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AI Brad Pitt dupes French woman out of €830k

bbc.co.uk

121–130 of 136 posts

Re: AI Brad Pitt dupes French woman out of €830k

#121
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your timeline there is a bit off. When she met this Brad Pitt, she was still married. She started sending money to him; got divorced; got a settlement of €775,000; and proceeded to give all of that as well to Brad Pitt. Still worthy of sympathy, but no one would question mockery of a married man who started chatting with a fake Angelina Jolie on social media, started sending her money, got divorced, and then gave the…

> ... , but no one would question mockery of a married man who started chatting with a fake Angelina Jolie ... I would hope that noone would mock this person. Anyone doing this clearly has some issues and should not be mocked but encouraged to seek help. When did so many people become assholes?

Agreed. Most of these scams entail an immoral dimension on the part of the victim. After all, it's not great that for helping out bail out an embattled Nigerian prince, that the victim would take an exorbitant fee (which was probably stolen from Nigerian tax payers). Even with that, those victims, just like the woman in this story, deserve a level of empathy. In this case, €830k is a lifetime of savings for most people and these guys will move on and do the same to someone else.

Re: AI Brad Pitt dupes French woman out of €830k

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the same low level reasoning I would say people are only sorry for her because she is a woman, that needs to be protected. Reverse the sexes in the story and you dont get much of an interesting story

What a blindly judgemental farce. Maybe don't project your own prejudice onto others?

Would you have shared / commented on the story and participated in the buzz of a story where the two sexes were reversed ?

Re: AI Brad Pitt dupes French woman out of €830k

#123
post #8

Lol this article doesn't even include the best part which were the pictures the scammer was sending. It's like 10 low res photos of Brad Pitt in a hospital bed, I think some of them lifted from movies. I don't even think AI really played an important role here. Edit: Here https://x.com/PopBase/status/1879197931129163782

I'll mention something that we all probably know: The crumminess is the point.

Anyone with any intelligence would pass over this as a scam. The scammers don't want someone with any intelligence. Hence, the more obviously that it's a scam, the better. Same thing with those Nigerian Prince email scams being garbage English. It's a crude, but effective, filter.

Re: AI Brad Pitt dupes French woman out of €830k

#124
post #21

She got the money from a divorce. What comes easy goes easy. I feel bad for the ex-husband.

> She got the money from a divorce. What comes easy goes easy. I feel bad for the ex-husband. Do you know the full story? Maybe the couple worked together to make a larger amount and then split it upon divorce. Making judgements like this is a problem IMO.

It's in the story. She married a wealthy real estate developer. Dumped her husband, took his money, and sent it to "Brad Pitt".

Now claiming to have done this to save his life but surely she wouldn't sent this money to random bloke "Tim Johnson".

Re: AI Brad Pitt dupes French woman out of €830k

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a blindly judgemental farce. Maybe don't project your own prejudice onto others?

Would you have shared / commented on the story and participated in the buzz of a story where the two sexes were reversed ?

Obviously. Why would I give a damn what's between the legs of someone that was a victim of fraud? It's just as sad when guys are catfished for scams and I feel the same empathy for them.

Re: AI Brad Pitt dupes French woman out of €830k

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you have shared / commented on the story and participated in the buzz of a story where the two sexes were reversed ?

Obviously. Why would I give a damn what's between the legs of someone that was a victim of fraud? It's just as sad when guys are catfished for scams and I feel the same empathy for them.

It’s not obvious to me this story would have reached you and me with the same strength, allowing us to talk together here

Re: AI Brad Pitt dupes French woman out of €830k

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously. Why would I give a damn what's between the legs of someone that was a victim of fraud? It's just as sad when guys are catfished for scams and I feel the same empathy for them.

It’s not obvious to me this story would have reached you and me with the same strength, allowing us to talk together here

Fair enough, but I personally consider it a problem regardless of the gender of the victim.

Re: AI Brad Pitt dupes French woman out of €830k

#128
post #28

"I understand the comic effect but we're talking about a woman in her 50s who got conned by deepfakes and AI which your parents and grandparents would be incapable to spot," one popular post on X read. This ignores the fact that her daughter tried to explain it to her for over a year . To me it seriously raises a question, what should we do with or think about people who deemed capable and are 50+ “YoE” but still una…

Be that as it may but we're not making that person "smarter" by shitting on them. Many people just aren't very "smart" or whatever you want to call it but it's people that are taking advantage of them that are at fault here. If this was someone with a cognitive disability we wouldn't make fun of it (I hope) and the line is sometimes blurry.

That is my question, essentially. Are cases like this (a year of repeating illusion impenetrable by relatives) a naive mistake or an undiagnosed cognitive disorder? Shouldn't people like her be at least partially taken care of?

My buddy had a similar case with his sister. She would take a loan, be late on payments and then give loan sharks anything they asked for, without any checks and balances. Could take family money, etc, only to get rid of them temporarily. She was clearly unwell and so impassable that the whole family had to part with her (legally splitting apartments and even taking a kid).

I'm not suggesting anything here, just thinking about it. Probably nothing generic enough could help here at all.

Re: AI Brad Pitt dupes French woman out of €830k

#129
I was so proud of my 63 year old mother the day she told me about a slightly similar scam (involving "borrowed" Antonio Banderas photos) that she not only did not fall for, but actually somehow managed to trace the scammer down (through some Google reverse image searching and other Internet "sleuthery" that I would not have imagined her doing on her own). Not only that but she then proceeded to send her conclusions (that it was some French scammer scum and his wife perpetrating all this, and she had proof of who it was) to her little circle of online "friends" that were actually in the act of falling for the scam and sending gifts, money, and whatnot to this dirtbag French scammer couple. Why, I'll never know... Who sends money and gifts to online strangers pretending to be celebrities? Hell, who sends gifts to random celebrities for that matter? Worst part of this story is that most of the "old biddies" actually ridiculed my mother and called her "paranoid" and proceeded to happily get scammed, thinking they were actually conversing online with Antonio himself... Some people are just bound and determined to stay stupid, I guess. Sadly, "A.I." audio/image/video generation has not made this situation any better these days.

Re: AI Brad Pitt dupes French woman out of €830k

#130
A lot of the comments here are really mean to that woman, for talking to Brad Pitt. Ha ha ha.

At least he exists in real life, not like some entity they themselves may be talking to on Friday, Saturday or Sunday (or another day where communication with deities is the clearest).

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