An image shared on Facebook claims billionaire George Soros has been “arrested in Philadelphia for election interference.”

Verdict: False

There is no evidence that Soros has been arrested for election interference. A spokesperson for the Open Society Foundations confirmed the claim is “entirely false.”

Fact Check:

The Facebook post appears to show a screen grab of an article recently published on the website YourNewsWire, with the headline alleging that Soros was “arrested in Philadelphia for election interference.” Soros, a billionaire who has donated to progressive causes through his Open Society Foundations, is often a target of online misinformation.

YourNewsWire’s article, which no longer appears to be available, claimed Soros “has been arrested and is currently being held in federal custody” in Philadelphia related to a supposedly “unsealed indictment filed in the Western District of Pennsylvania” that charges Soros with “serious crimes relating to the US election.” The article featured alleged photos of the indictment against Soros.

There is, however, no evidence that Soros has been arrested for election interference nor that the District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania has unsealed an indictment against him for such a thing. A reverse image search reveals the indictment pictured in the YourNewsWire article has been altered. In the real federal indictment, charges such as wire fraud, damage to computers, aggravated identity theft and aiding and abetting have been leveled against six Russian nationals, not Soros.

If Soros had been arrested for election interference, it would surely have been reported by national media outlets, yet no reports could be found. Jonathan Birchall, a spokesperson for Open Society Foundations, confirmed in an email to the DCNF that “this is entirely false.” (RELATED: Does George Soros Own Two Sigma Investments?)

YourNewsWire, a website known for sharing misinformation, has been fact-checked at least 80 times, according to the Poynter Institute.

This fact check is available at IFCN’s 2020 US Elections FactChat #Chatbot on WhatsApp. Click here, for more.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].