When there is an opportunity to gain a positive reputation, individuals are more willing to sacrifice their immediate self-interest, and to behave cooperatively. Evolutionary models of cooperation pose that reputation-based partner choice can be an alternative to indirect reciprocity (Nowak and Sigmund, 2005), or a useful complement to it (Roberts, 2015). According to Sommerfeld et al. (2007), gossip is an effective alternative to direct observation in games of indirect reciprocity, and exchanging information can effectively support cooperation in a Public Goods Game (Wu et al, 2016). However, these studies overlook the fact that individuals can have strategic motives to lie, and therefore gossip can be completely unreliable. Tooby, Cosmides, & Barkow (1995) suggest that selection would have favored our disseminating information in the interests, not of objective truth but of our own success in social competition. Gossipers would have incentives to deceive receivers in ways that benefit the signaler (Hess, Hagen 2006), thus derogating rivals and masking their faults. Also, noise and unintentional errors are unavoidable features of information transmission, thus raising further doubts about the efficacy of gossip in sustaining cooperation over time and across different groups. In this experimental study, we use a combination of Public Good Games and gossip rounds in order to test to what extent gossip can remain truthful and sustain cooperation when participants can lie. 160 individuals played a combination of repeated PGG in groups of 4 individuals, and a one-shot final round in groups of 8. For the final game 2 randomly selected leaders formed the groups, and in the partner selection treatment, only the group with the highest score was rewarded. In both conditions, participants could send messages by filling a form in which they had to indicate the target, the receiver, and the source of the gossip, choosing between themselves as identifiable sources and an unknown other. Our preliminary analyses show that partner choice made individuals more cooperative, but this did not reduce the manipulative potential of gossip. Both source and content manipulation were used, but deception rates were similar between the two conditions.