On June 4, Friday, an image supposedly showing screenshots of a couple of tweets posted by Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, in which he cryptically makes references to the convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein and his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell in an acrostic code, started circulating on social media.
The first alleged tweet contains a list of countries and the initial letter of each country spells out, "I Miss You Ghislaine."
The Twitter user shared a follow-up tweet appearing to show a similar message in acrostic code allegedly posted by Musk that read out the words, "RIP Jeffrey."
Fact-Check: It's a Hoax
We checked archived versions of Musk's Twitter timeline for the posts, but were unable to find any traces of the tweets. We were also unable to find any retweets containing broken links to the tweets, which means it was highly unlikely that Musk posted them before deleting it. Also, given that Musk has 50 million followers on the micro-blogging platform there are no credible news reports about the alleged tweets, which outlets would have jumped on had they actually been posted from his account.
The image appears to have been created as a hoax in order to establish ties between Musk, Epstein and Maxwell. The British socialite is currently awaiting trial on charges that she recruited young girls for Epstein's sex trafficking ring. Critics of Musk and conspiracy theorists have time and again tried to push Musk's connection to Maxwell with a photo of the pair.
While there is a genuine photo of Musk with Maxwell that was taken at a 2014 Vanity Fair Oscars after-party, Musk has denied that he knows the accused sex trafficker.
In addition to pushing conspiracy theories about Musk and Maxwell, the fake tweets appear to be mocking a genuine tweet Musk posted on Thursday, June 3, in which he seemingly spelled the word "cum" in acrostic code by posting the words "Canada," "USA" and "Mexico," one after another. The post even caused the cryptocurrency CumRocket coin to surge more than 85%.
