An image shared on Facebook and Instagram purports to show a tweet from the FBI’s verified Twitter account about the U.K.’s Prince Andrew.

Instagram/Screenshot

Verdict: False

There is no evidence the FBI tweeted the reply to Sky News. The fabricated image appears to have been created by a Twitter user.

Fact Check:

Prince Philip, the husband of British monarch Queen Elizabeth II, died on April 9 at the age of 99, Buckingham Palace announced. In the statement about his passing, the palace said the Royal Family “join with people around the world in mourning his loss.”

Prince Andrew briefly discussed his father’s death to Sky News, which then tweeted a video clip of his statement to its verified Twitter account. An image circulating online shows what looks to be a screen grab of the FBI replying to the Sky News tweet by saying, “Ooh, is he doing interviews now?”

NBC News reported in January 2020 that the FBI and New York prosecutors had reached out to Prince Andrew and his lawyers for an interview as part of an investigation into the deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and that a U.S. attorney said the royal had provided “zero cooperation.” The purported tweet appears to reference the federal prosecutor’s described lack of cooperation by Prince Andrew, who has been accused of having sex with a teenage girl trafficked by Epstein, an allegation he denies.

There is no evidence to suggest the alleged FBI tweet is real. It cannot be found on the FBI’s verified Twitter page or among the replies to the Sky News tweet. Archived screen grabs of the FBI’s Twitter timeline also show no record of the agency replying to the tweet in such a manner. The informal tone and language of the supposed reply do not match the FBI’s other tweets.

The earliest iteration of the image appears in a response to the Sky News tweet by Twitter user @mrnickharvey. In the tweet, the Twitter user indicated that he created the fake reply from the FBI.

Of course, the FBI would never actually tweet a reply like this, so I thought I’d mock it up for them instead. pic.twitter.com/3WSgu6j7Pw

— Nick Harvey (@mrnickharvey) April 11, 2021

“Of course, the FBI would never actually tweet a reply like this, so I thought I’d mock it up for them instead,” the user tweeted. (RELATED: Do These Photos Show Prince Andrew Posing With Epstein Accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre?)

Twitter user @mrnnickharvey appears to have posted images of other fabricated tweets from his account in the past.