A French woman who revealed on TV how she had lost her life savings to scammers posing as Brad Pitt has faced a wave of online harassment and mockery, leading the interview to be withdrawn on Tuesday.
The woman, named as Anne, told the Seven to Eight program on the TF1 channel how she had believed she was in a romantic relationship with the Hollywood star, leading her to divorce her husband and transfer 830,000 euros (US$855,259).
The scammers used fake social media and WhatsApp accounts, as well as artificial intelligence image-creating technology to send Anne selfies and other messages from Pitt.
Photo: EPA-EFE
To extract money, they pretended that the 61-year-old actor needed money to pay for kidney treatment, with his bank accounts frozen because of divorce proceedings with his ex-wife, Angelina Jolie.
Anne, an interior decorator in her 50s with mental health problems, spent a year and a half believing she was communicating with Pitt and only realized she had been scammed when news emerged of Pitt’s real-life relationship with girlfriend Ines de Ramon.
“The story broadcast this Sunday has resulted in a wave of harassment against the witness,” TF1 presenter Harry Roselmack wrote on his X account. “For the protection of victims, we have decided to withdraw it from our platforms.”
The channel at the time of its broadcast said that Anne has had severe depression and was hospitalized for treatment.
The story and subsequent media coverage went viral on Monday.
Toulouse soccer club tweeted that “Brad told us that he would be at the stadium on Wednesday” for the team’s next match, before withdrawing the message and posting an apology.
Netflix France also posted on social media promoting “four films to see with Brad Pitt (really) for free,” while other media commentators made fun of Anne’s gullibility.
She was first contacted by a woman posing as Pitt’s mother shortly after she began using Instagram for the first time while on a ski trip with her family in France.
“I ask myself why they chose me to do such harm like this,” she told TF1. “I’ve never harmed anyone. These people deserve hell.”
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
RSS