Tough times for a middle-aged French woman who got scammed out of $850K, fooled into thinking she was dating Brad Pitt after being duped by manipulated images of the actor.
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00:00Brad Pitt and his romance with a woman in France,
00:04or at least she thought she was having a romance with Brad Pitt.
00:08It was not the Brad Pitt,
00:10but she has a lot of photos of Brad Pitt
00:14that made her decide that she wanted to help him out financially.
00:19By the way, if you think-
00:20This is a scam victim that-
00:22If you think you've heard this story before,
00:24this is going to go to another level in a second.
00:27So just be prepared.
00:28When you understand what she did.
00:29Now, this woman in France believed that she was
00:33having an online interaction with Brad Pitt.
00:36And the person, the scammer, who was interacting with her
00:40was sending photos of Brad Pitt saying,
00:42I'm in the hospital.
00:44Your name is Anne.
00:46He said, Anne, I love you.
00:48I need help with my medical bills.
00:52And you go, well, if you're the woman-
00:54If you're Brad Pitt-
00:56Well, if you're Brad Pitt, how come you don't have money?
00:57He had an answer for that.
00:58He said, all my money is tied up in this battle,
01:02divorce battle with Angelina.
01:05Where we're, you know, in France,
01:07it's a very well-known thing, obviously,
01:08that there is a castle they co-own there.
01:11This was a big thing in their divorce.
01:13By the way, that's still going on.
01:15The castle part of it.
01:15They're fighting over this winery they've got.
01:17Yes, and so that was the explanation for why he needed money.
01:20Not only did she send him more than $800,000,
01:26but you may go, where did she get that $800,000?
01:29She divorced her husband,
01:32and that is part of the property settlement.
01:35The husband had millions of dollars.
01:38She used her property settlement in the divorce
01:42to send money to fake Brad Pitt.
01:45So what made, when was the jig up here?
01:48When did she go, wait a second.
01:51It was when she saw photos of Brad Pitt
01:55with his, the real Brad Pitt,
01:57with his real-life girlfriend, Inez,
02:00and they were out at an event.
02:02She happened to see these photos and thought,
02:04he looks healthy and not destined.
02:05He's not in the hospital,
02:07and he's with some woman who's not me.
02:09Okay, there's that.
02:10Charles, let's back up for a second,
02:11because you said the scammer sent her photos.
02:14These photos are those cartoonishly AI,
02:16poorly Photoshopped pictures of Brad Pitt
02:18with perfect hair, smiling in a hospital bed.
02:21Who falls for this?
02:22You know, you get these emails and these texts,
02:25and you think, who in the world would fall for that?
02:26Now we know.
02:28Even, yeah, she saw him with another woman.
02:30He's been out in public for months.
02:31Like, he's not in the hospital.
02:33He's not having a kidney transplant or whatever.
02:35It's alarming.
02:35I actually feel very badly for her.
02:37Oh, I feel terrible for her.
02:38Because it's easy for us to look at it and go like,
02:41oh, that's obvious.
02:42You're right, Eric.
02:42I mean, those images are-
02:43It's easy for anybody to look at it and do that.
02:44But- Yeah.
02:46Because also the reason how this all started
02:47was because someone claiming to be Brad Pitt's mother
02:49reached out to her on Facebook,
02:51first alarm right there,
02:52saying, you'd be perfect for my son.
02:55Who believes that? Yeah.
02:56Yeah.
02:57I mean, it's-
02:58I mean, I feel bad for her getting swindled
03:00out of her money, but it's hard to defend.
03:01Swindled out of her money, ends her marriage.
03:04We should say, this is not like an elderly woman.
03:07You hear a lot of times-
03:08She's 53. 53.
03:09She's 53 years old.
03:11That, you would think this is one, you know,
03:12somebody 90 years old is lonely.
03:14No, she's a 53-year-old who was married-
03:17The really sad part, obviously,
03:20she's, this has been reported to the police.
03:22She reported it last year.
03:23And they have no idea where this guy is.
03:24They have not been able to find him.
03:27And I just feel really bad for her.
03:29He's now Robert De Niro.
03:32Probably running that scam with someone.
03:34Hi, this is Enam from Toronto, Canada.
03:36And initially I felt so bad for this woman,
03:40especially because romance scams have become
03:42super prevalent with the technological advances in AI.
03:45But then I saw the images and I was like, girl,
03:47I could put that together on Microsoft Paint,
03:50especially the one for the surgery table.
03:52That almost sent me over the edge.
03:55I need Netflix writers to get in the workplace
03:58and start writing a six series episode show.
04:01And we need the husband being the scammer
04:04because that truly would be unreal.
04:07That theory, by the way, is going around.
04:09And we're not saying it's true, but the theory is crazy
04:12that the husband played Brad Pitt
04:15so that she would give him the money
04:18and that he lost in the divorce
04:19and he would get the money back.
04:21No evidence of that, but it's kind of going around.