The music legend, 65, became the latest notable name to fall victim to an Internet death hoax when “RIP Cher” became a Twitter trend late Thursday night and spread like wildfire into Friday morning.

The rumor apparently started when a user by the name @Lorraine_Star, who describes herself as a “Rihanna look-a-like,” created a phony tweet that was made to look like a retweet from CNN’s official account, according to Rumor Fix.

The fake message read: “RT @CNN: American recording artist Cher dies at 65 years old. Found dead in Malibu home.”

While Cher hasn’t been active on Twitter since Jan. 22, her good friend, jewelry designer Loree Rodkin, set the record straight.

“Whoever started that stupid rumor needs to have their face dragged across concrete,” she tweeted. “It’s a hoax. She’s fine.”

Rodkin explained the pop icon has simply been offline because “she’s a busy girl.”

“She’s so NOT dead,” the designer added.

Cher isn’t the first celebrity to get roped into a death hoax. Jackie Chan has had to prove his pulse was still beating on multiple occasions, while Justin Bieber, Will Smith, Jim Carrey and many others have all fallen victim to the obnoxious rumor within the past year.

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Robert Hegyes, an actor whose Jewish-Puerto Rican character Juan Epstein was one of the Sweathogs on the 1970s TV sitcom “Welcome Back, Kotter,” died Thursday of a heart attack in New Jersey. He was 60.

Mr. Hegyes, who had a mop of dark curly hair, played Juan Luis Pedro Phillipo de Huevos Epstein on “Welcome Back, Kotter,” which also starred John Travolta, Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs and Ron Palillo as wise-cracking students at a Brooklyn high school who were mentored by their teacher, played by Gabe Kaplan. It aired on ABC from 1975 to 1979.

Of Hungarian and Italian descent, Mr. Hegyes was born May 7, 1951, in Perth Amboy, N.J. He graduated from what is now Rowan University in Glassboro, N.J., and worked as a substitute teacher between acting jobs before landing the part in the hit sitcom.

After the show ended, he played Chico Marx onstage in a national touring production of “Groucho” with Kaplan in the title role. Mr. Hegyes later had a recurring part as Detective Manny Esposito on the 1980s TV police drama “Cagney and Lacey,” did stand-up comedy and tried writing screenplays.

But he would be best remembered for “Welcome Back, Kotter.”

“It’s a job where I went to work and laughed every day,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1995. “So how do you beat that?”