In this 2019 file photo, George Soros attends the Joseph A. Schumpeter award ceremony in Vienna, Austria. The billionaire financier confirmed he was in good health following viral rumours claiming he’d died of a heart attack.
Billionaire financier George Soros took to Twitter on Monday to declare he’s in good health, following a viral social media rumour that he’d suffered a fatal heart attack.
The hoax, which appears to have originated from a now-deleted tweet by user @PoliticsFAIRL Sunday night, has since been shared numerous times, attracting millions of views across various social media platforms.
“Rumours that I had a heart attack are completely false,” the official account for Soros confirmed on Twitter Monday morning. “I am alive and healthy.”
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On Sunday night, Twitter account Politics For All Ireland said Soros’s family confirmed the billionaire had died at age 92. Although its post was later deleted, the hoax was proliferated by numerous other accounts and shared across Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and Twitter.
Soros, the centre of numerous conspiracy theories, is no stranger to premature reports of his passing — fake news reports have circulated on the topic before, including that he was killed while visiting his home country in 2017. Meanwhile, in 2013, Reuters accidentally published a pre-written obituary of the financier that started with the line: “George Soros, who died XXX at age XXX, was a predatory and hugely successful financier and investor, who argued paradoxically for years against the same sort of freewheeling capitalism that made him billions.”
Who is George Soros?
The 92-year-old Soros is a Hungarian-American businessman and philanthropist who made much of his billions through his hedge fund, Soros Fund Management. He’s also known for his philanthropic work through his non-profit, Open Society Foundations, which promotes democracy, human rights, social justice and more globally.
Perhaps due to his philanthropic and political contributions, Soros has been the target of numerous conspiracy theories falsely alleging the billionaire has been secretly manipulating world events and governments.
Kevin Jiang
is a Toronto-based staff reporter for the Star’s Express Desk.
Follow him on X: @crudelykevin.
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