Published: 1:49pm, 16 Jan 2025Updated: 1:53pm, 16 Jan 2025
A representative for Brad Pitt has warned fans to be wary of impersonation scams after a French woman lost her life savings to fraudsters posing as the Hollywood star.
Advertisement
The 53-year-old victim told France’s TF1 channel she believed she was in a romantic relationship with Pitt, leading her to divorce her husband and transfer €830,000 (US$850,000) to the scammers.
“It’s awful that scammers take advantage of fans’ strong connection with celebrities,” a spokesperson for the Fight Club actor told US outlet Entertainment Weekly on Tuesday.
The spokesperson added it was “an important reminder to not respond to unsolicited online outreach, especially from actors who have no social media presence,” such as Pitt.
The scammers used fake social media and WhatsApp accounts, as well as AI image-creating technology to send the woman what appeared to be selfies and messages from the Oscar-winning actor.
Advertisement
To extract money, they pretended that the 61-year-old actor needed money to pay for kidney treatment, with his bank accounts supposedly frozen because of divorce proceedings with his ex-wife Angelina Jolie.