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A fake Warren 'Buffet' is going Twitter viral with life advice

Warren Buffett in 2018. Not “Warren Buffet.” (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)
Warren Buffett in 2018. Not “Warren Buffet.” (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

UPDATE 8/28/2018: Star recording artist Kanye West is a fan of the fake Buffett account.

A fake Warren Buffett Twitter account went viral early Monday morning, getting hundreds of thousands of retweets and likes for various self-help-style messages.

“WarrenBuffet99,” whose avatar is a photo of a smiling Warren Buffett, began tweeting Saturday, but has already been tweeting at a fast pace. As of publication, there were two dozen tweets and counting.

The real Buffett, the billionaire investor and Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A, BRK.B) CEO has two t’s in his name and is not a frequent user of the platform, tweeting just once in 2016, about Yahoo Finance’s livestream of the Berkshire Annual Meeting, and twice the year before.

“A number of fake Twitter accounts, often with one T, have been discovered,” said a Buffett spokesperson. “Mr. Buffett does not plan to tweet. The few tweets on his official account have been done by a friend of his.”

Buffett, worth an estimated $85.8 billion, has been known to deliver wisdom rooted in common sense about investing, spending, and life, but not quite in a “10 success tips” self-help style.

The fake Twitter comes as the real Buffett agrees to purchase a 3 to 4% stake in Paytm, an Indian payments company valued at $10 billion.

In addition to the success tips, the viral fake “Buffet” has tweeted “signs of maturity,” things not to do, traits of what the “smartest people I know,” what to do to be healthy, things you will and will not regret, what is “cool,” “what to be thankful for” and much more.

One post, “advice to young people” chalked up over 60,000 retweets and 142,000 likes and was filled with nuggets like “keep in touch with your friends” and “practice public speaking.”

The widespread support for the fake tweets shows that there is a thirst for actionable insights from Warren Buffett. Fortunately, there is an easy way to get them, as the legendary investor has a long history of articles, interviews, videos, letters to shareholders and collections of his essays that are available and far better than his fake Twitter account.

Requests for comment to “WarrenBuffet99” were unanswered as of publication.

Warren Buffett’s real, verified Twitter account is @WarrenBuffett, and here is his first tweet:

Ethan Wolff-Mann is a writer at Yahoo Finance focusing on consumer issues, retail, personal finance, and more. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann.

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