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This is about defrauding people who bought a tesla, not investors. > In 2020, Musk told a crowd in Shanghai that he remains “confident” that Tesla will achieve

This is about defrauding people who bought a tesla, not investors. > In 2020, Musk told a crowd in Shanghai that he remains “confident” that Tesla will achieve “basic functionality for level five autonomy this year,” referring to the SAE’s rankings of autonomy. Tesla’s technology, in 2024, is still at level 2. This reminds me alot of the Thernos case where she tried to make the case not about fraud but about an overly optimistic CEO promising something and being wrong about that. here Musk has clearly said that full self driving would be available many years ago. So I guess we're trying to figure out how much lying is ok by a CEO before it becomes fraud to the buyer.

bunderbunder 2y ago
As the article explains, wire fraud is about defrauding consumers, and securities fraud is about deceiving investors. Tesla is under investigation for both.
- paxys 2y ago
  Wire fraud is nowadays just a catch-all for "crime involving money". Regardless of all other specifics of the case, it is a certainty that at some point someone sent a text message or used a computer, so that's what the feds will go after. Ran a scammy crypto exchange out of the Bahamas? Took money from investors for a failed blood testing company? Raised money for a political campaign but spent it on hookers? Paid a hitman to kill your spouse? All wire fraud.
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    And pretty much everything a public company does is securities fraud: [1] To oversimplify, a company is required to disclose risks, and everything is a risk, so it's security fraud if it's not in the disclosure, or if it's misrepresented in the disclosure. 1: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everything-everywhere-is-securities-fraud https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...
  - rtkwe 2y ago
    Not just a computer but just using the phone is also a wire fraud trigger too. It is basically any fraud these days though given how much communication happens through some 'wire'.
  - bunderbunder 2y ago
    Yup. It's a straightforward consequence of how society has evolved over time. "Wire fraud" specifically means using electronic communication channels to defraud something. Since most business is conducted over electronic communication channels nowadays, it all falls into that category. IANAL, but I doubt that there's any great alternative that doesn't involve rewriting 100 years' worth of legislation and case law, which generally distinguishes categories of fraud by the medium over which they occur.
adrr 2y ago
I purchased FSD in 2019 on the promise of self driving. 5 years later and still no self driving. There was also the promise of the car being able to self park. I would be happy if I got my money back for a feature that was never delivered.
- w0m 2y ago
  same. at least we got in before the price jumped? We don't even have a hope as the new MCU doesn't even support getting backported to our car even if we were willing to pay for it.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - adrr 2y ago
    Pretty sure it cost me more than the $2500 I paid. I tried smart summon one day. Instead of backing out of the space, it just ran forward up the curb on to the sidewalk. Couple years later the left strut failed costing me $2k.
    - w0m 2y ago
      RIP. I haven't had any issues like that yet; but I've also barely used it out of that exact fear.
- steelframe 2y ago
  As my grandfather used to put it, you paid some "tuition of life" for a lesson you'll (hopefully) not soon forget.
  - aaomidi 2y ago
    Yeah but also it’s good to punish lying companies. It increases trust in the market.
- bagels 2y ago
  I couldn't imagine paying $12,000 for technology that didn't exist, from someone who repeatedly lied about that technology existing.
NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
Shouldn't fraud (for the end user/customer) be determined by claims made about the product at the time of sale, and not promises of what might be possible a few years from now? If you want to say promises of future features is fraud, then surely that would only be in relation to investors?
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  "It's almost ready" is a claim about the product at the time of sale.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
    "Almost ready" as a claim is pretty meaningless. It's a statement of feature status, not a prediction of when 100% completion occurs. In software, "almost" can last years or decades.
    - kube-system 2y ago
      Musk has been citing more precise estimates (e.g. "end of the year") for years.
    - ceejayoz 2y ago
      He's been frequently far more specific than that on timelines. 2018: "By next year, a Tesla should be able to drive around a parking lot, find an empty spot, read signs to confirm it’s valid & park." https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1057690425710891009 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1057690425710891009 2016: "In ~2 years, summon should work anywhere connected by land & not blocked by borders, eg you're in LA and the car is in NY." https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/686279251293777920 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/686279251293777920 It won't be hard to demonstrate some purchasers factored these claims into their decisions.
      - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
        "a Tesla", not "all Teslas". And of course "should" not "will". And so on. If his press releases are to be treated like contracts that he can be held to, then the verbiage needs to be parsed as if his words were contracts. That's just not going to go very well for the people litigating that he made false claims. Which gives the impression that the litigation isn't so much about punishing the wrongs he has committed, as they are about punishing the person that no one likes. Maybe there are other tweets that are better examples of your argument, I'll wait to see if they come up in any of the umpteen fluff articles we'll see over the next few months. In the meantime though, this seems more than a little unfounded.
Consultant32452 2y ago
If we started prosecuting CEOs who don't meet goals/expectations, they'd all be in prison. You have to prove Elon was intentionally lying, which I suspect many on this forum are sympathetic to that view, but in a fair court system that is a difficult standard. You'd have to have emails or some other hard evidence where he acknowledges he knows he's being untruthful. Short of that kind of evidence coming out, they are most likely going after him for political reasons.
ryantgtg 2y ago
No, this should be about defrauding people who bought FSD for their Tesla. Most Tesla owners do not care about FSD, according to the estimates of subscription rates.
- paxys 2y ago
  Plenty of people bought Teslas anticipating that they'd buy FSD when it fully worked "next year".
- chollida1 2y ago
  >No, this should be about defrauding people who bought FSD for their Tesla. Yes, it sounds like you and I are in complete agreement:)
FireBeyond 2y ago
> This reminds me alot of the Thernos case where she tried to make the case not about fraud but about an overly optimistic CEO promising something and being wrong about that. Right, and that fell apart with, well, many things, but the one that stands out to me - upcoming FDA inspection, and Holmes (in something out of a cartoon) literally had someone put a filing cabinet in front of the door to the lab where they were doing actual work to hide it, and direct inspectors to a faked up lab, i.e. outright fraud and deception.
- rsynnott 2y ago
  She wasn't convicted of... whatever that was (extremely low-effort obstruction of justice?), though, she was convicted of defrauding her investors. Notably, she got off on the charges of defrauding her customers, for, truly, it is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to get in trouble for injuring the general public.
marcusverus 2y ago
There is an obvious difference between lying and being wrong. Theranos claimed to already have created their magic machine, which was a blatant lie. They intentionally misled investors by pretending to put samples into a fake testing machine, secretly removing the samples to test them in a lab elsewhere, then putting them back into the machine to make it look like the machine was doing the testing. That's careful, calculated fraud, which was obviously a criminal act. Musk, by contrast, never claimed to have something that he did not have. He made overly-optimistic claims about product development. There is no reason to assume that these projections were lies, given that everyone else in the space was making similarly aggressive projections. Musk was wrong for selling FSD-related features before they were ready, and Tesla should obviously make that right. But pretending that being wrong (in good company) is the same thing as calculated fraud is just goofy.
- api 2y ago
  That's the question: is there any calculated fraud here or was he just vastly overly optimistic? ... but even if there is no calculated fraud, I think some Tesla buyers are owed refunds or other compensation. If a company promises me X, I pay for it, and years later has not delivered X, eventually I need a refund.
  - MBCook 2y ago
    I agree. After 7 years or whatever you can’t keep being “overly optimistic”. At some point it becomes clear it’s just not ready and you need to give people their money back and stop selling it until it is. If all FSD things were sold with a “really will be in 2 years or 80% of your money back” clause that would be different in my mind. But taking money and just never delivering is flat out fraud. No matter how many times you say “just one more year”.
- jcranmer 2y ago
  > Musk, by contrast, never claimed to have something that he did not have. IIRC, wasn't the video that claimed to demonstrate a full trip conducted by FSD actually like 100 different splices? That right there would be a claim of something that didn't exist.
Sparyjerry 2y ago
We're actually seeing how much people can read into words too much. There was zero promise by Musk just some guesses and when you buy the car itself it has all sorts of lack of promises.

bunderbunder 2y ago

As the article explains, wire fraud is about defrauding consumers, and securities fraud is about deceiving investors. Tesla is under investigation for both.

paxys 2y ago
Wire fraud is nowadays just a catch-all for "crime involving money". Regardless of all other specifics of the case, it is a certainty that at some point someone sent a text message or used a computer, so that's what the feds will go after. Ran a scammy crypto exchange out of the Bahamas? Took money from investors for a failed blood testing company? Raised money for a political campaign but spent it on hookers? Paid a hitman to kill your spouse? All wire fraud.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  And pretty much everything a public company does is securities fraud: [1] To oversimplify, a company is required to disclose risks, and everything is a risk, so it's security fraud if it's not in the disclosure, or if it's misrepresented in the disclosure. 1: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everything-everywhere-is-securities-fraud https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...
- rtkwe 2y ago
  Not just a computer but just using the phone is also a wire fraud trigger too. It is basically any fraud these days though given how much communication happens through some 'wire'.
- bunderbunder 2y ago
  Yup. It's a straightforward consequence of how society has evolved over time. "Wire fraud" specifically means using electronic communication channels to defraud something. Since most business is conducted over electronic communication channels nowadays, it all falls into that category. IANAL, but I doubt that there's any great alternative that doesn't involve rewriting 100 years' worth of legislation and case law, which generally distinguishes categories of fraud by the medium over which they occur.

adrr 2y ago

I purchased FSD in 2019 on the promise of self driving. 5 years later and still no self driving. There was also the promise of the car being able to self park. I would be happy if I got my money back for a feature that was never delivered.

w0m 2y ago
same. at least we got in before the price jumped? We don't even have a hope as the new MCU doesn't even support getting backported to our car even if we were willing to pay for it.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- adrr 2y ago
  Pretty sure it cost me more than the $2500 I paid. I tried smart summon one day. Instead of backing out of the space, it just ran forward up the curb on to the sidewalk. Couple years later the left strut failed costing me $2k.
  - w0m 2y ago
    RIP. I haven't had any issues like that yet; but I've also barely used it out of that exact fear.
steelframe 2y ago
As my grandfather used to put it, you paid some "tuition of life" for a lesson you'll (hopefully) not soon forget.
- aaomidi 2y ago
  Yeah but also it’s good to punish lying companies. It increases trust in the market.
bagels 2y ago
I couldn't imagine paying $12,000 for technology that didn't exist, from someone who repeatedly lied about that technology existing.

NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago

Shouldn't fraud (for the end user/customer) be determined by claims made about the product at the time of sale, and not promises of what might be possible a few years from now? If you want to say promises of future features is fraud, then surely that would only be in relation to investors?

ceejayoz 2y ago
"It's almost ready" is a claim about the product at the time of sale.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  "Almost ready" as a claim is pretty meaningless. It's a statement of feature status, not a prediction of when 100% completion occurs. In software, "almost" can last years or decades.
  - kube-system 2y ago
    Musk has been citing more precise estimates (e.g. "end of the year") for years.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    He's been frequently far more specific than that on timelines. 2018: "By next year, a Tesla should be able to drive around a parking lot, find an empty spot, read signs to confirm it’s valid & park." https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1057690425710891009 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1057690425710891009 2016: "In ~2 years, summon should work anywhere connected by land & not blocked by borders, eg you're in LA and the car is in NY." https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/686279251293777920 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/686279251293777920 It won't be hard to demonstrate some purchasers factored these claims into their decisions.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
      "a Tesla", not "all Teslas". And of course "should" not "will". And so on. If his press releases are to be treated like contracts that he can be held to, then the verbiage needs to be parsed as if his words were contracts. That's just not going to go very well for the people litigating that he made false claims. Which gives the impression that the litigation isn't so much about punishing the wrongs he has committed, as they are about punishing the person that no one likes. Maybe there are other tweets that are better examples of your argument, I'll wait to see if they come up in any of the umpteen fluff articles we'll see over the next few months. In the meantime though, this seems more than a little unfounded.

Consultant32452 2y ago

If we started prosecuting CEOs who don't meet goals/expectations, they'd all be in prison. You have to prove Elon was intentionally lying, which I suspect many on this forum are sympathetic to that view, but in a fair court system that is a difficult standard. You'd have to have emails or some other hard evidence where he acknowledges he knows he's being untruthful. Short of that kind of evidence coming out, they are most likely going after him for political reasons.

ryantgtg 2y ago

No, this should be about defrauding people who bought FSD for their Tesla. Most Tesla owners do not care about FSD, according to the estimates of subscription rates.

paxys 2y ago
Plenty of people bought Teslas anticipating that they'd buy FSD when it fully worked "next year".
chollida1 2y ago
>No, this should be about defrauding people who bought FSD for their Tesla. Yes, it sounds like you and I are in complete agreement:)

FireBeyond 2y ago

> This reminds me alot of the Thernos case where she tried to make the case not about fraud but about an overly optimistic CEO promising something and being wrong about that. Right, and that fell apart with, well, many things, but the one that stands out to me - upcoming FDA inspection, and Holmes (in something out of a cartoon) literally had someone put a filing cabinet in front of the door to the lab where they were doing actual work to hide it, and direct inspectors to a faked up lab, i.e. outright fraud and deception.

rsynnott 2y ago
She wasn't convicted of... whatever that was (extremely low-effort obstruction of justice?), though, she was convicted of defrauding her investors. Notably, she got off on the charges of defrauding her customers, for, truly, it is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to get in trouble for injuring the general public.

marcusverus 2y ago

There is an obvious difference between lying and being wrong. Theranos claimed to already have created their magic machine, which was a blatant lie. They intentionally misled investors by pretending to put samples into a fake testing machine, secretly removing the samples to test them in a lab elsewhere, then putting them back into the machine to make it look like the machine was doing the testing. That's careful, calculated fraud, which was obviously a criminal act. Musk, by contrast, never claimed to have something that he did not have. He made overly-optimistic claims about product development. There is no reason to assume that these projections were lies, given that everyone else in the space was making similarly aggressive projections. Musk was wrong for selling FSD-related features before they were ready, and Tesla should obviously make that right. But pretending that being wrong (in good company) is the same thing as calculated fraud is just goofy.

api 2y ago
That's the question: is there any calculated fraud here or was he just vastly overly optimistic? ... but even if there is no calculated fraud, I think some Tesla buyers are owed refunds or other compensation. If a company promises me X, I pay for it, and years later has not delivered X, eventually I need a refund.
- MBCook 2y ago
  I agree. After 7 years or whatever you can’t keep being “overly optimistic”. At some point it becomes clear it’s just not ready and you need to give people their money back and stop selling it until it is. If all FSD things were sold with a “really will be in 2 years or 80% of your money back” clause that would be different in my mind. But taking money and just never delivering is flat out fraud. No matter how many times you say “just one more year”.
jcranmer 2y ago
> Musk, by contrast, never claimed to have something that he did not have. IIRC, wasn't the video that claimed to demonstrate a full trip conducted by FSD actually like 100 different splices? That right there would be a claim of something that didn't exist.

Sparyjerry 2y ago

We're actually seeing how much people can read into words too much. There was zero promise by Musk just some guesses and when you buy the car itself it has all sorts of lack of promises.