Police in Spain have arrested five people accused of scamming two women out of 325,000 euros ($362,000) by pretending to be Hollywood star Brad Pitt online. <\/p>\n
Ten other people were also investigated as part of Operation Bralina, which spanned eight provinces, according to a statement from the Guardia Civil published Monday. <\/p>\n
One woman lost 175,000 euros ($195,000) to the fraudsters, while another lost 150,000 euros ($167,000). Of that total, police managed to recover 85,000 euros ($95,000). <\/p>\n
Both victims were contacted via a Brad Pitt fan site by fraudsters who managed to convince them that the actor wanted to invest in various projects with them, police said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn order to find their victims, the cyber criminals studied their social networks and put together a psychological profile of them, discovering as a result that both women were vulnerable people suffering from depression and a lack of affection,\u201d reads the statement. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey also used instant messaging platforms to exchange messages and emails with the two women until they thought they were chatting via WhatsApp with Brad Pitt himself, who promised them a romantic relationship and a future together.\u201d <\/p>\n
Both women ended up making numerous bank transfers to the person they thought was Pitt, until they realized they had been scammed and went to the police. <\/p>\n
Investigators found that, as part of the scam, a network of bank accounts were created using fake identity documents. \u201cMules\u201d were also used to help to launder money through their own bank accounts in exchange for a small payment. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Police in Spain have arrested five people accused of scamming two women out of 325,000 euros ($362,000) by pretending to be Hollywood star Brad Pitt online. Ten other people were also investigated as part of Operation Bralina, which spanned eight provinces, according to a statement from the Guardia Civil published Monday. One woman lost 175,000 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8051,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8050","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}