Satirical article claiming Pfizer’s VP was arrested believed to be true

A screenshot of an alleged tweet has gone viral on social media. The tweet carries an article that claims Pfizer’s Vice President has been arrested. The viral screenshot reads, ‘’The Vice President of Pfizer has been arrested from his home and has been charged with multiple counts of fraud by the US Federal Agents.’’

Sharing the screenshot, a user named Mahaguru wrote, ‘’Thank you to the Indian government for not succumbing to international pressure and saving us.’’ (archive link)

Giving credit where its due, thank you GoI for not yielding to international pressure and saving us! pic.twitter.com/jvGkeTaYfI

— Mahaguru (@wittymaharia) May 11, 2022

One user shared the viral screenshot, writing, ‘’The Vice President of Pfizer Group has been arrested after a document leaked showing only 12% vaccine efficacy and severe side effects. Thank you to our government that Pfizer was not allowed in India. Remember how Kejriwal, Uddhav Thackeray and Ashok Gehlot openly advocated for the Pfizer vaccine’. ’(archive link)

Rahul Roshan, CEO of pro-BJP propaganda website OpIndia, retweeted a tweet with the same claim. (archive link)

Similarly, many other users also tweeted this screenshot with the same claim.

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Fact-check

We noticed that the tweet which has gone viral is from the Twitter handle, ‘@tlloydjones’. This user tweeted an article on May 7 claiming that Pfizer’s VP was arrested. In the same tweet thread, the user wrote, ‘’Surprisingly, this is not ‘reportable’ to any major news outlets. Are you guys awake right now?’’

The viral screenshot shows a link to the website ‘vancouvertimes.org’. When we looked at the About section of the website, we found that it clearly states that the website is for entertainment purposes. The website publishes satirical articles.

In fact, the website also updated the Pzifer article to reflect that it is a satirical piece.

Ultimately, a satirical article about the arrest of Pfizer’s VP was shared by many users believing it to be genuine. False claims have been made before on social media regarding Pfizer’s vaccine as well.