Did the wife of Ukrainian President Zelensky buy a sports car a car for 4.5 million euros? A man posing as a car dealer claimed this on Instagram, and sites replicated the claim. DV checked the facts.
If it's not jewelry, it will be a luxury yacht or even a residence of the British royal family - reports periodically appear on the Internet about huge wealth and properties that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his wife Olena allegedly owned or just owned purchased. It is now claimed that on their last visit to Paris they acquired the latest model of the luxury Italian sports car brand “Bugatti”.
Claim: Olena Zelenska ordered the first unit of the latest model “Bugatti Tourbillon" at a car dealership in Paris. – a car that costs 4.5 million euros.
Fact Check: False
In an Instagram video that has since been deleted, an alleged employee of a car dealership from the "Groupe Schumacher" in Paris announces the sale. Looking a bit nervous, he expressed support for the Ukrainians and greeted the presidential couple with "welcome to the Bugatti family".
The video served as the basis for an article on the website "Veritee Cachee France" (The Hidden Truth) where the supposed invoice for the sale is also displayed. The video has been shared millions of times since July 1 – mostly on the X platform (before Twitter). Notorious fake news purveyor Jackson Hinkle's post alone, in which he attempts to substantiate the false claim with a photo of the "invoice", has been viewed 6.5 million times on H.
The car dealership denies it
The dealership mentioned in the video and on the invoice actually exists. When asked by DV, her boss refuted the statement in writing. In his response, he assures that the car dealership has nothing to do with the allegations in question and adds that they have already filed a lawsuit for forgery, identity theft and defamation.
It is possible that the invoice was not issued by the specified car dealership at all, as there are many errors in it. For example, the place of residence in the address Neuilly-sur-Seine is written with only one "l", the mandatory information about VAT and payment methods is missing. Not even a currency is specified. Surely no one in France would issue an invoice in such a dilettante manner - especially for such a huge amount.
The car dealer just doesn't exist on the internet
The video, which has already been taken down from the web, also raises a number of questions: the man is behaving strangely - his facial expressions, movements and tone do not correspond to the grandiose message he is making. His French shows odd mistakes. If these are all subjective impressions, there is also objective evidence: according to the deleted Instagram profile (jacqes_bertin_ls), the alleged car seller is called Jacques Bertin. However, neither his name nor his photo give any results when searching the Internet.
These are clear signs that such a person does not exist in reality and is most likely a fiction created with the help of artificial intelligence (AI).
On a fake news site
The third sign that a story is fabricated is the supposed news site it was published on. The text is structured like a tabloid newspaper article and is detailed enough to appear AI-generated.
However, the site itself has all the typical characteristics of a troll site: there is no legal information, no names of authors or information about the origin of the photos. Weird page layouts with fuzzy and blurry photos or absurd photo details are probably the result of careless programming.
Perhaps most tellingly, the title of almost every article on the front page begins with the words "Voici un titre court pour l'article" (Here is a short title of the article). The suspicion arises whether someone (or rather some computer program) did not order a chatbot to write the article with artificial intelligence and give it a title.
Typical model for creating and spreading fake news
The way in which fakes are produced has long been studied: first, information is created to serve the interests of its creator. In this case: defamation against Ukrainian President Zelensky.
Then the fake itself is created. It can be a video on social networks, an imitation of a famous media or a photo. Artificial intelligence often helps here, but sometimes more conventional tricks are also used, such as image editing programs.
Then it's the turn of fake news sites like "Veritee Cachee France" to pick up on the topic. In parallel, the information is replicated from their profiles on the social networks X, Facebook, Telegram or TokTok. Such profiles initially have a large number of followers and thus the false information quickly goes viral.