French woman faces cyberbullying after falling for fake Brad Pitt

Paris: 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 m...

Paris: 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savings to scammers posing as Brad Pitt has faced a wave of online harassment and mockery, leading the interview to be withdrawn on Tuesday.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" programme 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 ($850,000).

The scammers used fake social media and WhatsApp accounts, as well as AI image-creating technology to send Anne what appeared to be selfies and other messages from Pitt.

To extract money, they pretended that the 61-year-old actor needed money to pay for kidney treatment, with his bank accounts supposedly frozen because of divorce proceedings with his ex-wife Angelina Jolie.