Romance scam: AI Brad Pitt persuades woman to divorce husband and hand over $1.5 million

A lovestruck French woman handed over 830,000 euros (NZ$1.5m) to a fake, AI-generated Brad Pitt who convinced her he needed the money for cancer treatment in the midst of his divorce battle with Angelina Jolie.

Anne, a 53-year-old interior designer, said she believed that she and the Hollywood star had fallen in love online and would marry, so she divorced her husband and then wired fraudsters all the money from the settlement.

The truth only started to dawn on her when she saw reports of the Fight Club star with his new girlfriend. She has filed a legal complaint for fraud and opened an online crowdfunding account to cover her legal costs.

Anne’s ordeal reportedly started in February 2023 when she created an Instagram account to share photos of her skiing holiday in the Alps.

How it all went down

A woman calling herself Jane Etta Pitt – the real name of Brad Pitt’s mother – then contacted her in English, saying: “My son needs a woman like you.”

The “son” in question then popped up in her messages – also in English – the next day, demanding to know more about her.

She said: “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.”

While admitting to being a relative novice on social networks, Anne asked for proof of the man’s identity and received images of his passport, messages from people supposedly close to the actor, and AI-generated photos and videos of him. 

“I thought he had taken these photos for me.”

Over the course of the next 18 months, the pair conversed regularly and their relationship blossomed into a full-blown online romance as he sent her poems and other fiery declarations of love.

She told Sept à huit, a French documentary show: “There are so few men who write to you like that. I loved the man I was talking to. He knew how to talk to women and it was always very well put together”.

Her fake lover seemed interested in her work, unlike, she said, her husband whom she eventually divorced, receiving a settlement of 775,000 euros (NZ$1.4m). 

One day, the fake Brad Pitt asked her to marry him, and Anne said she was very close to saying ‘yes’.

He said he had sent her luxury gifts but that she would have to pay 9,000 euros (NZ$16,550) in customs duties to receive them as his accounts were frozen because of his lawsuit with his ex-wife, Angelina Jolie. The two stars’ divorce settlement came through last month.

The exchanges soon took a different turn when Anne was led to believe that “Brad” was in hospital and in need of money to pay for kidney cancer treatment. She wired 60,000 euros (NZ$110,397) to an account in Turkey.

While Anne had her doubts, she was reassured when the fake star’s “doctor” wrote to her by email and explained that her “husband” was “in a worrying state and is fighting to survive”.

She said: “It cost me to do it, but I thought that I might be saving a man’s life”.

When Anne’s daughter warned her mother that she was being conned, she said: “You’ll see when he’s here in person then you’ll say sorry”.

The penny started to drop in the summer of 2024 when the “real” Brad Pitt was seen with his current partner, Inès de Ramon. 

Even then, the scammers sent a fake news flash that dismissed the reports of his relationship with de Ramon and said he was going out with an unnamed “very special person”.

Then a person posing as an FBI agent contacted her saying he could get her out of the honeytrap for 5,000 euros (NZ$9,198). Again, she wired the money.

By now almost penniless, she sold all her furniture and moved in with a friend, later setting up an online fund asking for help to pay for legal fees in the case.

This is not the first time Brad Pitt’s persona has been used in such scams. Last September, five people were arrested in Spain for defrauding two “vulnerable” and “depressed” women out of 325,000 euros (NZ$597,909) by pretending to be the star in online and WhatsApp exchanges.

First published by NZ Herald, reshared here with permission and edits

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