Woman scammed out of £700,000 after believing she was dating Brad Pitt

She thought she was sending money to help the actor with hospital treatment

Anne, a 53-year-old from France, was contacted on social media by a scammer who was posing as Pitt's mother.

The next day, she was sent a message from a separate account pretending to be the Fight Club star. The scammers convinced Anne that Pitt had cancer and needed money to help with the treatment.

Anne ended up sending €830,000 (£697,000) to the scammers.

She received the first message from an account posing as Pitt in February 2023. The Metro reports that the message read: "Hello Anne, my mother told me a lot about you. I would like to know more."

Speaking to French channel TF1, Anne explained that she was going through a difficult moment with her millionaire husband at the time and felt she could confide in the person.

She said: "In fact, we're talking about Brad Pitt, I'm falling from the clouds. At first, I tell myself it's fake, but I don't really understand what's happening to me. After that, we will contact each other every day and we become friends.

"There are so few men who write you this kind of thing. I liked the man I was talking to. He knew how to talk to women, it was always very well done."

The scammers told Anne that they couldn't afford funds for "cancer treatment" because of their divorce from Angelina Jolie, which at the time was still ongoing.

Anne received AI-generated images claiming to show Pitt in hospital holding up messages written on card.

Whenever Anne asked to speak over the phone with him, the account would always say they were busy.

The woman eventually agreed to marry the person running the account after she received €775,000 (£652,310) from divorcing her husband, BFM TV reports.

The fake Brad Pitt promised Anne they were buying her luxury gifts, but convinced her to send another €9,000 to cover a supposed customs fee.

It was only when Anne saw pictures of the real-life Pitt in public with his new girlfriend that she started to get suspicious about the account she was talking to.

Eventually, she decided to take the case investigators last summer, and it wasn't long before the awful truth came to light.

Since the investigation into then scam was opened, Anne has been diagnosed with severe depression and has been hospitalised at a specialist clinic.