Does a photo of stacks of banknotes sitting in a room or basement show USAID money found in the house of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy? No, that's not true: The photo has been online since 2007 and shows money discovered in a drug bust in Mexico. The picture has been used in jokes and memes for years.
The joke appeared (among other places) in a post on X (archived here) published on February 7, 2025, with a caption that read:
USAID found at Zelensky's house
This is what the post looked like at the time:
(Source: X screenshot taken Sat Feb 8 11:49:13 UTC 2025)
The photo has been online since at least 2007, when it appeared in an AP story published by SeattlePI (archived here) titled "Mexican suppliers filling void left by U.S. meth labs." The photo was captioned:
In March, U.S drug agents working with Mexican police discovered $206 million -- profits of methamphetamine sold in the United States -- stuffed inside walls, suitcases and closets in one of Mexico City's wealthiest neighborhoods. It was described as the largest drug cash seizure ever.
MEXICO ATTORNEY GENERAL'S OFFICE/AP
(Source: Seattlepi.com screenshot taken Sat Feb 8 11:56:29 UTC 2025)
In addition to the 2007 original photo publication, Lead Stories found more than 1,400 copies of the image dating back to 2008 by performing a reverse image search on TinEye (archived here). In many of these instances, the photo was shared under pretenses different from its initial reporting.
The account (archived here) that shared the photo at the source of this fact check identifies itself as "parody and sarcasm" in its bio, which read:
Not associated with the Federal Reserve. Financial Parody and sarcasm. Not investment advice.
Below is how that account appeared at the time of this publication:
(Source: X screenshot taken Sat Feb 8 12:03:51 UTC 2025)
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Other Lead Stories fact checks involving Volodymyr Zelenskyy can be read here.
