8 ms·
AI Brad Pitt dupes French woman out of €830k
- cowmix 2y agoIt is always shocking to me that someone with those kinds of resources can get duped like that -- with little checks and balances.
- markus_zhang 2y agoThey desperately need some comfort or excitement and the scammer provided it to her. Sad.
- thiscatis 2y agoFrom Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/UpliftingNews/comments/1i1uvjq/scammer_in_viral_fake_brad_pitt_fraud_that_conned/ https://www.reddit.com/r/UpliftingNews/comments/1i1uvjq/scam... French start up Find My Scammer carried out the investigation pro bono as the victim has literally no money left in her account, not even a cent. Victim had no experience whatsoever with social media before creating an Instagram account in 2023 to share holiday pictures. Victim was targeted after liking pictures related to Brad Pitt on Instagram. Victim was in the midst of a divorce before being contacted by scammer. 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. Victim had no knowledge of technologies such as deepfake. Victim was lulled into a sense of security as grooming lasted for many months before she was asked to send money for the first time, thinking that such a scam would be more immediate. Victim has HIV and cancer, tried to end her life three times. French TV program which revealed the story accused of manipulating the subject matter and misrepresent facts to encourage ridicule against victim, has been pulled off all platforms. Scammer found in Benin, was tricked into clicking a link which gave start up full access to his computer, phone, information, living address, etc. Crypto wallet where the stolen money is stored found. All information in the hands of authorities investigating the crime. Scammer has over 30 victims. Also poses as fake Keanu Reeves.
- doctoboggan 2y ago> Crypto wallet where the stolen money is stored found. All information in the hands of authorities investigating the crime. This is great news, and I hope Anne and the other victims can see at least some of their money returned.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- sebdufbeau 2y agoAn important point in the story: while she was contacted by the scammers when she was still married, it is after the divorce that she received most of the money that was eventually scammed - over €700k
- anon22981 2y agoDo such links really work so that it’s enough to load the page on your browser and you are done?
- _ink_ 2y agoDepends. Mostly not. But Pegasus spy software was put on iPhones via silent SMS. So those targets didn't even need to click a link. All they really had to do was owning an iPhone. And made their number known.
- spiderfarmer 2y agoMy grandpa has a saying that translates to something: "The money bag never hangs in front of the same house for more than three generations". This is just one of the reasons why.
- markus_zhang 2y agoYep, the Chinese has exactly the same saying -- even the same number of generations. I hope she gets some $$ back though.
- ternnoburn 2y ago"This" -- do you mean theft and abuse are the reasons why? Or debilitating illness (HIV/Cancer).
- throwawaysleep 2y agoShe was tricked. The money wasn't physically taken. She lost the money because, unlike she claims, she is indeed a moron.
- spidersenses 2y agoIt's not an uncommon expression on managing generational wealth. I've frequently encountered it as: "The first generation makes it, the second generation spends it, and the third generation blows it."
- poisonborz 2y agoLet's just ignore thousands of European noble families and wealthy industrial tycoon dynasties.
- f1shy 2y agoAny examples? I’m not really aware.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- PaulHoule 2y agoLove is blind.
- f1shy 2y agoIn Spanish when somebody says love is blind, another will quickly add “and deaf and stupid/idiot“
- jokethrowaway 2y agoShe didn't earn that money. The bigger scam was acted against the wealthy entrepreneur who saw a big chunk of his money going to his ex-wife. Divorce laws are ridiculous, you are better off not getting married and using a surrogate mother.
- ttoinou 2y agoTo be fair there are different ways to get married in france and some contracts allow for separation of wealth, sort of
- ralfd 2y agoHer daughter should have done more to safe her own inheritance. Like, if you safe 800K Dollar in convincing your mother she is not romanced by Brad Pitt, I would handle that as a full time job! That said this is increasingly common and especially elder people can be easily scammed with AI. https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/1df081i/my_mother_and_elon_musk/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/1df081i/my_mother_an... > Reading through all of this, apparently lots of elderly people having "relationships" with celebrities. Adding my mother to the mix. She's been corresponding with "Elon Musk" for at least six months. She's not even that old, she's only 67...but extremely gullible. https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/15sls1v/my_dad_thinks_elon_musk_is_texting_him_and_has/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/15sls1v/my_dad_think... > My Dad thinks Elon Musk is texting him and has lost over $10K - Help! I don’t know how we can deal with that in the future. Financial regulation to make it easier that people at risk have more banking safe guards and their children/spouses can supervise accounts better? Or hope it fixes itself when the 4Chan generation who grew up with Nigerian prince scams replaces boomers?
- moi2388 2y ago“She has since told a popular French YouTube show that she was not "crazy or a moron" She might indeed not be crazy..
- ternnoburn 2y agoNor 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.
- ttoinou 2y agoShould society remove citizen’s rights to those helpless people then ? Who should watch over them and be responsible for their acts ?
- fkyoureadthedoc 2y ago> 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
- neilv 2y agoSummary: 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.
- seydor 2y agoShe 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
- fooker 2y ago> She got 770k euros from her own divorce. The ex husband must be laughing his ass off at this!
- Gualdrapo 2y agoI don't see how that validates the response of the public mocking and harassing them.
- paul7986 2y agoUnfortunately for her the mocking is to teach other fools not to be one!
- johndevor 2y agoSome people are the shipwrecks on the rocks that help others navigate.
- llamaimperative 2y agoYeah very commonly people say, "I have identified this as a scam but given that other victims weren't mocked relentlessly enough, I shall part with my money." /s
- extr 2y agoLol 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. Edit: Here https://x.com/PopBase/status/1879197931129163782 https://x.com/PopBase/status/1879197931129163782
- exogeny 2y agoWhat'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 2y agoIt's possible for things to be both sad and funny from different perspectives. Hope that helps.
- ttoinou 2y agoWe french are specialists of the tragi-comique
- exogeny 2y agoDon't backtrack now. It's only funny to you because you don't know her. I don't find everyday sociopathy as amusing myself.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- extr 2y agoYeah, so what? That's how a lot of life works. If I had to practice maximal empathy and view every misfortune I hear about through the lens of "Oh my god, what if it happened to me!" I would be catatonically depressed and wouldn't be able to function. It's too bad for this lady. I wouldn't laugh in her face about it of course. But come on, the pictures are funny. It's okay to find humor in dark things. I try to find humor in my own misfortunes as well. That's life.
- exogeny 2y agoIt's amazing and pathetic to me that the overriding sentiment here is mocking the woman for being duped. Just absolute zero empathy.
- rtsil 2y agoSome people feel good when someone else appears stupider. They'd like to think that they would be smarter in the same situation, and mocking the weak is deeply ingrained in our collective psyche. Considering all the stories of hackers caught for poor opsec hygiene, as well as the perpetrator of this case who was tricked into clicking a malware link himself, and the fact that this is a very long and extremely targeted ops, I'm not so sure such confidence is warranted. And she's a woman who got a fortune from a divorce. That probably triggered some as well.
- seydor 2y agoI am beginning to doubt my five Instagram girlfriends
- f1shy 2y ago[flagged]
- deadbabe 2y agoConsider 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 2y agoIf you look at the images from this case, they weren't AI. They could have been done in Microsoft Paint.
- bilbo0s 2y agoNot 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.
- wruza 2y agoPhotoshop 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.
- afh1 2y agoShe got the money from a divorce. What comes easy goes easy. I feel bad for the ex-husband.
- bilbo0s 2y agoHuh? Money acquired via divorce is "easy"?
- spidersenses 2y agoI'd assume it's somewhat easier this way than building a net-worth of €830k through working long hours for decades.
- frr149 2y agoMaybe the scammer was the ex husband.
- ttoinou 2y agoThat’d be a great plot twist
- tartoran 2y ago> 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 2y agoIt'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 2y agoMaking endless excuses to deny women agency and accountability is a far larger problem IMO
- wruza 2y ago"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 2y agoBe 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 2y agoThat 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.
- jcarrano 2y agoIt would make for an interesting plot twist if her ex was behind the scam.
- daveguy 2y agoThe 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.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoThey lack empathy because doing something about this would likely harm their salary or create regulation.
- f1shy 2y agoMmm more your ex wife… she was 53, which is pretty much in the age range of HN
- daveguy 2y agoYeah, 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 2y agoCriticising, 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
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Agree2468 2y agoI'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?
- f1shy 2y agoUnbelievable history. We are not talking about an old lady, 95 yo. She is 53, wealthy. While money does not make you intelligent, probably gives access to more or less good information, social relations. I literally think this history is not believable. Also that she happens to be the 2 worse diseases in popular knowledge. I don’t know… seems contrived.
- pizzuh 2y agoThis is heartbreaking
- racl101 2y agoWhy 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.
- thomasmg 2y agoThe 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.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- whycome 2y agoAs 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.
- paxys 2y agoThe 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.
- blooalien 2y agoI 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.
- BrandoElFollito 2y agoA lot of the comments here are really mean to that woman, for talking to Brad Pitt. Ha ha ha. At least he exists in real life, not like some entity they themselves may be talking to on Friday, Saturday or Sunday (or another day where communication with deities is the clearest).