New conspiracy theories hold that Jeffrey Epstein is alive and well

The publication of the Epstein files by the US Department of Justice on January 30 has shone a light on the troubling links between the financier convicted of sex crimes and a number of well-known political figures and business leaders. The release of these documents has also sparked conspiracy theories that Jeffrey Epstein is still alive. Despite the fact that Epstein was discovered dead in his cell in a New York correctional centre on August 10, 2019, some social media users are sharing what they say is proof of life. Turns out, however, there is no basis to this “proof”.

• Is Epstein alive and well in Israel? Nope, those images were generated by AI 

“Israel faked his death,” claimed a social media user on February 5 in a post on X that has since garnered more than six million views. The post features what he claims is a photo of Epstein, alive, sporting white hair and a shaggy beard and walking the streets of Tel Aviv in Israel.

However, the image is entirely fake: it was generated by artificial intelligence (AI). If you run the image through a reverse image search (click here to check out our handy guide), it leads you to the original version of the image posted on the Reddit forum “hardaiimages”, which shares AI-generated images.  

The AI-generated image on Reddit features the people’s full bodies, while the X image is cropped at the waistline. This crop was likely made to cut out the indication that the image was generated by artificial intelligence.

If you look closely, there is a diamond shape on the bottom-right corner of the original image posted on Reddit: it’s the logo of Nano Banana, Google’s artificial image generator which is integrated into Gemini, Google’s AI chatbot.  

Google Lens also indicates that the image posted on Reddit was “created with Google’s AI”. Images generated by Nano Banana also have an invisible watermark that can be read by SynthID, the tool for detecting AI-generated content in Google Lens.

Social media users also took to X on February 7, 2026 to share another image purported to show Epstein, garnering more than 2.4 million views. In it, Epstein has long hair and a shaggy beard and is wearing a black hoodie. Behind him, you can see a car with red taillights. 

Journalist Henk van Ess reported that the image was based on a real photo that had been doctored using AI. 

If you run this image through Tineye, a tool for carrying out reverse image searches, then you’ll find the original photo was published on May 27, 2020 – after Epstein’s death – by British tabloid The Sun. The image was taken from a Netflix documentary released in 2020.  The car with the red taillights that appears in the image on X also appears in this image, and Epstein is wearing the same clothes in both images.

In the original photo, Epstein is clean-shaven with short hair. The image that circulated on X was doctored, probably using AI, to make his hair and beard long. 

• Is Epstein still playing Fortnite? No – Fortnite claims that the account belongs to someone else

Social media users took to X on February 5 to share an even more incongruous so-called "proof of life" for Epstein. They claimed that the financier was playing the video game Fortnite in August 2025, six years after the announcement of his death. A post featuring this claim garnered more than 7.8 million views on X.

As proof, these social media users shared a screengrab of a Fortnite user with the handle “littlestjeffl1”. They argue the profile is based in Israel, pointing to the presence of an Israeli flag on the avatar.

However, there is no basis to this claim. It does appear that, at one time, Epstein did use the handle “littlestjeffl1” (you can see this on the US Department of Justice website if you search the keywords “littlestjeffl1”). However, the documents posted by the department indicate that he used this handle for his YouTube account. There is no mention of a Fortnite account with the handle littlestjeffl1 in the Epstein files.

A Fortnite official took to X to say that the account littlestjeffl1 did not belong to Jeffrey Epstein. An existing account owner changed his name to this handle: 

“A few days ago, an existing Fortnite account owner changed their username from something totally unrelated to littlestjeff1, following the revelation of littlestjeff1 as a name on YouTube.”

The Fortnite official added that there was no sign of the email addresses mentioned in the Epstein files in Epic, the platform that supports the Fortnite game. 

“Since the public document releases [of the Epstein files], people have created Fortnite accounts with similar-looking email addresses and user names,” reads the X post from Fortnite.

This article has been translated from the original in French by Brenna Daldorph.