Media mogul Oprah Winfrey has been a frequent target of misinformation since the wildfires that devastated Maui, Hawaii in August 2023.
Now, a Facebook post links her to the disappearance of more than a dozen missing children on the island.
“Oprah is AMAZED after 15 children finally found in Maui,” reads the text on a video shared October 2 on Facebook. The words “save children” appear below it.
“Why are people speculating about Oprah because of this?” someone in the video said. “Was she involved in such a horrific alleged act? You’re about to find out.”
The narrator later says, “There are still some children unaccounted for, so in light of Oprah’s alleged past involvement in similar incidents, some individuals are now raising awareness about her possible connection to this supposed latest tragedy.”
The video then cuts to a man saying: “Where are the kids, Oprah? It was just two and a half weeks ago, and now we’re not allowed to talk about it, we’re not free to live.” this country.”
This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. We found no credible news or other authoritative sources to corroborate this post’s claims.
We found a YouTube video that includes some of the clips from the Instagram post’s video, and it refers to a baseless and debunked story about Navy SEALs finding “15 children Missing Maui was kept in padlocked cages lined with padding.
According to the Maui Police Department and FBI, around the time that story was published on September 17, 2023, only one of the 31 known missing people was a minor.
We rate the claims that Oprah was “worried” about this fake news story, much less that she was responsible for the missing minor in Maui, to be false.