Fact Check: Viral image of Bill Gates ‘arrested’ by US Federal Marshals is morphed

Hyderabad: An image of the multi-billionaire Bill Gates tied to a bed and under custody has gone viral on social media.

The Twitter user allegedly claims that “Bill Gates Arrested by US Federal Marshals; Being Held Under Armed Watch at Guantanamo Bay; Charged with War Crimes Against Humanity. Washington Post. (sic)”

The viral tweet dated July 11, 2023, also cited Washington Post as the source of this claim.

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the claim is false as the viral image is a morphed version of a screen grab from a documentary.

We started our investigation by scanning the Washington Post website to find any report related to this claim but could not find any relevant report about Bill Gates’ arrest.

Moving forward, on performing a keyword search with relevant keywords, we could not find even a single report on Bill Gates’ arrest as news like this would have become Breaking News on every news portal.

On performing a reverse image search, we found that the viral image has been taken out of a YouTube video titled “DeathPenaltyFail: A Lethal Injection” which shows the recreation of a death by lethal injection.

The description of the video reads, “A painstaking reconstruction of a real-time execution by lethal injection that highlights some of the very specific issues relating to the USA’s preferred execution method. #DeathPenaltyFail is a film campaign to promote the facts, highlight the inefficiencies and push for the repeal of the death penalty in the United States. We challenge anyone to watch the full series of videos on our website and not learn something surprising:”

On closely analyzing the video, we found that the viral image was taken from the timestamp around 8:13 min, and then Bill Gates' face was superimposed onto that screen grab.

For further clarity, here is a comparison of both images.

Hence, it is evident that the viral image is morphed.