What looks like a BBC News article about a new Tesla project is spreading on social media, promising people “the single biggest opportunity to build a small fortune fast.”
“SPECIAL REPORT: Tesla launches its newest platform Bitcoin iFex 360 Ai — aims to help families become wealthier,” the supposed headline says. “Due to the financial crisis around the world, Tesla has launched a new project promising to help families become wealthier.”
A Facebook post sharing the link was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
First of all: This isn’t a real BBC News article. It’s a blog post with a url including cokuysal.com, and references to a Tommy Hilfiger “mini reporter bag in black.” When we tried archiving the blog post, it saved not the story about the supposed bitcoin project, but a retail page selling the aforementioned bag for $129.
We reached out to Tesla about the post but didn’t hear back. However, we found no evidence such as press releases from Tesla that would connect the company to “Bitcoin iFex 360 Ai,” which the blog post claimed is a new cryptocurrency trading platform that Tesla said “can transform anyone into a millionaire within 3-4 months.”
A Belgian television broadcaster reached the same conclusion in November, when it looked at a French-language version of the claims in this post.
As we were reporting this story, the blog post text changed to reflect that Tesla had launched a platform by a different name: “+360 iFex App BTC.” Whatever the name, this is wrong.
We rate this post False.
