Beware image showing Mamdani and his mom with Epstein, Clinton, Gates, Bezos

An image circulated online in late January and early February 2026 allegedly depicting New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani — as a child — and his mother with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Amazon owner Jeff Bezos and Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

For example, conspiracy theorist and Infowars host Alex Jones posted the image (archived) on X on Feb. 1, claiming Grok, the social media platform’s artificial intelligence tool, “says this photo of the young future, New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani with Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton and others is real.”

(X user @RealAlexJones)

Jones’ post received more than 1.6 million views. Variations of the rumor spread on other X accounts (archived, archived, archived), as well. 

Although some readers seemed to believe the image depicted a real-life event, there was no evidence it was real. If it were, reputable news media outlets would have reported on it.

Rather, the image of Mamdani and his mother with Epstein, Clinton, Gates, Bezos and Maxwell originated with @DumbFckFinder — a social media account that describes its output as being humorous or satirical in nature. The X account is labeled “parody account,” and its bio says it shares imagery created with artificial intelligence to “expose” people who believe it.

The image spread as Mamdani’s mother, movie director Mira Nair, made headlines for appearing (archived) in government-released files on Epstein. Publicist Peggy Siegal said in an email to Epstein that Nair was at an after-party for her 2009 film, “Amelia,” at Maxwell’s townhouse, along with Clinton and Bezos.

(justice.gov)

We found no further evidence linking Nair to Maxwell or the others beyond the 2009 party. Additionally, in 2009 Mamdani would have been 18 — not a child, as pictured in the image.

We ran the image of Mamdani and Nair through AI-detection software Hive, which found the image to be more than 97% likely to be AI-generated. Google’s Gemini also detected a SynthID watermark, concluding that “most or all of this image was edited or generated using Google AI.”

The Associated Press reported that a number of images of Mamdani shared by the account were generated with AI.

Snopes has addressed similar satirical claims related to Epstein in the past, including the assertion that U.S. Vice President JD Vance was the last person to see him alive before he died by suicide and a rumor that Denmark renamed Greenland “Epstein Island” to stop Trump from talking about it.

For background, here is why we alert readers to rumors created by sources that call their output humorous or satirical.