Multiple posts shared with a picture of a hand-cuffed Bill Gates being led away by FBI agents allege the US billionaire has been arrested for biological terrorism.
It adds that the arrest "is\xa0reportedly the result of a tip-off from the Melbourne conspiracy theorists who breached Victorian lockdown restrictions yesterday to spread ‘the truth’ about this so-called pandemic"., AFP found that The Betoota Advocate runs\xa0a satirical website. The "About" section on its\xa0Facebook page carries the tongue-in-cheek description: "Our competitors in the city label us \satire\. They don\t understand.", However, the story was republished as real news on this Nigerian website\xa0and shared over a thousand\xa0times on Facebook. Many of the commenters seem to believe the claim is true., Similar claims have also been shared here, here, here, and here., AFP ran multiple reverse image searches to verify the picture\xa0and traced it to articles including this AFP story reporting on the arrest of New York mobster Vincent Asaro in January\xa02014\xa0for his role in a 1978 heist. Meanwhile, the second image used in the same post, which shows a crowd holding banners, was taken during recent\xa0anti-lockdown protesters in Australia., There is no public record of Gates being arrested by the FBI., A day\xa0after the misleading article was published, Gates published a piece\xa0on his blog GatesNotes\xa0about a new surveillance program in Seattle\xa0aimed at\xa0“detecting cases of COVID-19 and helping guide public health responses”. On May 18, he released a list of five books to read\xa0this summer. And on May 19, the British government\xa0released a statement saying that Prime Minister Boris Johnson spoke to both Gates and his wife\xa0via video call., AFP contacted the FBI for comment but has not yet received a reply., Gates has been the target of many COVID-19 conspiracy theories, as explained in this\xa0AFP Fact Check story., , Copyright © AFP 2017-2020.  All rights reserved.  Users can access and consult this website and use the share features available for personal, private, and non-commercial purposes.  Any other use, in particular any reproduction, communication to the public or distribution of the content of this website, in whole or in part, for any other purpose and/or by any other means, without a specific licence agreement signed with AFP, is strictly prohibited.  The subject matter depicted or included via links within the Fact Checking content is provided to the extent necessary for correct understanding of the verification of the information concerned.  AFP has not obtained any rights from the authors or copyright owners of this third party content and shall incur no liability in this regard.  AFP and its logo are registered trademarks.
Image of Bill Gates in cuffs is doctored photo of a 2014 mobster arrest | AFP Fact Check