This is a more complicated scam than "Ocean's Eleven."

A French woman who thought she was in a relationship with Hollywood star Brad Pitt paid 830,000 euros ($855,000) to scammers as part of an elaborate year-long scam that Involving an AI-generated version of the cast of Moneyball.

To make matters worse, when the 53-year-old French interior designer spoke about her misfortunes on French television channel TF1, she was met with a wave of ridicule and abuse, and the station had to cancel her interview. This is a seven to eight o'clock show.

"The story aired on Sunday sparked a wave of harassment against witnesses," TF1 presenter Harry Roselmack posted on his X account on Tuesday. "In order to protect the victims, we have decided to remove it from our platform. "

Anne said that sometime in February 2023, while Pitt was on a ski vacation in the French Alps, an account pretending to be Pitt's mother, Jane Etta Pitt, sent her a message on Instagram. She started talking to the fake "Fight Club" actor. .

Anne told TF1 that the account "told me that her son needed someone like me," according to AFP.

Over the next few months, she exchanged multiple messages with fake Pitt on different social media and messaging platforms, including WhatsApp, and even received an AI-generated selfie of the 61-year-old actor, a fax from him Told her he needed money for cancer treatment.

"At first I said to myself this is fake, this is ridiculous," she continued. "But I'm not used to social media and I don't quite understand what's happening to me."

The scammers told Anne that Pitt was hospitalized with kidney cancer and needed money for treatment, but the scammers then made demands for money after his bank accounts were allegedly frozen due to divorce proceedings with ex-wife Angelina Jolie.

She was hesitant at first, but eventually transferred the large sum of money to an account in Turkey after receiving an email from the fake celebrity "doctor."

Anne said she finally realized she was the victim of a scam last summer after seeing photos of the real Pete and his current partner, Ines de Ramon. "I asked myself, why did they choose me to do this harm?" she said. "I never hurt anyone. These people deserve to go to hell."

French newspaper Sud reported that Anne was in the process of divorcing a millionaire entrepreneur. She reportedly suffered from severe depression and was hospitalized following the scam.

Police are currently investigating the hoax, but the interview still sparked plenty of jokes online.

People, organizations and companies poking fun at Anne include Netflix France, which promoted "four Brad Pitt (literally) free-to-watch movies" in a post on X.

According to the Federal Trade Commission, artificial intelligence increases the risk of online identity theft and fraud, resulting in more than $8.8 million in losses in the United States.

A global study by computer security company McAfee found that one in four people worldwide has experienced an AI voice cloning scam or knows someone who has.