Elon Musk has always wanted to be a celebrity, I’m pretty sure. Musk is well-known in the business world for being CEO of Tesla. He’s well known in the gossip world for dating Amber Heard and Grimes, and for being Azealia Banks’ latest enemy. I kind of want to give Azealia partial credit for this: because of Azealia’s social media posts, people in the business world began to really question some of Elon Musk’s decisions and his decision-making process. Azealia Banks drew a portrait of a man who did drugs and tweeted about Tesla, and made him seem like a pathetic loser, basically. So… about the high-tweeting, last month, Elon tweeted this:
Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 7, 2018
And now he’s being charged with securities fraud. Thanks, Azealia!
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been charged with securities fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The charges stem from a tweet the 47-year-old billionaire wrote in August, which detailed plans to take Tesla private.
“Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured,” Musk wrote. According to the SEC’s complaint, Musk’s tweet stirred up significant confusion among investors and “caused Tesla’s stock price to jump over six percent,” the SEC revealed in a press release. The complaint also claims Musk’s plans were not discussed “with any potential financing partners, and he allegedly knew that the potential transaction was uncertain and subject to numerous contingencies.”
In addition, the SEC’s complaint is asking that Musk be dismissed as CEO as he “violated antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws, and seeks a permanent injunction, disgorgement, civil penalties, and a bar prohibiting Musk from serving as an officer or director of a public company.”
If Azealia Banks was right, Elon was tripping his balls off when he wrote that tweet, and then he later doubled-down on it rather than admit he was high as hell and tweeting about Tesla stock. Even if he was stone-cold sober, it was still a dumb thing to do. And now he’s in a sh-tload of trouble.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
Read this yesterday…..and I am still laughing at him.
I met a SEC investigator once, and he said that people are always on their radar and don’t even know it and it is all about them tripping their own selves up so they can finally bring charges (ex, just talking to a client or the assistant of some mid level manager. Then the subject gets nervous and want to do some ‘clean up’). And this was before social media blew up.
Pretty much. Given it’s production and profit issues, Tesla has probably been under quiet investigation by the SEC for awhile. Banks might have aired it publicly, but I suspect this was inevitable one way or another.
I’m sorry, but I’m just cracking up at all of his cult followers flipping out about this. He’s got some brilliant engineering ideas, but he is just such an idiot when it comes to anything PR/business related.
He’s inept at PR, but I think he’s a genius at the business side of things. His problem seems to be recent, when he became a “celebrity” and started going after actresses Wonder when his drug use started and when he decided to follow te celebrity lifestyle, which I can’t imagine is very disciplined.
Tesla has been struggling with production issues for years now and has only recently started to catch up. They have great ideas and great products, and I appreciate their objective over all, but there’s been no small amount of stumbles for them business-wise. He’s best as a visionary in that he’s good at selling his ideas to people on a level where they can see them to fruition. I honestly think it’s a shame he did himself in like this.
I don’t think the SEC cares if he tweets while he’s high. They are concerned about the CEO putting out false information, and causing the stock price to fluctuate because of that false info. Elon seems to be falling apart to some extent.
The man is very obviously a target for automobile industry and everyone else who wants to keep us to be dependent on oil. He might have twitted under the influence and should take responsibility but the real problem is whether or not he is going to be destroyed by them. Tesla 2.0 🙁
No need to worry about anyone else helping him on his way to Self-Destructville. He seems to have that down on his own.
Interesting how people love to waste time hating on personal shortcomings rather than see the big picture – Elon Musk and his company Tesla are changing the world for the better. It was unwise for someone like Musk to twit what he did and put make himself vulnerable, but it doesn’t negate the fact that he is the only person who is seriously and successfully fighting our dependence on oil and people who will not let that cash cow out of their hands easily.
The auto industry is moving to ev in a big way.
One of the major u.s. makers announced the would offer 8 different ev models by 2020.
Others have pledged similar results by 2023.
No, they’re not. They’re announcing things, but nothing substantial is actually happening.
Audi just made a lot of noise about their electric SUV…which they won’t be stocking in dealerships in the US. Jaguar’s making a fuss of their electric SUV…that has the battery specs of a low-end 2012 Tesla. GM still isn’t producing half the Volts and Bolts it once promised to. Porsche is touting its plan to put a couple of charging spots at its dealerships as though that’s a Supercharger competitor (lol). Toyota is still obsessed with hydrogen, which is just never going to happen in the near future. Ford keeps leaking concept images, but plans are vague and dates keep getting pushed back.
No one’s taking it seriously like Tesla.
Talk is cheap. Where have they all been before Musk came to the picture and forced change? Today, exactly a decade after Tesla Roadster came out NONE of them (including the good-natured Toyota) is nowhere near Tesla in terms of technological advancement.
I was typing up something similar. We own 2 Teslas: X & S and we can’t imagine ever going back to an ICE vehicle. We cancelled a move back to my home country of Canada because we wouldn’t be able to bring our own personal vehicles across the border and paying for these in Canadian funds would be too expensive.
Saying all of that, he really played roulette with that tweet, but it’s Elon personally that’s being sued, not Tesla.
EV’s are the cars of the future and regardless of what happens, Tesla has changed the game. The network build out superchargers is fantastic and it really does change the way we drive on road trips now.
If anyone wants a referral code, hit me up! I know the price tag can be shocking, but when you sit down and look at the total cost of ownership, you’ll see how the upfront costs are made up off the daily costs of ICE. Plus, even my slow X75D can beat virtually any car off the line!
Writing a day later. People bring their personal cars into Canada if they move but pay import duties. We moved two cars to Canada and it wasn’t terrible as they were older regular sedans. Another option is to use USD in Canada or at least convert USD to CAD for the purchase due to the favorable exchange rate.
Eh, EV is the best alternative we have now, but my feeling is that better investment in mass transit is where we really need to be going in the long run. Electric cars have their own share of issues with ecological impact (both in terms of production and disposal). The goal should really be cutting down the amount of single owner vehicles on the roads, which in America means taking a very serious look at how to address our infrastructural issues on a national scale.
Lol, don’t credit Azealia Banks with any of this. Despite posting endless private screenshots she never actually backed up any of her claims about his drug use or anything about the funding, and her tweets keep showing she’s just pathetically obsessed with him. She’s been talking about how she started drama to get Grimes out of the picture because she wanted Musk and didn’t want a ‘sister wife’. She’s written whole rants about how they could still have a chance together, how she’d be good for him, how she’d good for his kids, how this is all Grimes fault because she was jealous of her…it’s creepy.
Anyway, he’s been charged because he rejected a very favourable settlement. This isn’t quite the slam dunk people are making it out to be.
This guy cant handle his weed at all. Stop tweeting! Two lawsuits over his tweets in like the past week. Dude needs to learn to put the phone down
So, wait – if irrational tweeting is cause for this kind of action, any chance they could help with Agent Orange?