Is the story true about the French farmer who found €3.5 billion worth of gold on his property?

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At the end of May 2025, news went viral on the Internet about how a lucky Frenchman had discovered gold nuggets weighing 150 tons. We decided to check if anything like this actually happened.

The fact that farmer Michel Dupont discovered a new unique deposit in the French province of Auvergne was written by many Russian media (for example, TASS, RBC, "Kommersant", Russia Today, "Russian newspaper", Lenta.ru And "Gazeta.ru"). The story of the amazing discovery is being shared by social media users (“VKontakte", Facebook, Instagram, "Classmates", X, Telegram) and blogging platforms (“Peekaboo", "Zen"). The publications specify that the price of land bordering the Dupont farm has risen sharply due to the number of people who also want to try their luck. However, the media report that the Frenchman will not be able to benefit from his find: supposedly, according to French laws, all gold belongs to the state, even if it was found on private land.

The authors of most publications in the media and social networks refer to the news in the British tabloid The Mirror, some attach screenshots of the article. Google also shows an indexed page of this publication with a headline about the farmer, but the article itself was no longer available at the time of writing the analysis and its archived copy “Verified” was also not found. Judging by the screenshots, the article was published on May 22, 2025 with the headline “Farmer discovers gold worth 3 billion on his land, but won’t get a penny.”

Russian-language media, citing The Mirror, cite Dupont's story about how he found gold on his land. There are quotes from him in English-language articles as well. However, almost everywhere stock images of nuggets are used as illustrations - “Verified” did not find any photos of Dupont or photographs of golden mountains from his site anywhere. 

Despite the fact that gold deposits were allegedly found in France, not a single reputable French media outlet wrote about this, although the news of such a discovery is remarkable even without regard to the amazing story of the farmer. The fact is that the entire world gold production in 2024 amounted to 3,300 tons, with most of it mined in China, Russia and Australia. Gold in Europe in 2023 mined only in Bulgaria, Finland and Sweden, and in much more modest volumes (from 6.7 to 9.7 tons). Since 2000, none data there is no mention of gold mining in France at all. If a deposit equivalent in volume to 4.5% of global gold production was discovered there, the largest local media, as well as Bureau of Geological and Mining Research France certainly would not have been spared such news. 

Calculations of the cost of the allegedly found precious metal also do not agree. At the time of writing this analysis, the price of a ton of gold is stock exchange was about $108 million. At the end of April, when the news first appeared on the Internet, the price of gold was close to these values, which means that for 150 tons DuPont could gain about $16 billion, or €14 billion. Of course, price fluctuations on the stock exchange can be significant, but in recent years gold has never dropped in price so low that for 150 tons only €3.5 billion was given. Even if we take into account that pure gold is traded on the stock exchange, and in nuggets usually contained from 5% to 15% impurities, still the price should not differ significantly.

Although the news went viral in the Russian and English-language segments of the Internet only at the end of May 2025, earlier publications can also be found in French. Many of them were no longer available at the time of writing, but archival copies of them have been preserved. The earliest “Verified” publication found appeared on April 19 on the website La Plasturgie. As you can see from the titles of other articles in this publication, it specializes in clickbait messages and does not bother itself much with checking the information. The authors of the publication, in turn, refer to an article in the publication Atelier de France (the site is currently unavailable, and there is no archived copy of the article). 

Moreover, this is not the only news about incredible finds that appeared on the publication’s website around the same time as the article about Dupont. Just a few days after the amazing discovery of the Frenchman from Auvergne Atelier de France told about how a 58-year-old landowner - this time from New Aquitaine - found a natural gas deposit on his property, which was immediately allegedly valued at €9 billion. On the same day, the portal appeared news about the discovery of a large cobalt deposit under the building of a rural school - the region was not specified at this time. Neither major French media outlet wrote about these stories. French fact checkers already refuted and other fakes that were launched and/or distributed by the authors of Atelier de France. Moreover, the owners of the portal do not make any claims about the quality of the content: under each article on the site there is a warning sign that all materials are generated using AI, may contain errors and inaccuracies and are intended for entertainment purposes only.

The article about the French farmer is an almost fairy-tale story about a simple man who accidentally discovered treasures, but was immediately faced with injustice in the face of the state, eager to lay its paw on the wealth that suddenly fell on a person. It’s no wonder that it went viral so quickly and even ended up in some seemingly serious publications—you want to believe in it. Such fictional stories are quite popular - “Verified” already sorted it out a similar story about a Kamchatka mushroom picker who allegedly found a treasure, which was then confiscated by the state. At that time, the primary source was a public page on VKontakte. At Atelier de France, judging by archival copies, dozens of similar generated (and, apparently, partially or completely fictitious) articles were published every day. And this portal is not the only one specializing in such AI news. 

Analytical service NewsGuard in 2025 revealed 1271 sites engaged in similar AI generation of fictional stories. Why is this being done? Firstly, this is how owners increase traffic and earn money by selling advertising. Secondly, sometimes fake political topics appear on such sites, designed to denigrate one of the politicians or to form a certain public opinion. Even if there is no real confirmation of such information, a significant part of site visitors will not go to check it, but they may well spread it further, without even remembering where they initially saw this or that fake. 

This effect is exacerbated by the growing popularity of neural networks. Thus, in social network X, in 2023, they launched an AI bot called Grok, designed to check the information published by users. Under many posts, commenters are now asking: “Is this true, @grok?” Like other neural networks, the bot searches for information on the Internet, but does not check it on its own. They asked the bot a question in the comments under the story about Michel Dupont - and Grok immediately confirmed that it was true, citing “several news sources.” I agree with my AI brother and ChatGPT. Because of this, even people who decide to check the veracity of the information are still left in the dark.

Thus, there is no evidence that such a story actually happened to one of the residents of France. The site where the news originally appeared specializes in AI-generated articles and explicitly states that it is not responsible for errors or inaccuracies. And they really are in the article, starting from the price of gold to the scale of the allegedly discovered deposit. This also indirectly indicates that the story is completely fictitious to attract traffic to the site. 

Correction June 2, 2025: The text incorrectly stated the cost of a ton of gold - at the time of writing the analysis it was not $108,000, but $108 million. The original version of the analysis can be found at link.

Cover photo: ChatGPT

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What do our verdicts mean?

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