A French woman, identified by French broadcaster TF1 as Anne, claims to have lost her life savings to Nigerian scammers pretending to be A-list American Actor, Brad Pitt.
The fraudsters used AI-generated photos to obtain $850,000 (approximately FCFA 536,513,420) from the woman.
Anne, 53, said an unknown individual posing as Brad Pitt’s mother first targeted her on Instagram after she shared pictures of herself skiing in the resorts of Tignes.
The unknown individual tricked her by using the AI-generated pictures of Brad Pitt declaring love to her and even promising her marriage.
It made her believe she was in a romantic relationship with the 61-year-old Hollywood star.
In an emotional interview on TF1, she described how the scammers manipulated her into believing the well-elaborated lie.
“There are few men who write to you like that. I loved the man I was talking to. He knew how to talk to women and it was very well put together,” she told the French broadcaster.
“We are talking about Brad Pitt here and I was stunned. At first I thought it was fake, but I didn’t understand what was happening to me,” she added.
Anne reportedly divorced her wealthy husband who was 19 years older than her because of the marriage promise from “Brad Pitt”.
Her daughter had warned her that it was fake.
At first, Anne sent money for customs fees on luxury handbags the fake Pitt had supposedly promised her, but the scheme escalated when the scammers later sent her images of Brad Pitt in a hospital bed claiming that Brad Pitt needed money urgently to pay for kidney treatment.
They alleged that his bank account had been frozen due to ongoing divorce proceedings with his ex-wife Angelina Jolie.
She finally knew the truth, when images spotted Brad Pitt at a public place with his partner Ines de Ramon. But it was already too late for Anne as she had already handed over hundreds of thousands to the scammers.
Anne’s lawyer, Laurene Hanna, said her client lost $850,000 to the scammers.
Her lawyer wrote on X that she has also been in touch with Marwan Ouarab, the founder of the FindmyScammer.com website, in a bid to find the fraudsters.
According to French daily Le Parisien, which quoted Ouarab, the scammers are three of them, in their 20s and are located in Nigeria.
The Nigeria Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said it can only investigate the claim if it receives a petition.
“It is a petition that authorizes the EFCC to act,” spokesman Dele Oyewale told AFP.
Nigeria is increasingly gaining a reputation for Internet scammers known as “Yahoo Boys,” whose influence even reflects in popular music.
The term “Yahoo Boys” became widely recognized after the 2007 hit song Yahooze by Olu Maintain, which celebrated cyberfraud.
Several Nigerian musicians, like Naira Marley and Shallipopi, have suffered arrests on fraud-related charges.
A prominent case involves Nigerian national, Ramon Abbas, who received an 11-year sentence in the US for laundering millions through online scamming.
Sextortion and romance scams have also evolved, with fraudsters using artificial intelligence and deepfakes to deceive victims.
In July 2023, Meta banned thousands of accounts linked to sextortion scams involving Yahoo Boys.
Additionally, Nigeria’s anti-graft agency, EFCC, arrested 792 suspects in Lagos, including foreign nationals, and continues to crack down on cybercrime training centers and phishing operations targeting victims worldwide.
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