Fact Check: FEMA Is NOT Giving Away $1,000 Checks

Fact Check

  • by: Victoria Eavis
Fact Check: FEMA Is NOT Giving Away $1,000 Checks Joking

Is FEMA -- the Federal Emergency Management Agency -- giving away "free money" by sending $1,000 checks next week to everyone? No, that's not true: This started as a joke, but you might not realize it unless you click on a suspicious link that leads you to a photo of a gorilla flipping off the camera.

The claim appeared in a post (archived here) shared on Facebook on July 13, 2020. The post read:

HERES SOMETHING TO MAKE YOU ALL SMILE.....GO GET YOUR FREE MONEY !!! First check STIMULUS, 2nd check FEMA, THEY GIVING AWAY MONEY........THANK ME LATER !!!πŸ’œπŸ’œπŸ’œπŸ’œπŸ’œπŸ’œπŸ’œMake sure you guys fill out the application for FEMA assistance so you can get that $1000 check next week. Everyone can get a FEMA Check Follow The Link ASAP #FreeMoney #blacklivesmatter #sharealaugh

This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:

Facebook screenshot

(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue Jul 14 16:52:07 2020 UTC)

This was the photo the "application for FEMA assistance" link took Facebook users to when they clicked it:

Screen Shot 2020-07-14 at 1.14.55 PM.png

This Facebook post comes about two weeks before the current July 31 deadline of the $600 per week federal unemployment benefit program. As of July 14, 2020, a new federal benefits program was not in place to follow up this fast-approaching deadline.

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  Victoria Eavis

Victoria Eavis is a fact checker at Lead Stories. She recently graduated from Duke University with a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology. In her last few months at Duke, she was a reporter for a student news site, The 9th Street Journal, that covers the city of Durham, North Carolina. 

Read more about or contact Victoria Eavis

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