An old, erroneous report by website opensourceinvestigatio
Bearing the headline, “Exposed: Grace Poe’s Million Dollar Mansion in the US,” the story describes Poe’s former U.S. residence as a “million dollar mansion” in Washington, D.C. having “9 rooms, 2 stories (sic) with a basement and an attached garage.”
The story is more than two years old. It first came out on March 2, 2016 and was revived this week by several Facebook pages shortly after Poe filed her re-election bid on Oct. 15 for the 2019 midterm polls. The page Showbiz Government re-shared the story with the caption, “Grace Poe’s loyalty is not RP but in US??????????”
The piece is also irrelevant: The senator’s family in fact sold the property in April 2006, a detail that was not revealed when Poe admitted in 2016 ownership of the house with husband Teodoro “Neil” Llamanzares. She said then: “Whoever is claiming that it was a million-dollar mansion, we didn’t buy it at that price.”
The house was bought in 1999 for $230,000 (then about P9.8 million), but its value has appreciated over the years, according to several news reports. According to several U.S. real estate websites, the property only has four bedrooms, not nine as claimed by opensourceinvestigations.
Poe’s property in the U.S. was made an issue by her detractors during the 2016 election where she ran for president. She was portrayed as a rich person unable to relate to workers and ordinary citizens.
Opensourceinvestigations.com’s incorrect story could have reached over 8.8 milllion people. Traffic from social media largely came from the pages Open Source Investigations, Showbiz Government and Paula Defensor Knack.
Opensourceinvestigations.com was created in December 2015.
(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
