The $60 Million Lie: How Fake News Tricks Us

In October 2025, a bizarre tale took the internet by storm. It claimed that Robert Irwin, the well-known wildlife expert and son of the legendary Steve Irwin, had filed a $60 million lawsuit against Pete Hegseth, the U. S. Secretary of Defense. The story alleged that this legal action followed a heated dispute on a TV show. However, there was no evidence to support this claim. The story quickly spread across various Facebook pages, with eye-catching headlines like "BEATEN, BEATEN – PAY NOW! " designed to attract clicks. These posts often linked to suspicious websites loaded with advertisements. Despite the widespread sharing, a simple search on any search engine revealed no legitimate news sources reporting on this lawsuit. This incident highlights a larger issue: the proliferation of fake news involving celebrities and public figures. These fabricated stories are often created to generate ad revenue for the websites that host them. The Facebook page "Irwin Generations" was one of the platforms that shared this false narrative. Interestingly, they also posted another fabricated story about Robert Irwin dropping out of a dance competition. This is not an isolated event. Snopes, a reputable fact-checking website, has debunked similar stories in the past. They discovered that the same attention-grabbing phrase "BEATEN, BEATEN – PAY NOW! " was used in another fake news story about Tiger Woods suing Pete Hegseth. Efforts to contact the administrators of the "Irwin Generations" Facebook page for clarification have been unsuccessful. As of now, there is no response to the inquiries about the origin and intent behind these false stories.