Trials & Litigation
Elon Musk defrauded Twitter investors in $44B buyout, jury finds
Technology billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk committed securities fraud with false or misleading statements about Twitter’s fake bot accounts as he attempted to scrap or renegotiate the $44 billion deal to buy the social media platform, a California jury for a civil trial unanimously found Friday. (Photo by Patrick Pleul/Getty Images)
Technology billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk committed securities fraud with false or misleading statements about Twitter’s fake bot accounts as he attempted to scrap or renegotiate the $44 billion deal to buy the social media platform, a California jury for a civil trial unanimously found Friday.
Law360 has the story.
After deliberating for 20 hours over four days, the jury found that in May 2022, Musk posted two misleading tweets and one in-person statement, the story said, including a May 13, 2022, post stating that the deal was “temporarily on hold” while he gathered information on the amount of bots and spam on the platform now known as X.
The jury, however, didn’t find Musk liable based on the investors’ claim of an overall “scheme to defraud Twitter investors,” according to Law360. But Mark Molumphy of Cotchett Pitre & McCarthy, a lawyer for the investors, estimated that damages that the jury awarded would hit about $2.6 billion.
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