AND now she's out $800,000.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00A woman in France was tricked into handing over her life savings,
00:03all because a scammer used AI selfies to pretend to be Brad Pitt.
00:13Even worse, the catfisher fooled the woman into a fake year-and-a-half
00:17romantic relationship with the actor, stealing her heart along with $800,000.
00:24The 53-year-old French woman, known only as Anne,
00:27said the relationship began after she received a message from an Instagram account
00:31claiming to be Jane Etta Pitt, the Hollywood star's mother.
00:35The fake profile wrote to Anne that she was exactly the woman her son needed.
00:39The computer-generated Brad Pitt messaged Anne the next day, asking to know more about her.
00:45Over the next year and a half, her fake lover would send her poems, declarations of love,
00:50and eventually asked her to marry him, in an elaborate plot by scammers designed
00:54to get her to hand over money.
00:56There are few men who write to you like that, Anne, an interior designer, told French media.
01:01I loved the man I was talking to. He knew how to talk to women,
01:04and it was very well put together.
01:06Anne herself was in a romantic slump when the AI Brad Pitt entered her life.
01:11She was going through a divorce after 19 years of marriage to her millionaire husband.
01:15The request for money began as the scammer behind the AI claimed to be sending her
01:18luxurious handbags but told her she had to foot the customs bill, the first being $9,000.
01:24Eventually, the AI impersonator claimed he was in hospital with kidney cancer
01:28and needed money for treatment.
01:30The money requests escalated when the fake Pitt told Anne he needed cash to pay for
01:35kidney cancer treatment, sending her multiple AI-generated photos of Brad Pitt in a hospital bed.
01:41I looked those photos up on the internet but couldn't find them,
01:44so I thought that meant he had taken those selfies just for me, she said.
01:48He even told her that Pitt's real-life ex-wife, Angelina Jolie,
01:51had frozen his bank accounts and he had no access to his fortune.
01:55Despite her doubts, Anne was reassured by the fake star's
01:58doctor who emailed her explaining Pitt was dying and fighting to survive,
02:03so she transferred around $800,000 to an account in Turkey.
02:07We're talking about Brad Pitt here. And I was stunned, she said.
02:11At first I thought it was fake, but I didn't really understand what was happening to me.
02:14I thought I was saving a man's life.
02:16When the victim's daughter warned her mother that she was being conned, she said,
02:20You'll see when he's here in person, then you'll say sorry.
02:23However, she finally realized she was being scammed in the summer of 2024,
02:28when the real Pitt was seen with his current girlfriend, Inès de Ramon.
02:31Anne has since told a popular French YouTube show that she was not crazy or a moron.
02:36I just got played, I admit it, and that's why I came forward, because I'm not the only one.
02:42But that didn't stop a flood of social media posts mocking her for the outrageous scam.
02:51The scammers who catfished Anne have yet to be found,
02:54and Anne herself says her life is in ruins.
02:56But at least the real Brad Pitt now knows who she is.
02:59The actor's spokesperson made an official statement about the debacle, saying,
03:02It's awful that scammers take advantage of fans' strong connection with celebrities.
03:07And it's an important reminder to not respond to unsolicited online outreach,
03:11especially from actors who have no social media presence.
03:14For context, Brad has no official social media accounts.