An image shows that “following his resignation, Boris Johnson has escaped to the sea.”

An imposter Twitter account posing as an affiliate of the BBC circulated an old, out-of-context photo of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and falsely claimed it showed him at the beach after he announced his resignation as Conservative Party leader.

“BREAKING: Following his resignation, Boris Johnson has escaped to the sea,” said the July 7 tweet, which showed an image of Johnson running into the water and quickly went viral.

The tweet came from “BCC News,” a Twitter account with a name, handle and logo designed to resemble legitimate, verified Twitter accounts run by the BBC.

The “BCC News” Twitter account created parody content, however; social media users who clicked to its page would see that its bio said, “fake news not real, not affiliated with BBC.”

The tweet about Johnson went viral. Many users reshared it as a joke, and copycat tweets spread across the platform. 

Screenshots of the tweet, which were posted on Facebook and Instagram, earned thousands of interactions, the social media insights tool CrowdTangle showed. 

The posts were flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

But the reshares and replies to the original tweet suggested that some people thought it came from an authentic BBC News account, and that the photo of Johnson at the beach was current.

The image of Johnson was not taken after his resignation. It was cribbed from a video of him jogging and swimming at a beach in Cornwall, England, in June 2021. Johnson was in Cornwall then for a summit of seven leading industrial nations. The Sun, a British tabloid newspaper, published several screenshots from the video to its website at the time, under a headline that likened Johnson to “Baywatch” actor David Hasselhoff.

Twitter has since permanently suspended the “BCC News” account for violating its policy surrounding misleading and deceptive identities, a company spokesperson confirmed. 

We rate the tweets claiming that an image shows that “following his resignation, Boris Johnson has escaped to the sea” False.