a relationship with Pitt, Anne sent the scammers $850,000 and divorced her husband.
"I was in love with the man I was chatting to," she said on Seven to Eight, according to The Guardian. "He knew how to speak to a woman."
Anne realized the scam after seeing news of Pitt's real romance with Ines de Ramon and filed a police report. The interview was later pulled from circulation to prevent further cyberbullying, as Anne struggled with mental health issues, including depression.
In September 2024, Spain's Interior Ministry reported the arrest of five people who scammed two women out of $350,000 by impersonating Pitt. It's unclear whether this case is linked to the French scam.
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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