Brad Pitt has a cautionary message for his fans after a recent scamming situation.
Earlier this week, Spain's Minister of Interior shared in a press release that the Civil Guard had arrested five people and investigated another ten who were part of a criminal organization that scammed two women out of hundreds of thousands of euros, by pretending to be the Wolfs actor.
The investigation began over a year ago in August 2023, and now the Oscar winner's representatives are speaking out on his behalf.
"It's awful that scammers take advantage of fans' strong connection with celebrities," a statement shared with People read.
Brad's team maintained: "This is an important reminder to not respond to unsolicited online outreach, especially from actors who have no social media presence."
The press release from the Minister of Interior states that they were able to recover $85,000 euros from the $325,000 the women got scammed out of, which is approximately $361,611 U.S. dollars.
It also details that the scam took place through an alleged internet platform for fans of Brad, and that the scammers specifically targeted the two women, studying their social media presence in order to determine them as "vulnerable" people.
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Connecting via private direct message and email, they led them to believe they were in an intimate relationship with Brad, and proposed that they invest with him and in several projects, eventually scamming one woman out of $175,000 euros and another out of $150,000.
Separate from the scamming incidents and arrest, it has been a busy summer for Brad, who has been promoting his new film Wolfs, starring his longtime friend and frequent collaborator George Clooney.
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They stepped out together at the Venice Film Festival last month to premiere it, and while George had his wife Amal Clooney by his side at the red carpet, Brad was hand in hand with girlfriend Inés de Ramón, with whom he has increasingly been stepping into the spotlight, over a year into their romance.
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It was November 2022 when the pair was first spotted together, and at the time it was reported that they had been seeing each other casually for some months.
Inés had separated from her ex-husband, The Vampire Diaries actor Paul Wesley, in September, and their divorce was finalized in February of this year; Brad's eight-year legal battle over his divorce from Angelina Jolie remains ongoing.