"When you find out who owns the island next to Epstein's," reads a caption on an Instagram video, posted on May 7 and seemingly referring to Water Island. "Spoiler alert: it's Joe Biden," the poster then says.

The video has since been flagged as misinformation, playing on a falsehood that has been circulating since 2020—but has gained new traction since news broke that Little St. James, once Epstein's holding in the U.S. Virgin Islands, had been sold.

In July 2020, a Facebook post used an image that stated Ghislaine Maxwell—a former socialite who was found guilty of sex trafficking charges in connection to Epstein—"owns a submarine company and its based in the U.S. Virgin Islands."

It went on to say that "another private island a short distance away" had a submarine base, before asking: "Do you want to know who OWNS THIS PRIVATE ISLAND that is NEXT TO EPSTEIN'S and has MAXWELL'S SUB SITTING IN IT? JOE BIDEN!"

Before the post was taken down it received around 21,000 shares. Fact checks from the time show that the image had been reposted by other accounts.

Maxwell owned The TerraMar Project, which she described as an ocean conservation non-profit, but it was closed down in 2019 not long before she was arrested in New York.

According to local accounts, a U.S. military installation on Water Island was partially constructed during World War II to protect a submarine base on nearby St. Thomas, but it does not appear to have a base of its own.