FALSE: This page advertising grants from the Crown Prince of Dubai is a hoax
The link shared alongside the posts on the page directs to a series of online advertisements not linked to the Crown Prince
A Facebook post claiming that Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and ruler of the Emirates of Dubai, is giving out money is FALSE.
The post contains multiple images of stacks of cash and photos of the Crown Prince. Visitors are asked to register using their first name, then check an alphabetical list provided for the prize that corresponds to the first letter of their name. Each letter has a matching cash value.
Further instructions to share the post with 10 to 20 groups for ‘more chances to win’ are given, and a promise that the grant money will be sent to the user 20 minutes after registration.
A message in the comment section, supposedly written by the Crown Prince outlines three steps to follow in order to get the award. Step 1 is to click on the registration link provided, Step 2 urges the user to verify that their name is correct, while the third step says users will be contacted for delivery of the gift.
The link in Step 1 redirects to a website with a message congratulating the participant for winning ‘a fantastic amount of cash money’.
The website shows an image of the Crown Prince holding a dummy check of USD 1 million with three other individuals. The page has a countdown timer that serves as the registration button. Scrolling towards the bottom of the site reveals comments from users, some of whom claim that they have already received money.
However, clicking on the ‘Register Now’ button on the website redirects to a series of different online adverts, and not to a registration page for cash prizes as claimed in the post. That is how clickbait usually works.
Additionally, no such offer exists on Prince Al Maktoum’s official Facebook page. PesaCheck debunked a similar claim that the Crown Prince was offering grants on Facebook in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
PesaCheck has looked into a Facebook post claiming that Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Vice president and Prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, and ruler of the Emirate of Dubai, is giving out grant money, and finds it to be FALSE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake news or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck Fact-Checker Pius Enywaru and edited by PesaCheck Deputy Editor Enock Nyariki.
The article was approved for publication by PesaCheck Managing Editor Eric Mugendi.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water/sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.