It’s the season of giving and sparkly gifts. Apropos of the moment, a video of billionaire Elon Musk offering free gold bars is circulating social media. But don’t be fooled; this is a scam.
A Dec. 8 Facebook post claimed to show a video of Musk announcing this giveaway.
“I know times are tough right now and the holidays are just around the corner. I was just told that we will have a massive tax bill due to unexpected profits and instead of paying it, I would rather give that money to the hardworking, underappreciated American public,” Musk appeared to say in the video. “I will be giving free gold bars to the first 10,000 people who see this video.” (The video had been viewed more than 151,000 times as of Dec. 12.)
The Facebook post’s caption read, “I’m back again with another crazy giveaway for you guys! This time we’re giving away FREE Pure Gold Bars!”
(Screengrab from Facebook)
This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
Misleading posts promising free and fast money are common on social media. PolitiFact found no evidence that Musk was giving away gold bars. USA Today has fact-checked a similar claim about Musk giving away silver bars.
Musk in the Facebook video says to receive the gold, people can click the link below the video, enter their personal information and pay a $9.95 shipping fee.
However, the link leads to a webpage with the URL “majestysciencespotnews.com” that doesn’t appear to be affiliated with Musk. The site is titled, “The Fascinating World of Science,” and shows articles about scientific subjects. It doesn’t mention Musk or gold bars.
Also, the Facebook video’s audio appears to be edited to make it sound as if Musk is promoting this giveaway. But a reverse-image search found that the clip of Musk is from a virtual talk he gave at the February 2023 World Government Summit, an annual conference of government and industry leaders in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
During this conference, Musk discussed his vision for Twitter, now called X, and warned against becoming a “single world government.” He did not mention gold bars.
PolitiFact reached out to Musk through X’s press email and received this automatic response: “Busy now, please check back later.”
We also searched Google and the Nexis news archive for “Elon Musk gold bars” and “Elon Musk gold giveaway” and found neither credible news reports nor official announcements about Musk giving away gold bars.
We rate this claim False.
