Guardia Civil arrest fake ‘Brad Pitts’ who scammed women out of €325k

The suspects made contact with the women on a social media page for fans of the Oscar-winning actor and led them to believe ‘they had a sentimental relationship with him’, the Guardia Civil 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 Andalusia, was defrauded of €175,000 while the other, from the Basque Country, lost €150,000. In uncovering the scam, the police codenamed their undercover work as the ‘Operation Bralina’.

‘The cybercriminals, to capture the victims, had studied their social networks and made a psychological profile of them, thus discovering that both women were two vulnerable people, lacking in affection and in a state of depression,’ police said.

‘They also used instant messaging platforms to exchange messages and emails with the two women until they reached a point where they believed they were chatting via WhatsApp with Brad Pitt himself, who promised them a romantic relationship and a future together.’

Police arrested five people in the southern region of Andalusia, including the suspected leaders of the group. Ten others are under investigation as part of the ‘Bralina operation’ carried out in the provinces of Almería, Málaga, Vizcaya, Barcelona, ​​Granada, Madrid, Huelva and Seville..

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’.

The Guardia Civil discovered that the cybercriminals had created a network of bank accounts registered with falsified documentation of people of African nationalities such as Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal and Sierra Leone, in which the scammed money was received. They also used ‘mules¡ who, in exchange for a small amount of money, received the scammed money and later transferred it to other accounts to launder it.

Following the investigation that first began in November 2023, two people were arrested in San Isidro de Níjar (Almería) and a third individual in Málaga for receiving part of the scammed money in their bank accounts.

Between January and February 2024, the police investigated three other individuals in Amorebieta (Vizcaya), one in Huelva, three in Seville, one in Madrid, one in Barcelona and one in Granada.

Finally, the leaders of the dismantled criminal organisation were arrested in Torremolinos and Málaga.

Officers were able to recover €85,000 of the money that was defrauded from the two women.

During the investigation, the police also discovered that the son of the Granada victim had made three fraudulent charges with his mother’s bank card and had stolen €17,000 from her, for which he was also arrested. The investigators ruled out that the son had anything to do with the dismantled criminal organisation.

| 5 personas detenidas por #estafa 325 mil euros a dos mujeres por el método conocido como #FalsoBradPitt

▶️Se ha investigado también 10 personas pertenecientes a la #organizacióncriminal y se ha conseguido localizar y bloquear 85 mil euros del dinero total… pic.twitter.com/qc4AouztgO

— Guardia Civil (@guardiacivil) September 23, 2024