HISPI Project Cerebellum HISPI PROJECT CEREBELLUM

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

January 12, 2025

Three Nigerian scammers, known as 'Yahoo Boys', reportedly used deepfake technology and AI-generated image manipulation tools to impersonate actor Brad Pitt. They created fake social media and WhatsApp accounts, allegedly convincing a French interior decorator, Anne, that she was in a romantic relationship with the actor. Over an 18-month period, they fabricated selfies and messages, leading Anne to divorce her husband and transfer $850,000 under false pretenses for alleged kidney treatment while Pitt's accounts were frozen. This incident highlights the need for responsible AI governance and safe and secure practices in AI technology usage.

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Alleged deployer
yahoo-boys, scammers-impersonating-brad-pitt, brouteurs
Alleged developer
unknown-deepfake-technology-developers
Alleged harmed parties
general-public-susceptible-to-ai-enhanced-scams, brad-pitt, anne-(french-interior-decorator)

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/901

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.