Is the story of a French farm that found € 3.5 billion on its site true?

The material is updated ↓

At the end of May 2025, the news was encouraged on the network about how a successful Frenchman discovered gold nuggets weighing 150 tons. We decided to check whether something similar happened in reality.

The fact that the farmer Michelle Dupont discovered a new unique deposit in the French province of Overn was written by many Russian media (for example, TASS, RBC, "Kommersant" Russia Today, "Russian newspaper" Lenta.ru And "Gazeta.ru"). The history of amazing finds share users of social networks ("VKontakte" Facebook, Instagram, "Classmates" X, Telegram) and the platform blog ("Picabu","Zen"). The publications specify that the price of the land bordering the Dupon farm has risen sharply due to the number of people who want to try good luck. However, the media will not be able to benefit from the media, the Frenchman will not be able to benefit from its find: allegedly, according to the laws of France, all gold belongs to the state, even if it was found on private land.

The authors of most of the 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 the indexed page of this publication with the Farmer heading, however, the article itself at the time of writing was already unavailable and it was also failed to find its archival copy. Judging by the screenshots, the article was released on May 22, 2025 with the heading "The farmer found gold for 3 billion on his land, but will not receive a penny."

Russian -speaking media, citing The Mirror, give Dupon's story about how he found gold on his land. There are his quotes in English -language articles. However, the stock images of nuggets are used almost everywhere as illustrations - neither the photo of the Dupon, nor the pictures of the Golden Mountains from its site was “tested” anywhere. 

Despite the fact that the deposits of gold were allegedly found in France, not a single authoritative French media wrote about this, although the news of such a find is noteworthy even an exclusively amazing story of the farmer. The fact is that all world gold mining in 2024 Compiled 3300 tons, and most of them are mined in China, Russia and Australia. In 2023 in Europe gold mined Only in Bulgaria, Finland and Sweden, and in much more modest volumes (from 6.7 to 9.7 tons). Since 2000 no data There is no gold in France at all. If there were discovered a field equal in volume of 4.5% of global gold mining, the largest local media, and also Bureau of Geological and Mining France would definitely not bypass such news. 

The calculations of the value of the allegedly found precious metalla do not converge. At the time of writing this analysis, the price of a ton of gold by Exchange It amounted to about $ 108 million. At the end of April, when the news only appeared on the network, the price of gold was close to these values, which means that for 150 tons of Dupont could help out about $ 16 billion, or € 14 billion. Of course, fluctuations in the exchange prices can be significant, but in recent years the gold has never been lowered so that only € 3.5 billion is given even if 150 tons. To take into account that pure gold is traded on the exchange, and in the nuggets usually Contained From 5% to 15% of impurities, still the price should not differ at times.

Although in the Russian and English-language segments of the Internet the news was encouraged only at the end of May 2025, in French you can find earlier publications. Many of them were already inaccessible at the time of writing, but their archival copies were preserved. The earliest found “verified” publication appeared on April 19 on the site La Plasturgie. As you can see from the headings of other articles of this publication, it specializes in clicobite messages and does not much bother to verify the information. The authors of the publication, in turn, refer to the article in the publication of Atelier de France (the site is currently not available, and the archive copy of the article has not been preserved). 

Moreover, this is not the only news about the incredible finds that appeared on the publication’s website at about the same time with an article on Dupone. Just a few days after the amazing discovery of the Frenchman from the overwhelming Atelier de France told About how a 58-year-old landowner-this time from the new Aquitaine-found a natural gas deposit in his site, which was allegedly estimated at € 9 billion. On the same day, a portal appeared on the portal news This time the region was not specified about the discovery of a large cobalt deposit under the building of a rural school. Not a single large French media also wrote about these stories. French FACECHERS already refuted And other fakes that launched and/or distributed authors of Atelier de France. Moreover, the owners of the portal do not claim the quality of the content: under each article, the site posts a warning sign that all materials are generated using AI, may contain errors and inaccuracies and are intended only for entertainment purposes.

An article about the French farmer is an almost fabulous story about a simple person who accidentally discovered treasures, but immediately encountered injustice in the person of a state who was eager to put his paw on a wealth that had suddenly been falling on a person. It is not surprising that she so quickly encouraged and even got into some seemingly serious publications - I want to believe in it. Such fictional plots are quite popular - "verified" already Disassembled A similar story about the Kamchatka mushroom picker, supposedly finding a treasure, which the state later confiscated. At that time, the primary source was a public in VKontakte. In Atelier de France, judging by archival copiesDozens of such generated (and, apparently, partially or completely fictional) articles came out daily. And this portal is not the only one who specializes in such and new ones. 

Analytical service Newsguard in 2025 Identified 1271 A site engaged in such a and generation of fictional stories. Why is this done? Firstly, so the owners increase traffic and earn on the sale of advertising. Secondly, sometimes on such sites there are fakes of political topics, designed to denigrate one of the politicians or form a certain public opinion. Even if there are no real evidence of such information, a significant part of the site visitors will not go to check it, but they may well be distributed further, without even remembering where they initially saw this or that fake. 

This effect is aggravated by the growing popularity of neural networks. So, in the social network X in 2023 launched the GROK AI-Bot, designed to check the information published by users. Under many posts, commentators are now asking the question: "Is this true, @grok?" Like other neural networks, the bot is looking for information on the Internet, and does not check it on its own. They asked the Botu question in the comments under the story of Michel Dupone - and Grok immediately confirmed that she was truthful, citing "several news sources." He is in solidarity with his AI-Combat and ChatGPT. Because of this, even people who decided to verify the veracity of information still remain in ignorance.

Thus, there is no evidence that such a story really happened with one of the inhabitants of France. The site, on which the news originally released, specializes in articles generated with the help of AI, and directly declares that it is not responsible for errors or inaccuracies. And they really have in the article, from the price of gold to the scale of the allegedly discovered deposit. It also indirectly testifies to the fact that history is fully fictitious to attract traffic to the website. 

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

Photo on the cover: ChatGPT

Fake

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. Than "header knowledge" dangerous
2. Is the story of a teenager who found millennium shells with large black pearls on the beach?
3. Very strange cinema: Z-channels spoke about a fake documentary with Tom Cruz about corruption in the IOC, but the series did not become a world sensation