Nigerian scammers accused in AI-driven ‘Brad Pitt’ fraud
LAGOS—A French woman who lost her life savings to scammers pretending to be American actor Brad Pitt is seeking to unmask at least three Nigerians her legal team accuses of defrauding her.
The scammers tricked the victim, identified as 53-year-old Anne by French broadcaster TF1, into believing she was in a romantic relationship with the 61-year-old Hollywood star by using artificial intelligence (AI)-generated photos.
The case illustrates how Nigerian scammers, already known for a variety of internet schemes, including “romance” scams, are pivoting toward new technologies to swindle victims.
Anne told TF1 she was first targeted on Instagram by someone posing as Pitt’s mother after she shared pictures of herself skiing in the resort of Tignes.
For kidney treatment
The scammers claimed that the actor urgently needed money to pay for kidney treatment, alleging that his bank accounts had been frozen due to ongoing divorce proceedings with his ex-wife Angelina Jolie.
Anne’s lawyer Laurene Hanna said her client lost 830,000 euros ($850,000) to the scammers.
Anne has been in touch with Marwan Ouarab, the founder of the FindmyScammer.com website, in a bid to find the fraudsters, the attorney said on X.
According to French daily Le Parisien, which quoted Ouarab, the scammers—three men in their 20s—are located in Nigeria.
Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) antigraft agency said it can only investigate the claim if a petition is submitted.
“It is a petition that authorizes the EFCC to act,” spokesperson Dele Oyewale told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
‘Yahoo Boys’
Africa’s most populous country is saddled with a reputation for internet fraudsters known in local slang as “Yahoo Boys.”
The use of AI is a new twist to an old crime, one expert told AFP.
Romance scams, sextortion and the once-popular emails from a “Nigerian prince” have been used to swindle victims in the past.
Deleted accounts
The “use of AI and deepfake” will “erase the huge gains made already and set us back over 20 years,” cybercrime expert Timothy Avele told AFP.
In July 2024, Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta deleted 63,000 Instagram accounts linked to sextortion scams from the West African country and blamed “Yahoo Boys” for the scam accounts.
‘Foreign syndicates’
Sextortation cases often involve young male or teen victims being persuaded to send compromising photos to fraudsters posing as young women. They are then blackmailed.
Foreign “cybercrime syndicates” are also exploiting Nigeria’s weakness in cybersecurity systems, and find it a “profitable place to set up their operations centers,” Avele said.
Last month, the EFCC said it had arrested 792 suspects in a single operation in the affluent Victoria Island area of Nigeria’s commercial hub of Lagos.
At least 192 of the suspects were foreign nationals, 148 of them Chinese, the agency said.
EFCC spokesperson Oyewale said in a statement the foreign gangs recruited Nigerian accomplices to find victims online through phishing, targeting mostly Americans, Canadians, Mexicans and others in European countries.
