A French woman who was conned out of €830,000 (£700,000; $850,000) by conmen posing as actor Brad Pitt has faced a barrage of ridicule, prompting French broadcaster TF1 to pull a program about her.
The primetime program, which aired on Sunday, drew national attention to interior designer Anne, 53, who thought she was in a relationship with Pitt for a year and a half.
She has since told a popular French YouTube show that she wasn’t “crazy or stupid”: “I was just played, I admit it, and that’s why I came forward, because I’m not the only one.”
A representative for Pitt told US media outlet Entertainment Weekly that it was “terrifying that scammers are taking advantage of the strong connection fans have with celebrities” and that people should not respond to unsolicited online contact “especially from actors who have no presence on social media”.
Hundreds of social media users mocked Anne, who the program said had lost her life savings and tried to take her own life three times since the hoax came to light.
Netflix France published a post on X advertising “four movies with Brad Pitt (actually)”, while, in a now-deleted post, Toulouse FC said: “Hi Anne, Brad told us he would be at the stadium on Wednesday .. and you?”
The club has since apologized for the post.
On Tuesday, TF1 said it had pulled the segment on Anne after her testimony sparked “a wave of harassment” – although the program can still be found online.
In the report, Anne said her ordeal began when she downloaded Instagram in February 2023, when she was still married to a wealthy entrepreneur.
She was immediately contacted by someone who said they were Pitt’s mother, Jane Etta, who told Anne her son “needed a woman like her”.
Someone claiming to be Pitt contacted him the next day, which set off alarm bells for Anne. “But as someone who’s not very used to social media, I didn’t know what was happening to me,” she said.
At one point, Brad Pitt said he tried to send her lavish gifts but was unable to clear customs on them as his bank accounts were frozen. due to divorce proceedings with actress Angelina Jolieprompting Anne to transfer €9,000 to the fraudsters.
“Like a fool I paid… Every time I doubted him, he managed to dispel my doubts,” she said.
Demands for money escalated when fake Pitt told Anne he needed money to pay for kidney cancer treatment, sending her multiple AI-generated photos of Brad Pitt in a hospital bed. “I looked for those pictures on the internet but I couldn’t find them, so I thought it meant he took those selfies just for me,” she said.
Meanwhile, Anne and her husband divorced and she was awarded €775,000 – all of which went to the fraudsters.
“I told myself I was probably saving a man’s life,” said Anne, who is herself in remission from cancer.
Anne’s daughter, now 22, told TF1 that she tried to “make her mother see reason” for more than a year, but her mother was too emotional. “It pains me to see how naive she was,” she said.
When images surfaced in gossip magazines showing the real Brad Pitt with his new girlfriend Ines de Ramon, arousing Anne’s suspicions, scammers sent her a fake news report in which the AI-generated anchor spoke about “Pitt’s exclusive relationship with a special individual . . . who goes by the name of Anne.”
The video comforted Anne for a short while, but when the real Brad Pitt and Ines de Ramon made their relationship official in June 2024, Anne decided to end things.
After scammers tried to get more money from her under the guise of “FBI Special Agent John Smith,” Anne contacted the police. An investigation is now underway.
The TF1 program said the events left Anne broken and that she has tried to end her life three times.
“Why was I chosen to be hurt like this?” said a tearful Ana. “These people deserve hell. We have to find those crooks, please – please help me find them.”
But in the YouTube interview on Tuesday, Anne hit back at TF1, saying she had left out details about her repeated doubts about whether she was talking to the real Brad Pitt, and added that anyone could have fallen for the scam if it was said “words you have never heard from your husband”.
Anne said she was now living with a friend: “My whole life is a little room with a few boxes. That’s all I have left.”
While many netizens mocked Anne, some took her side.
“I understand the comedic effect, but we’re talking about a woman in her 50s who was duped by deepfakes and AI that your parents and grandparents wouldn’t be able to tell,” he wrote a popular post on X.
An op-ed in the newspaper Libération said Anne was a “whistleblower”: “Life today is paved with cybernetic traps… and the advancement of AI will only worsen this scenario.”
