Is Jeffrey Epstein alive? Viral photo has conspiracy theorists on a spree; is it real or fake?

For years, Jeffrey Epstein’s death has refused to fade from public memory. The unanswered questions around what happened inside his jail cell have kept conspiracy theories alive - from whispers of powerful people pulling strings to wild claims that he never died at all.

And now, with the US Department of Justice releasing a fresh batch of documents known as the “Epstein Files,” the internet has latched onto yet another theory: that Epstein is still alive and living somewhere quietly under a new identity.This time, the rumour took off after a photo began doing the rounds on X, Reddit and Facebook. The image shows a bearded man wearing dark sunglasses, with users confidently claiming it was Epstein “spotted alive in Tel Aviv, Israel.”

As the photo spread, so did the certainty in the captions. Many posts framed it as proof that Epstein faked his death and simply walked away from prison life into anonymity abroad.

Fact-checkers quickly pointed out that the original version of the photo carries a SynthID watermark, which suggests that much of the image was created or altered using Google’s AI tools, as flagged by Google Gemini. The full-size image also includes a small, diamond-shaped Gemini watermark in one corner - a detail that mysteriously disappeared in the cropped versions that went viral.

That missing watermark became a big red flag once people started tracing the image back to its source.

As for what really happened to Epstein, the official record hasn’t changed

In August 2019, he was found dead in his cell at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, and authorities ruled his death a suicide. Public doubt has never quite gone away, and over the years it has fuelled countless theories - from claims that his death was staged to rumours that he was secretly moved out of custody.The newly released Epstein files have only added to the renewed interest in his case, but they don’t offer any evidence that he is alive. The documents mainly include emails, internal records and investigative material. In other words, there’s plenty in them to reopen old debates, but nothing that supports the idea that Epstein is out there, alive and well, under a new name.