A rumor that circulated online in August 2025 claimed singer-songwriter Adam Lambert donated nearly $13 million to a homeless shelter initiative. Snopes readers emailed us to ask whether the rumor was true. One reader messaged, "There is a story circulating on Facebook about Adam Lambert donating $12.5 million to a homeless shelter initiative." Another person asked, "Adam Lambert donates entire $12.9 million? Real or not?"
For example, on Aug. 4, a manager of the Glittering Voices Facebook page posted (archived) the story. The post, receiving nearly 100,000 reactions, displayed an image featuring three pictures, including photos showing Lambert, bunk beds and small shelters, as well as two links to an advertisement-filled article in the top comments. The story began, "BREAKING NEWS: Adam Lambert Donates Entire $12.9 Million Bonus and Sponsorship Earnings to Homeless Shelter Initiative, Funding 150 Housing Units with 300 Shelter Beds."
(Glittering Voices/Facebook)
Other Facebook users also shared the same claim, including links in top comments leading to the same ad-filled article or similar stories hosted on other websites. Users on Bluesky (archived), Instagram (archived), Threads and YouTube posted the rumor as well.
However, searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo, as well as social media platforms, found no news media outlets reporting about Lambert donating a large sum of money to a homeless shelter initiative. Instead, those searches located posts (archived) promoting the rumor as far back as early June. Prominent outlets would have widely reported this rumor by early August, if true.
Rather, the unknown person or people who authored the story fabricated the entire matter as one of hundreds of inspirational tales depicting famous people, including celebrities and athletes, performing inspiring acts of kindness. Those users aimed to earn ad revenue from the articles linked in the comments of the aforementioned Facebook posts.
A reverse-image search for the post's picture of bunk beds located a January 2024 article about a homeless shelter in Georgia, while another search for the photo of tiny homes found a February 2024 story about providing for the homeless in Canada. Neither article mentioned Lambert's name.
Snopes contacted representatives for Lambert to ask if they wished to share any comments about the matter, as well as a manager of the Glittering Voices Facebook page to inquire about the fictional stories displayed on their feed. We will update this story if we receive more information.
Further Lambert rumors, AI, Vietnam and glurge
A different post (archived) also appearing on the Glittering Voices Facebook page on Aug. 3 claimed Lambert donated $5.9 million — a different amount of money than the other post — to the same cause. That post displayed a fake photo of Lambert handing a key to a man with two children. A user created that inauthentic picture with an artificial-intelligence (AI) tool, as exhibited by the cartoonish look of Lambert's face and hair. To anyone experienced in repeatedly examining AI-generated photos, the smiles shown by the children also closely resembled those seen in AI-created pictures in recent months and years.
(Glittering Voices/Facebook)
The fact that the Facebook page's posts displayed conflicting dollar amounts further indicated that the page's managers were simply trying different strategies to attempt to bring in clicks on their articles so they could earn ad revenue based on the lies.
A check of the Facebook page's "page transparency" tab showed a majority of its managers resided in Vietnam — a country that often appears in our research on pages promoting these sorts of fake stories.
These sorts of stories all resemble glurge, which Dictionary.com defines as stories "that are supposed to be true and uplifting, but which are often fabricated and sentimental."
In recent weeks, users also promoted made-up stories about Lambert's alleged donations of his money, talents and time following the Texas floods in early July, just as they did for other musicians including Jelly Roll, Bruce Springsteen, Blake Shelton and others.
For further reading, Snopes previously reported on another story claiming Lambert replaced James Hetfield as lead singer of Metallica.