
A French woman was duped into paying 800,000 euros by a scammer using images from the hospital and smooth chats. The suspect messaged her on Instagram and persuaded her to aid him with medical care because his bank accounts had been frozen due to an ongoing divorce battle with actress Angelina Jolie.
Anne, 53, revealed on Sunday evening's "Sept a huit" show on local television station TF1 that she received a message from an account acting as the actor's mother, Jane Etta Pitt, while on a ski holiday to Tignes. A day later, an account posing as the actor contacted her, and the two began communicating and eventually became friends.
Anne, who was married to a millionaire but going through a difficult time, continued to receive poems and declarations of love from the bogus account because she believed she was in a long-distance relationship with Mr Pitt. "There are very few men who write such things. "I liked the man I was talking to, and he knew how to talk to women," she explained.
While he constantly avoided her calls, he used AI-generated films and graphics to persuade Anne of his feelings for her. At the same moment, he asked her to marry him. He also claimed to have given her a nice gift and requested her to pay 9,000 euros, but she never received it, according to BFMTV.
Anne's divorce was finalized shortly thereafter, and she was awarded 775,000 euros in compensation. He subsequently released more doctored videos and photographs, claiming that he was about to undergo kidney surgery and had already been admitted to the hospital.
The hoax was discovered in 2024 when Anne saw stories of Brad Pitt's romance with jewelry designer Ines De Ramon. She was then admitted to the hospital for the treatment of acute depression.
A similar scam was revealed in September last year when Spanish police detained five persons accused of defrauding two ladies of 325,000 euros by impersonating Brad Pitt through Internet and WhatsApp communications. The suspects contacted the women on an Oscar-winning actor's fan website, which led them to believe "they had a sentimental relationship with him," according to a statement from Spain's Guardia Civil. Posing as Pitt, the gang members allegedly recommended to the women that they invest in a variety of non-existent enterprises.
ALSO READ: Social media erupts with ’Stare at wife’ memes after L&T chairman's 90-hour workweek remark