I'm Really Struggling To Sympathise With This Woman.

[mawnansmiff]

For 18 months, a seemingly intelligent French woman genuinely believed she was in a relationship with actor Brad Pitt. She was so convinced of this she paid out around £700,000 to 'him' despite they never meeting nor speaking

I know these scams are old hat but I thought these days folk were well aware of them and not getting sucked into them. It appears not.

And she wonders why she is being mocked across the whole nation.

French woman duped by AI Brad Pitt faces mockery online

Anne, 53, was subject to nationwide ridicule after a TV show revealed how she paid out huge sums to romance scammers pretending to be Brad Pitt.

www.bbc.co.uk

Jay.

 

[Briarcutter]

I'm sorry she lost her money. What's sad is that some people are that lonely. But I didn't read the article, maybe there's more to it. I'm afraid to respond to the real ones, I've got million$ waiting for me in the customes office at the airport

 

[greeneyes]

My father is 86 years old and he was a medical doctor, a cardiothoracic surgeon. We didn't know until much later that he was struggling with worsening dementia but looking back there were increasing incidences of credit card breaches and other things of that nature.

We have an aging population and not all have the Internet literacy and the cognitive health to deal with attacks of increasing sophistication.

If anything I sympathize and certainly don't deride vulnerable people in situations like hers.

 

[dd57chevy]

It's a shame , but WOW , she thought Brad Pitt would reach out to her ???
A fool and his/her money are soon parted.......

 

[mawnansmiff]

We have an aging population and not all have the Internet literacy and the cognitive health to deal with attacks of increasing sophistication.

I get what you're saying but there was no evidence of senility or cognitive breakdown, even her daughter saw right through the scam but the lady insisted she was dealing with the real guy, why? Because she wanted to believe it.

Gullibility is not an illness.

Jay.

 

[Briarcutter]

Maybe Brad will reimburse her

 

[Briar Lee]

Around thirty five years ago, the bank next door to my office called me and I went over to find one of my clients with an impeccably dressed “financial adviser”, who had convinced her to withdraw $250,000 out of the bank for him to “invest”.

I got to use my “two worlds” line.

There’s a world where you get in your shiny new car and drive someplace else, and buy a nice pair of shoes,

Or there’s a world where I call the sheriff I sit on the board of elders at church with and the prosecutor that’s my next door neighbor.

Which world do you want to dwell?

By that evening her family had her under conservatorship.


I only tell the war stories where I save the old lady.

The really gullible ones are the old men, who think a young woman thinks they have a cute belly.

 

[greeneyes]

I get what you're saying but there was no evidence of senility or cognitive breakdown, even her daughter saw right through the scam but the lady insisted she was dealing with the real guy, why? Because she wanted to believe it.

Gullibility is not an illness.

Jay.

Cruelty isn't an illness either. I think there is a difference between trying to help this woman and deriding her. I think she's attempted suidice three times after the media and society at large caught wind of this and began ridiculing her? We can be sure that if anyone in her intimate circle wants to look up anything pipe related they can catch a bit here too, right?

[Also, regarding evidence of cognitive illness: Were psychiatric evaluations posted alongside the original article? Or are patient records still confidential?]

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Wait... so maybe Scarlett Johansson isn't really my side chick? Uggg...

 

[cosmicfolklore]

I think there is a difference between trying to help this woman and deriding her. I think she's attempted suidice three times after the media and society at large caught wind of this and began ridiculing her?

This shit isn't even real news. It's using someone's personal misstep as entertainment. The British press has always tended to be the world's leader in appealing to national outrage in people's personal matters. We have a little of that here in entertainment news and some in regular news, but no where near as brutal as in Britain.

But, it's not my place to shame them. Everyone looks at the news through the lenses of their weird assed personal beliefs, especially political ones. I'd call it a world-wide mental illness.

 

[Briar Lee]

Cruelty isn't an illness either. I think there is a difference between trying to help this woman and deriding her. I think she's attempted suidice three times after the media and society at large caught wind of this and began ridiculing her? We can be sure that if anyone in her intimate circle wants to look up anything pipe related they can catch a bit here too, right?

[Also, regarding evidence of cognitive illness: Were psychiatric evaluations posted alongside the original article? Or are patient records still confidential?]

Somehow, a 53 year old woman managed to marry a very wealthy man and become an interior designer, divorce him and clear $850,000, which I’ll bet he’s relieved it wasn’t more.

And the publicity might attract her more marriage proposals, from lonelier older men.

Ugly 53 year old women couldn’t get in such trouble.

 

[greeneyes]

Somehow, a 53 year old woman managed to marry a very wealthy man and become an interior designer, divorce him and clear $850,000, which I’ll bet he’s relieved it wasn’t more.

And the publicity might attract her more marriage proposals, from lonelier older men.

Ugly 53 year old women couldn’t get in such trouble.

I have no doubt you have (or had) a very effective legal practice.

 

[Briar Lee]

I have no doubt you have (or had) a very effective legal practice.

That’s Winston Churchill’s mother.

She was scammed first by one of Winston’s classmates and later by a Nigerian civil servant.

Jennie Churchill and Her Attempts to Be an Independent Woman

Finest Hour 175, Winter 2017 Page 06 By Anne Sebba Anne Sebba is the author of Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died under Nazi Occupation […]

winstonchurchill.org

My own mother was fond of saying the Lord ought to have made all bad women ugly, but in that He surely failed.

Jennie Churchhill had a good time, most of her time.

 

[mawnansmiff]

I think there is a difference between trying to help this woman and deriding her.

Again, I get what you're saying but think of it this way, if you saw a guy slip on a banana skin wouldn't you laugh before going to help him up? Someone using a salt shaker thinking it was a sugar shaker, would you not find that funny?

Humour is just laughing at someone else's ineptitude and we are all guilty of that on occasion.

Besides, it's not as though the whole world and his dog hasn't been warned to be alert to such scam artists.

Anyway, I'm sure she's now getting all the emotional support she needs from her nearest and dearest.....assuming she will actually listen to them this time.

Jay.

 

[beefeater33]

I don't feel any sympathy towards her at all............. Brad Pitt is worth $400 million dollars, and she was sending HIM money??.....................
She'll be OK- probably get a juicy movie deal..........

 

[Briarcutter]

Brad Pitt is worth $400 million dollars, and she was sending HIM money??.....................

Great point!

 

[HawkeyeLinus]

Wait... so maybe Scarlett Johansson isn't really my side chick? Uggg...

Could be David….

 

[georged]

The whole business of otherwise demonstrably logical and rational people fixating on something so outrageously unlikely that everyone around them shakes their head in astonishment, has never been explained that I'm aware of.

Alien abduction, levitation, and so forth, with "Brad Pitt is in love with me!" small potatoes in comparison.

A successful businessman I've known for 40+ years got "had" by a Nigerian Scam a while back for a million dollars. Everyone around him, other people he'd known for decades, did everything short of sounding air horns and hiring a sky writing airplane to wake him up. Made no difference. Whatever the mental mechanism is, it's strong.

 

[anotherbob]

For 18 months, a seemingly intelligent French woman genuinely believed she was in a relationship with actor Brad Pitt. She was so convinced of this she paid out around £700,000 to 'him' despite they never meeting nor speaking

I know these scams are old hat but I thought these days folk were well aware of them and not getting sucked into them. It appears not.

And she wonders why she is being mocked across the whole nation.

French woman duped by AI Brad Pitt faces mockery online

Anne, 53, was subject to nationwide ridicule after a TV show revealed how she paid out huge sums to romance scammers pretending to be Brad Pitt.

www.bbc.co.uk

Jay.

The fact with scams is it's not intelligence or lack of it that they usually work on. It's desperation. I found that out when in the early 2000s I was having trouble getting a job. And for just a brief minute I found myself honestly having the thought "maybe these work from home emails are legit".
How many people have spent more money on a spouse that everyone else knows is just using the sucker.
Remember the con in con job stands for confidence not smarts.
Don't know much about this lady or what happened. But she still got robbed and robbed by exploiting her emotional needs in some way. And now she gets mocked, which yeah can't really blame people for that, but it's got to be salt in the wound.
So maybe the key to having sympathy is not reading the article and forgetting that she's French.
Oh and p.s. Jay I need a few thousands to finish that next movie and please don't tell everyone which highly famous and attractive actress I really am .

 

[brian64]

Gullibility is not an illness.

On the individual level, when it comes to personal issues like this, the vast majority of people are not anywhere near as gullible as she was.

But the irony is that on the collective level, society as a whole is every bit as gullible if not more so, when it comes to the monumental lies and scams it has swallowed hook, line and sinker throughout history.