'I defy any woman not to fall into the trap': Full inside story of scam that saw wealthy divorcee hand £700,000 to Brad Pitt conmen - and why these devious schemes are a growing threat
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Blonde, tanned and beautiful, Anne was always smiling in the idyllic photographs she posted on her social media accounts. And no wonder: living on the sun-kissed French island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, where she ran an interior design business, the 53-year-old mother-of-one wanted for nothing.
![[The scammer told her they were suffering from kidney cancer and that the money was needed for lifesaving treatment]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/17/17/94220863-0-image-a-3_1737135764423.jpg)
Recently separated from her millionaire husband, with whom she shared a poolside mansion on the nearby paradise island of Mauritius, Anne had plenty of income at her disposal – thanks to a £650,000 divorce settlement – to indulge her passions for travel, fitness and art.
![[Wealthy divorcee Anne is pursuing a civil case against her French bank for allowing her to make such huge money transfers to overseas accounts unchecked]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2025/01/17/20/94225633-14297613-image-a-1_1737145880070.jpg)
Anne also had a truly sensational secret. For the past year and a half, since the breakdown of her marriage, she had – she believed – been in an online relationship with none other than Brad Pitt. The world-famous actor, 61, apparently going by his real first names ‘William Bradley’, had been lavishing Anne with romantic messages, love poems and even a marriage proposal. ‘My queen,’ he called her. ‘You are all I have. I adore you. Baby, I love you so much.’.
Over months of daily, sometimes hourly, intimate exchanges between the two, an intensely loving relationship developed – or so Anne thought. ‘There are so few men who write this kind of thing,’ she has admitted. ‘I loved the man I was conversing with. He knew how to talk to women.’.
