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FACT CHECK: Is Bill Gates Related To Ghislaine Maxwell?

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An Instagram post claims Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is related to Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime confidant of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

 

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Verdict: False

While Gates’ mother was born Mary Maxwell, there is no evidence she is related to Robert or Ghislaine Maxwell.

Fact Check:

Multiple Facebook users recently shared a photo of a bespectacled young man appearing to talk with two rabbis. They have attempted to use the photo to connect Gates to Ghislaine Maxwell through an alleged familial connection.

“Bill Gates with Rabbi Schneerson the head of the Jewish extremist end times cult Chabad Lubavitch,” reads the text accompanying the image. “Gate’s mother is a Maxwell, related to the Israeli Mossad agents Robert Maxwell and his daughter Ghislaine, who used child trafficking to blackmail world leaders with Jeffrey Epstein.”

But Gates is not pictured. A reverse image search reveals the photo was published in a 2014 Jerusalem Post article. It does, in fact, depict the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, but the man the post claims to be Gates is actually the author of the article, Yosef Abramowitz, per the photo’s caption.

Gates’ mother was born Mary Maxwell in Seattle in 1929, the daughter of James Willard Maxwell and Adele Thompson, according to the biography “Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire.” There is no evidence she is related to Robert Maxwell or his daughter Ghislaine Maxwell, who both lived in the U.K. for most of their lives.

Media mogul Robert Maxwell was born Jan Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch in 1923 in Czechoslovakia and only changed his name in 1948 after moving to the U.K., nearly 20 years after Mary Maxwell was born on a different continent, per Business Insider.

Some people have linked Robert Maxwell to the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, a popular but unproven claim, according to The Daily Mail. Similar unsubstantiated rumors surround Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, The Sun reported.

Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested in early July on charges that she allegedly helped Epstein recruit minors to sexually abuse, according to NPR. She is currently being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where she awaits trial after being denied bail, per The Associated Press.

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