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Yahoo Boys Allegedly Used Deepfake Technology to Impersonate Brad Pitt and Defraud French Woman of $850,000 in Romance Scam

23 news reports Snapshot 7 Sep 2026

In brief

An AI system built by Deepfake Technology Developers and deployed by Yahoo Boys, Scammers Impersonating Brad Pitt and 1 other allegedly harmed General Public Susceptible To Ai Enhanced Scams, Brad Pitt and 1 other.

Risk domain
Malicious Actors & Misuse Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation
Occurred
Coverage
23 reportsJan 2025

What happened

Three Nigerian "Yahoo Boys" scammers allegedly used AI-generated image manipulation tools, along with fake social media and WhatsApp accounts, to reportedly impersonate actor Brad Pitt and convince a French interior decorator, Anne, that she was in a romantic relationship with him. Over 18 months, they allegedly fabricated selfies and messages, reportedly leading Anne to divorce her husband and transfer $850,000 under the false pretense that Pitt needed money for kidney treatment while his accou

Laws that address this harm

Policy angle: Classified under Malicious Actors & Misuse (Fraud, scams, and targeted manipulation) in the MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy; 5 recorded instruments address this use case.

Matched from the record's risk domain and country to the instruments recorded here. A reviewer can correct the match in the repository (data/external/incident_overrides.yaml).

News reports (14)

Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.

  1. Scammer uses deepfake images of Brad Pitt to dupe French woman out of $1.2M
    nationalpost.com · Stewart Lewis
  2. A woman thought she was dating Brad Pitt—was tricked into giving $850k
    newsweek.com · Marni Rose McFall
  3. Scammers Posing as Brad Pitt Convince Divorced Woman to Transfer More Than $800,000
    usmagazine.com · Kristie Lau-Adams
  4. French woman faces cyberbullying after falling for fake Brad Pitt
    gulfnews.com · AFP
  5. Woman who lost $850,000 to scammers posing as Brad Pitt faces wave of online harassment and mockery
    cbsnews.com · CBS News
  6. French woman duped by AI Brad Pitt faces mockery online
    bbc.com · Laura Gozzi
  7. AI Brad Pitt Convinced a French Woman To Pay €830K for Kidney Treatment
    ccn.com · Kurt Robson
  8. Viral scam: French woman duped by AI Brad Pitt love scheme faces cyberbullying
    euronews.com · David Mouriquand
  9. Brad Pitt criticizes "awful" scammer who conned woman out of $850K
    newsweek.com · Billie Schwab Dunn
  10. Arnaque au faux Brad Pitt : une enquête en cours auprès de la brigade financière
    leparisien.fr · Victor Cousin, Zoé Lauwereys
  11. AI scammers pretending to be Brad Pitt con woman out of $850,000
    foxnews.com · Caroline Thayer
  12. Brad Pitt's Rep Reminds Fans Actor Does Not Use Social Media After Catfished Fan Was Scammed Out of $800K
    people.com · Tommy McArdle
  13. Nigerian scammers accused in AI-driven fake Brad Pitt fraud
    france24.com · AFP
  14. Brad Pitt Is Not In Love With You. Here's How To Protect Yourself And Loved Ones From AI Scams.
    huffpost.com · Monica Torres

Who was involved

Alleged harmed party
General Public Susceptible To Ai Enhanced Scams, Brad Pitt, Anne (French Interior Decorator)

Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)

Causal entity
Human
Intent
Intentional
Timing
Post-deployment
Harm level
—
Sectors
—
Countries
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Risk entries describing this failure mode

Entries from the MIT AI Risk Repository coded to subdomain 4.3.

  • Cheating/plagiarism

    "Cheating/plagiarism - Use of another person’s or group’s words or ideas without consent and/or acknowledgement."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • IP/copyright loss

    "IP/copyright loss - Misuse or abuse of an individual or organisation’s intellectual property, including copyright, trademarks, and patents."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Financial and business

    "Financial and Business - Use or misuse of a technology system in a manner that damages the financial interests of an individual or group, or which causes strategic, operational, legal or financial harm to a business or...

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Impersonation/identity theft

    "Impersonation/identity theft - Theft of an individual, group or organisation’s identity by a third-party in order to defraud, mock or otherwise harm them."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Dehumanisation/objectification

    "Dehumanisation/objectification - Use or misuse of a technology system to depict and/or treat people as not human, less than human, or as objects."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Defamation/libel/slander

    "Defamation/libel/slander - Use of a technology system to create, facilitate or amplify false perception(s) about an individual, group, or organisation."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Misinformation and Manipulation

    "Recent studies have demonstrated that LLMs can be exploited to craft deceptive narratives with levels of persuasiveness similar to human-generated content (Pan et al., 2023b; Spitale et al., 2023), to fabri- cate fake n...

    Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models (Anwar2024)

  • Cybersecurity

    "LLMs may exacerbate cybersecurity risks in various ways (Newman, 2024). Firstly, LLMs may significantly amplify the effectiveness of deceptive operations aimed at tricking people into disclosing sensitive information or...

    Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models (Anwar2024)

Incidents in the same risk subdomain

All incidents in this subdomain

Source record: incident #901 on the AI Incident Database · all 23 reports