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Tesla is being investigated for securities and wire fraud for self-driving claim

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Re: Tesla is being investigated for securities and wire fraud for self-driving claim

#81

Post by kube-system »

nullorempty wrote: post #10
_akhe wrote: post #2

Securities fraud again, funny that the guy who "bought Twitter" and shut down free speech ended up getting sued himself due to his own tweet (lying about # of Teslas being produced). It's like a bully trying to chase someone but tripping over their shoelace in the first step, love it. On self-driving: For several years the guy has been saying "next month" "next year" it's been like 10+ years at this point. He's a big…

I think Musk is just relaying the promises he receives from ML/AI guys he employes. As far as I know FSD has always been a paid option.

Given what I've read about his management style, I doubt it's like that. Probably more like:

Musk: Hey get your shit together I want this done by the end of the year

Team: Okay we'll try

Musk: Okay we'll plan on that

Re: Tesla is being investigated for securities and wire fraud for self-driving claim

#82

Post by bunderbunder »

paxys wrote: post #9
bunderbunder wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

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.

Re: Tesla is being investigated for securities and wire fraud for self-driving claim

#83

Post by FireBeyond »

chollida1 wrote: post #6

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 overl…

> 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.

Re: Tesla is being investigated for securities and wire fraud for self-driving claim

#84

Post by bee_rider »

itsoktocry wrote: post #38
animex wrote: post #20

Absolutely. If Martha Stewart went to jail for much less, a certain CEO[1] should be doing some hard time for ludicrous claims over the past 8 years. Some back-of-the-napkin-math: If we focus on the 4m Model 3 (& Y) vehicles sold that had these claims attached and assume that there was a peak uptake rate of 46% declining to 11% as these claims became obviously untrue. On FSD @ an ever-increasing price of $6000-$12000…

> A certain founder should be doing some hard time for ludicrous claims over the past 8 years. I don't think "hard time" is appropriate for white collar crimes. Money is how you speak to these people. Martha Stewart is still worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

If someone steals something, taking the thing they stole back is of course the first step.

Other than that, the next step depends on what you think the point of the court/prison system is. If the point of the system is to prevent criminals from harming people: white collar criminals do crime at scale. They can hurt many more people than blue collar criminals.

If the point is to reform people, it seems like white collar criminals have an easier time lying to themselves and justifying their actions, because they don’t physically take things from people, it’s all very abstract. So that seems like a harder project that might take longer.

If the point is to prevent others from following their example, there are lots of reasons to punish white collar criminals more harshly. Their crimes are more difficult to work out, so getting caught might be harder. Plus there’s less of a de-facto preventative aspect—with blue collar crimes, depending on the crime, there’s likely a chance the victim might be physically present and quite irate, so they might fight, potentially even kill, the culprit.

Of course there are some reasons that blue collar crimes can be more serious (muggers might physically hurt somebody). But I don’t think hard time is inappropriate in either case.

Re: Tesla is being investigated for securities and wire fraud for self-driving claim

#85

Post by lolc »

mikestew wrote: post #25
nullorempty wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Musk is just relaying the promises he receives from ML/AI guys he employes. As far as I know FSD has always been a paid option.

And after years of publicly looking like a lying car salesman, why would he still listen to those employees? I don’t think it’s the line employees that are lying here.

The way I understood it went down for the CEO:

1. Made optimistic claims about future product.

2. Some of the people tasked with implementation disagreed about optimistic claim.

3. Those people got fired for underperforming.

4. All people on the team tasked with implementation agree with optimistic claim.

5. Doubled down on the promise.

Repeat every year.

I can't see how a CEO could be blamed in this scenario, as clearly they were lied to by their subordinates.

Re: Tesla is being investigated for securities and wire fraud for self-driving claim

#86

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

ceejayoz wrote: post #73
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

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 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/stat…

"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.

Re: Tesla is being investigated for securities and wire fraud for self-driving claim

#88

Post by MisterDizzy »

_akhe wrote: post #26
MisterDizzy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people are really defensive about this. What's the big deal if X does well? Why are people so personally invested in pretending like Elon didn't do the world a huge service by removing Twitter from the control of possibly the most politically extreme and anti-constitutional subculture in the entire country?

I can tell by the upvote/downvote dance on the parent comment - people love their celebrities. They get really mad if you talk bad about Elon Musk lol I find it quite pathetic personally. I of course disagree - I don't see the "huge service". Everything from defrauding investors, customers, speaking out of school (saying he's a physicist in the early days), hanging out with Ghislaine Maxwell, stealing then tanking Te…

[flagged]

Re: Tesla is being investigated for securities and wire fraud for self-driving claim

#89

Post by kube-system »

bagels wrote: post #74
adrr wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I couldn't imagine paying $12,000 for technology that didn't exist, from someone who repeatedly lied about that technology existing.

People generally trust the US consumer products market. And that's a good thing.

If people had to research the CEO of Old Navy before they bought a pair of pants from oldnavy.com, it would be pretty bad for our economy.

And there are markets like this where trust is low, and they don't function well.

Re: Tesla is being investigated for securities and wire fraud for self-driving claim

#90

Post by jcranmer »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #27
chollida1 wrote: post #6

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 overl…

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?

The definition of fraud is going to vary slightly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but generally the core elements are:

* Falsity: did the person knowingly make a false statement?

* Materiality: was the false statement something that could reasonably influence someone's decision to agree to a contract?

* Reliance: did the other party actually use the false statement to decide to agree to the contract?

Claims of future capabilities are necessarily going to be evaluated differently from claims of current capabilities, since it's going to be harder to demonstrate all of these points. But for Tesla's FSD promises, we're at 7-ish years now of "coming soon" promises, with marketing materials outright saying it's only regulatory reasons that a driver is needed. Materiality and reliance are slam-dunks at this point; the only out Tesla really has at this point is falsity. Essentially, Tesla has to argue that its engineers were all high on their own hype (which I have to admit it as at least plausible).

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