AI Brad Pitt dupes French woman out of €830k
135 comments
·January 15, 2025neilv
scarmig
Your timeline there is a bit off.
When she met this Brad Pitt, she was still married. She started sending money to him; got divorced; got a settlement of €775,000; and proceeded to give all of that as well to Brad Pitt.
Still worthy of sympathy, but no one would question mockery of a married man who started chatting with a fake Angelina Jolie on social media, started sending her money, got divorced, and then gave the rest of his assets to her.
HumblyTossed
> ... , but no one would question mockery of a married man who started chatting with a fake Angelina Jolie ...
I would hope that noone would mock this person. Anyone doing this clearly has some issues and should not be mocked but encouraged to seek help.
When did so many people become assholes?
Clubber
I think the issue I have with it is she divorced her (assumedly) loyal husband, then took (assumedly) half his money in court only to give to another man she was planning on cheating with. Then the schadenfreude cherry on top was it was all a scam and she was too gullible or stupid to know. She deserves to be mocked. If nothing else for what she did to her family.
swatcoder
Claiming that some stranger "has issues" and encouraging them to "get help" is just denigrating them instead of mocking their behavior.
We don't know anything about this person besides what facts have come up in the story, and none of us are directly engaging with them anyway.
It's much less presumptive and much more socially constructive to directly critique their behavior for being plainly misguided, so that others can learn from it, than it is to make any kind of judgment about the person themselves.
macspoofing
Agreed. Most of these scams entail an immoral dimension on the part of the victim. After all, it's not great that for helping out bail out an embattled Nigerian prince, that the victim would take an exorbitant fee (which was probably stolen from Nigerian tax payers). Even with that, those victims, just like the woman in this story, deserve a level of empathy. In this case, €830k is a lifetime of savings for most people and these guys will move on and do the same to someone else.
caeril
Really? Let's hypothesize that some rando on the internet contacted you and said he was Jensen Huang, and he offered to sell his NVDA stock to you at $50/sh (currently trading at $135). Looking for a quick flip, you wire your family's entire savings to a random account number he sends you - or, even better, to some BTC address.
You later find out, SHOCKINGLY, that this rando is not actually Jensen Huang. You would, rightly, be a fair target of mocking for your S-tier gullibility.
This isn't "I fell for a well-designed phishing scam"-tier, or "SBF promised me 9% yields"-tier. This is a whole other level that is rightfully deserving of mockery.
The fact she wrecked her marriage in the process is just the cherry on top.
beretguy
How why would anybody give money to Brad Pitt? Dude's rich enough already.
scarmig
There are always explanations for why the invented persona needs cash, and the scammer also presents sophisticated evidence chains for it. Most people are susceptible to it; see the massive success of spear phishing in corporate environments.
hleszek
He pretended he was sick and his money was frozen because of his divorce and needed a lot of money for expensive operations which failed one after another.
squarefoot
As would be Nigerian princes. Seems just a variation of the same old scam.
pimlottc
That’s the whole point. Of course he’s rich, there’s just this thing with the bank right now, but this other bill is due immediately, so he just needs a loan, but don’t worry, he’ll pay you back, I mean he’s Brad Pitt, everyone knows he’s loaded, it’s not like some bum asking you for change…
johnisgood
Which makes her more of a ...?
glenneroo
As posted elsewhere in this thread, Find My Scanner did some research[0] and the "Victim was in the midst of a divorce before being contacted by scammer." Also relevant, "Victim was groomed for months and months by scammer passing themselves as Pitt's mother, agent, etc, in addition to Pitt himself, using American phone numbers, fake articles, etc."
[0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/UpliftingNews/comments/1i1uvjq/scam...
jasonm23
Also all the pictures are bad photoshopped images, that I've seen, no AI images.
seydor
She was paying for his divorce with jolie. She got 770k euros from her own divorce. Not exactly a poor person
A fool and her money are easily parted. You can have sympathy for her while admitting that she s a fool. Not even the first or second one.
Moral of the story is "don't be a fool" because there is no chance that scammers will disappeared
chongli
No, the moral of the story is that technology is an exponentially-growing force multiplier for scammers.
Back in the hunter-gatherer days, you could be a fool and still survive by relying on your kinship group to protect you and take care of you. They would find ways to let you contribute to the group without needing to be highly intelligent and skillful.
Now we are living in a techno-jungle swarming with parasites and predators. Let your guard down for even a moment and you could lose everything. Oh, and when the cognitive decline that comes with age catches up to you? You might as well walk out onto the virtual ice floe and unplug yourself from the internet.
kiba
Probably true that we are all vulnerable to scams in one way or another, especially as we age. Some of us has more mockable vulnerability, but one way or another it's just a bug in human software.
Even if we aren't vulnerable to scams, we may be vulnerable to falling for false rumors, fake news, myths, or just things that sounds true but turn out to be false.
"Don't be a fool" isn't really much of a lesson, but it is useful to know there are fake Brad Pitt milling around potentially preying on vulnerable women.
Gualdrapo
I don't see how that validates the response of the public mocking and harassing them.
paul7986
Unfortunately for her the mocking is to teach other fools not to be one!
locallost
Everyone is a fool in some aspect of life. This person was bad with money and fraud, but maybe she is or was an extremely talented artist. Maybe you understand money and fraud, but are otherwise talentless. Neither of you are fools.
throwawaysleep
Wrecking your life is substantially worse than not being a good artist.
fn-mote
The lack of morality in the parent post discourages me.
fooker
> She got 770k euros from her own divorce.
The ex husband must be laughing his ass off at this!
ttoinou
She is creating a bad buzz to get helped from detectives, lawyers, media, the public etc. The price she pays is being mocked at, yes
extr
Lol this article doesn't even include the best part which were the pictures the scammer was sending. It's like 10 low res photos of Brad Pitt in a hospital bed, I think some of them lifted from movies. I don't even think AI really played an important role here.
wnevets
calling that AI is very generous.
nuancebydefault
It's the sad part, not the "best"
exogeny
What's the "best part" of someone with both HIV and cancer who is going through a divorce getting robbed out of every cent to their name and then mocked on the Internet?
Yeah, hilarious. Ell oh ell oh ell.
extr
It's possible for things to be both sad and funny from different perspectives. Hope that helps.
ttoinou
We french are specialists of the tragi-comique
exogeny
Don't backtrack now. It's only funny to you because you don't know her. I don't find everyday sociopathy as amusing myself.
ukd1
This isn't the timeline. She decided to get divorced midway through this scam, and used the proceeds to help Brad.
whycome
Which part is the best part then?
jlarocco
The best part is that there are people so gullible to fall for things like this.
These are the people clicking internet advertisements and funding the web.
llamaimperative
Maybe a radical perspective here, but I'd suggest that even dumbasses have a right to live with dignity and not get scammed of their belongings.
Even the biggest dumbass on the planet, in fact, deserves this.
null
xtiansimon
Scam could have been done with Photoshop.
Meh. The only thing to make AI interesting was IF some box in a university basement decided to scam a rando with BrandPit while sorting email traffic.
Balgair
I'll mention something that we all probably know: The crumminess is the point.
Anyone with any intelligence would pass over this as a scam. The scammers don't want someone with any intelligence. Hence, the more obviously that it's a scam, the better. Same thing with those Nigerian Prince email scams being garbage English. It's a crude, but effective, filter.
daveguy
The lack of empathy of the responses here saddens me. I sincerely hope none of your parents or grandparents are scammed. And I hope you are all educating your loved ones on the threat of scams in this new era when AI fakes are so easy and realistic.
f1shy
Mmm more your ex wife… she was 53, which is pretty much in the age range of HN
daveguy
Yeah, she's not the best poster-girl for the problem, apparently getting a divorce for her scammer, and having a daughter who warned her after she was duped (much more difficult to accept due to sunk cost and embarrassment).
But her relative age just highlights how you don't have to be 95 to fall for these scams when fakes are getting so good. I should have said, I hope you are warning and educating your parents, grandparents, spouses, children.
Please inform your loved ones why it's important to never trust unsolicited communication.
ttoinou
Criticising, being realistic, seeing through lies and being empathic are not exclusive. We can do all of those things at the same time.
The fakes were not realistic here, it didnt need any AI and most people who are mocking her here read more about the topic than you apparently
null
Agree2468
I've thought about this and probably should, especially since my parents got divorced recently. But I haven't really thought of a way to bring it up tactfully without being patronizing. Any ideas?
daveguy
My parents responded well starting from a discussion of "Have you seen how good AI imitations are these days? Voice, images, even video..."
I don't think safety rules themselves are patronizing, especially considering how good the tech is: "Never trust a conversation you didn't initiate no matter who the other party claims to be or how good, bad, or urgent it sounds." Generally this doesn't count known communications with friends and family through known channels. It would take a lot more security failures to mistrust known good channels (but it can still happen! eg spoofed caller ID).
Another rule of thumb is to ask yourself, "How would I go about addressing this directly if I hadn't been contacted about it." E.g. the website, app, support line from the main site, etc. Always best to go to known channels, especially for anything financial. Even better not to even answer/respond to unknown contacts if you can avoid it. (Not always possible with work / kids school / etc.)
I agree, I wouldn't use this article as an example, because it does include a lot of poor judgement along the way. But there are plenty of examples of how good AI imitation has become lately.
2OEH8eoCRo0
They lack empathy because doing something about this would likely harm their salary or create regulation.
wruza
"I understand the comic effect but we're talking about a woman in her 50s who got conned by deepfakes and AI which your parents and grandparents would be incapable to spot," one popular post on X read.
This ignores the fact that her daughter tried to explain it to her for over a year.
To me it seriously raises a question, what should we do with or think about people who deemed capable and are 50+ “YoE” but still unable to real life or a little bit of logic, basically.
barbazoo
Be that as it may but we're not making that person "smarter" by shitting on them. Many people just aren't very "smart" or whatever you want to call it but it's people that are taking advantage of them that are at fault here. If this was someone with a cognitive disability we wouldn't make fun of it (I hope) and the line is sometimes blurry.
wruza
That is my question, essentially. Are cases like this (a year of repeating illusion impenetrable by relatives) a naive mistake or an undiagnosed cognitive disorder? Shouldn't people like her be at least partially taken care of?
My buddy had a similar case with his sister. She would take a loan, be late on payments and then give loan sharks anything they asked for, without any checks and balances. Could take family money, etc, only to get rid of them temporarily. She was clearly unwell and so impassable that the whole family had to part with her (legally splitting apartments and even taking a kid).
I'm not suggesting anything here, just thinking about it. Probably nothing generic enough could help here at all.
deadbabe
Consider that if someone secretly had our modern AI tech 10-15 years ago, they could have easily scammed a lot of people out of money in romance scams.
Now consider that the future isn’t equally distributed and some people are literally still living at the level of 10-15 years ago. Wow, there is a lot of opportunity for scammers out there, though the window will be closing every year as the world catches up, and no one will trust images, videos and voices anymore.
throwawaysleep
If you look at the images from this case, they weren't AI. They could have been done in Microsoft Paint.
wruza
Photoshop existed 10-15 years ago. TFA has no photos but I’m pretty sure even my paint.net imaging skills would be enough to trick such irrational person.
the world catches up, and no one will trust images, videos and voices anymore
The person in spotlight didn’t trust her daughter who tried to “catch her up” for a year. This is not the case of a single person with no source of critical thinking.
bilbo0s
Not even scammers.
This is essentially the future of AI models that emulate male sex workers. The "romance scam" is basically what they'll do. Only they will dispense with the Brad Pitt likenesses, because they will have enough information to come up with AI faces and bodies meticulously calculated to maximally interest the, um, "client".
Oh, and they will be legal.
moi2388
“She has since told a popular French YouTube show that she was not "crazy or a moron"
She might indeed not be crazy..
ternnoburn
Nor a moron.
Solitary people who are groomed and love bombed aren't idiots, they are victims. Abuse of this type works so often because people have weakened defenses due to other events in their life. We're hard wired as a species to value social cohesion and social approvals.
fkyoureadthedoc
> Anne's daughter, now 22, told TF1 she tried to "get her mother to see reason" for over a year but that her mother was too excited. "It hurt to see how naive she was being," she said.
At least a little bit moron, also was married while this was ongoing
ternnoburn
I don't think you realize just how extensively abuse can break your brain.
Edit: I'm talking about emotional and psychological abuse. Separating you from people who care for you, gaslighting you, building dependency, etc are all scamming tactics that are absolutely psychological and emotional abuse.
ttoinou
Should society remove citizen’s rights to those helpless people then ? Who should watch over them and be responsible for their acts ?
bhandziuk
This isn't a "rights" issue. It's taking a step back and seeing that what happened to her could, to a degree, happen to any of us and she's not deserving of mockery.
blargey
We deny people's natural right to be defrauded by outlawing fraud, yes.
dvngnt_
sending someone you never met 700k is dumb. she can be a victim too. and you said 'break your brain' which only proves that she wasn't dealing with a full deck.
paxys
The article is getting clicks because of "AI" in the title but this is a very generic scam. There's no part of it that wasn't done before AI a million times.
jcarrano
It would make for an interesting plot twist if her ex was behind the scam.
racl101
Why would anyone give a celeb money? Especially a high profile one like Brad Pitt.
Like I get if you believed that Josh Hartnett or Pauly Shore is asking you for money. They haven't worked much in the last decade.
But Brad Pitt? That's almost as bad as Ryan Reynolds or Kevin Hart asking you for money cause they're in so many movies.
whycome
As someone who is actually friends with Brad Pitt on Facebook and have given him money, it’s because he wants to know that he’s still a normal person. He wants to connect with real people. He’s tired of the Hollywood world. And he also says he lost lots of his money in the fires. And Jennifer Anniston took all his money. But he’s also too ashamed to let others know. He only trusts that information to a real person not tied to Hollywood.
brabel
We should start a Fundme campaign to help poor Brad!
racl101
> And Jennifer Anniston took all his money.
wait what? If anything I expect Angelina to take his money but not so much that he would be broke.
Guess I know Jack.
whbrown
> As someone who is actually friends with Brad Pitt on Facebook and have given him money
Are you telling us you fell for the same pig butchering scam?
whycome
I thought my over-the-top response made it clear it was satire and a comment on the absurdity of someone thinking they're "actually friends with Brad Pitt and he needs my money"
null
thomasmg
The probability that any person would give Brad Pitt money is nearly zero. But obviously it is not zero! We already know that some people believe weird things.
The problem (for the scammer) is to find out, efficiently, _who_ would give (a lot of) money. In the past, they sent email that had typos - I think on purpose: the probability that someone would send money is higher if he doesn't detect that.
With AI, this got _much_ easier, and scales much better: you can generate very convincing text, images, videos and interact with many, many potential victims. The story itself, it seems, doesn't need to be too convincing.
afh1
She got the money from a divorce. What comes easy goes easy. I feel bad for the ex-husband.
bilbo0s
Huh?
Money acquired via divorce is "easy"?
spidersenses
I'd assume it's somewhat easier this way than building a net-worth of €830k through working long hours for decades.
tartoran
> She got the money from a divorce. What comes easy goes easy. I feel bad for the ex-husband.
Do you know the full story? Maybe the couple worked together to make a larger amount and then split it upon divorce. Making judgements like this is a problem IMO.
iteratethis
It's in the story. She married a wealthy real estate developer. Dumped her husband, took his money, and sent it to "Brad Pitt".
Now claiming to have done this to save his life but surely she wouldn't sent this money to random bloke "Tim Johnson".
Gvaskas
Making endless excuses to deny women agency and accountability is a far larger problem IMO
blooalien
I was so proud of my 63 year old mother the day she told me about a slightly similar scam (involving "borrowed" Antonio Banderas photos) that she not only did not fall for, but actually somehow managed to trace the scammer down (through some Google reverse image searching and other Internet "sleuthery" that I would not have imagined her doing on her own). Not only that but she then proceeded to send her conclusions (that it was some French scammer scum and his wife perpetrating all this, and she had proof of who it was) to her little circle of online "friends" that were actually in the act of falling for the scam and sending gifts, money, and whatnot to this dirtbag French scammer couple. Why, I'll never know... Who sends money and gifts to online strangers pretending to be celebrities? Hell, who sends gifts to random celebrities for that matter? Worst part of this story is that most of the "old biddies" actually ridiculed my mother and called her "paranoid" and proceeded to happily get scammed, thinking they were actually conversing online with Antonio himself... Some people are just bound and determined to stay stupid, I guess. Sadly, "A.I." audio/image/video generation has not made this situation any better these days.
Summary: First, criminals preying upon someone apparently vulnerable (after cancer, divorce, and who knows what else). Then, as if that wasn't more than enough for one person, a bunch of Internet people, and even some brand marketers, publicly mocking and harassing the victim.