Fact Check: Did Oprah Winfrey receive $40M FEMA grant to rebuild her mansion following Maui wildfires?
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: A wild rumor about Oprah Winfrey and FEMA has been circulating on social media.
The entertainment icon is accused of pocketing a $40 million construction grant from the US Federal Emergency Management Agency to rebuild a mansion after the 2023 Maui wildfires, even though her home didn’t burn down. But is there any truth to this? Let’s find out below.
Claim: Oprah Winfrey received $40M FEMA grant to rebuild mansion following Maui wildfires
Snopes reported that readers bombarded the fact-checker with questions about the alleged payout, with some insisting Oprah Winfrey received $22 million instead of $40 million.
On August 22, a Threads user posted a meme placing Winfrey’s face over an aerial shot of a mansion. The caption read, “Oprah Winfrey took a $40 million construction grant from FEMA to rebuild her mansion after the Maui fires. The only problem is… not a single inch of her property burned.”
That post drew more than 59,000 views and featured another fiery caption: “Get the $40M back. BTW, where’s all the missing Maui children?"
The rumor quickly spread across Facebook, iFunny, Gettr, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and X. One X post alone racked up 388,000 views, with many users treating it as gospel truth.
🚨 SCAM ALERT: Oprah Winfrey — billionaire “philanthropist” — took a $40 MILLION FEMA construction grant to “rebuild her mansion” after the Maui fires.
— John McAfee 🇺🇸 News (@mcafeenew) August 23, 2025
Problem is… not a single inch of her estate burned.
Families in Maui lost everything. Children are still missing. Survivors… pic.twitter.com/Zjv3PJSlII
Fact Check: False, story came from a satirical Facebook page
The problem is that the entire story was cooked up by a self-described “satirical” Facebook page, in other words, fake news with a sense of humor.
Snopes conducted thorough searches on DuckDuckGo, Google, and Yahoo but found zero evidence that Winfret ever received a single FEMA dollar after the 2023 Maui inferno.
That devastating August 2023 disaster left at least 102 people dead, destroyed the historic town of Lahaina, and reduced thousands of buildings to ash. It also spawned a wave of conspiracy theories still circulating on TikTok and other platforms.
Some of those tall tales, such as claims that “over 1,000 children are missing”, have already been debunked by FactCheck.org. Still, they continue to rack up likes from users who mistake wild speculation for fact.
Even Bing’s AI tool reportedly stumbled, generating an inaccurate answer that reinforced the $40 million rumor. Its “sources” included an unrelated New York Post article and the same meme from iFunny.co.
The origin of the claim about Oprah Winfrey
This juicy piece of gossip appears to have originated from America’s Last Line of Defense, essentially a troll factory masquerading as satire.
On August 22, the page manager uploaded the same Oprah Winfrey meme that was later recycled across multiple platforms. Earlier versions — including April, May, and July’s $22 million claim — also appeared under their banner. The page doesn’t hide its intent; its bio openly states, “The flagship of the ALLOD network of trollery and propaganda for cash. Nothing on this page is real.”
A closer look at the meme itself reveals a tiny logo carrying the same disclaimer: “Nothing on this page is real.”
It is true that Winfrey owns property in Maui — TMZ confirmed that much. But the photo in the meme is not Hawaii. It actually depicts her Montecito mansion in Santa Barbara County, California.
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