Anne is 53 years old, an interior designer, and lives in France. In February 2023, she joined Instagram to share photos from a skiing trip in the Alps. Shortly afterward, someone claiming to be Brad Pitt’s mother wrote to her that her son “needed someone like me”.
From then on, everything was a carefully laid trap. For more than a year, the scammers sent her personalized photos and messages generated with artificial intelligence. They asked her for money for the actor’s supposed kidney treatment and explained that he couldn’t access his accounts because of his divorce from Angelina Jolie. A fake doctor finally convinced her that “Brad” was really suffering. She sent 830.000 euros, around 855.000 dollars, to a bank account in Turkey. According to TF1, Anne has mental health problems, and she left her husband while the deception continued.
She realized the truth when she saw news about Pitt’s real girlfriend, Ines de Ramon. She filed a police complaint and decided to tell her story on TF1’s “Sept à huit” program. What she got was a wave of memes, ridicule, and cyberbullying. Host Harry Roselmack explained on X that, to protect victims, the interview was being removed from the channel’s platforms. When did we start laughing at someone who has already lost everything?
