MADRID (AFP) – Spanish police said on Monday that they had arrested five people accused of scamming two women of EUR325,000 by posing as the Hollywood star Brad Pitt via online and WhatsApp messages.
The suspects made contact with the women on an internet page for fans of the Oscar-winning actor and led them to believe “they had a sentimental relationship with him”, Spain’s Guardia Civil police force said in a statement.
Posing as Pitt, the members of the gang then allegedly proposed that the women invest in various projects that did not exist.
One woman, from the southern region of Andalusia, was defrauded of EUR175,000 while the other, from the northern Basque Country, lost EUR150,000. Police arrested five people in the southern region of Andalusia, including the suspected leaders of the group.
They raided five homes as part of their operations, seizing several mobile phones, bank cards, two computers and a diary “in which the phrases used by the fraudsters to deceive their victims were written down”.
Officers were able to recover EUR85,000 of the money that was defrauded from the two women.
