A French interior designer lost more than £700,000 in a 14-month romance scam by fraudsters posing as Brad Pitt, later traced to suspects in Nigeria.
A French interior designer has revealed how she was duped out of more than £700,000 by online scammers posing as Hollywood actor Brad Pitt. In her new book, Je ne serai plus une proie (“I Will No Longer Be a Prey”), Anne Deneuchatel recounts how she was seduced, manipulated and defrauded over 14 months, from April 2023 to June 2024.
Police investigations traced the perpetrators to three men living in a villa in Nigeria, highlighting the continued global reach of so-called “Yahoo Yahoo” cybercriminals. Deneuchatel said she was emotionally vulnerable due to an unhappy marriage and became “addicted” to the fake Pitt’s romantic messages, poems and even a marriage proposal.
The scammers sent AI-generated hospital photos, claiming the star was battling kidney cancer. She finally reported the case when they demanded private jet fees. “My divorce is the only positive thing that came out of this,” she wrote, warning others of increasingly sophisticated AI-driven scams.