Tesla Is Suing An Oil-Company Executive For Impersonating Elon Musk (businessinsider.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: Tesla is suing an oil executive under suspicion of impersonating Elon Musk to dig up confidential financial information from the company, Forbes reported on Wednesday. The lawsuit, reportedly filed Wednesday in the Superior Court of Santa Clara County, claimed that Todd Katz, the chief financial officer for Quest Integrity Group, emailed Tesla's chief financial officer using a similar email address as Musk's looking to gain information that wasn't disclosed in an earnings call with investors. Quest Integrity Group has partnerships with BP, Chevron, and ExxonMobil, the Forbes report said. According to the lawsuit, Katz used "elontesla@yahoo.com" to send an email to Tesla CFO Jason Wheeler asking about the company's sales and financial projections. The email named in the suit reads: "why you so cautious w Q3/4 gm guidance on call? also what are your thoughts on disclosing M3 res#? Pros/cons from ir pov? what is your best guess as to where we actually come in on q3/4 deliverables. honest guess? no bs. thx 4 hard work prepping 4 today. em." Tesla is seeking "undisclosed financial compensation," as well as compensation for the cost of the investigation and legal fees, according to Forbes.

Comments

Re:What a maroon

[wierd_w]

He used a throwaway yahoo account! He was hoping their incompetence would help shield him from investigation!

(Joking!)

Re:What a maroon

[Anonymous Coward]

MBA types are not that cerebral. Their function is to make guesses based on "big data."

Re:What a maroon

[Guy Harris]

What, he didn't think he could and would be tracked down?

What, he didn't think the fucking CFO of Tesla wouldn't see an email from "elontesla@yahoo.com" and open it only to see whether it's advertising 1) a penis enlargement treatment, 2) a weight loss treatment, 3) an exciting business proposal, etc. and then forward it to Musk with the heading "LOL who is this moron?"

Re:What a maroon

[Guy Harris]

What, he didn't think he could and would be tracked down?

What, he didn't think the fucking CFO of Tesla wouldn't see an email from "elontesla@yahoo.com" and open it only to see whether it's advertising 1) a penis enlargement treatment, 2) a weight loss treatment, 3) an exciting business proposal, etc. and then forward it to Musk with the heading "LOL who is this moron?"

OK, "from a Yahoo email address similar to one Musk has used in the past", but I'd still expect the CEO to be sending questions such as that from a tesla.com address; was the Yahoo address used to send more public mails, so that his e-mail address inside Tesla wouldn't be used publicly?

Why do names reflect the opposite so often?

[whoever57]

Quest Integrity Group

When people proclaim their good qualities so publicly, it's because they want to con you.

Re:Why do names reflect the opposite so often?

[Chuq]

The leader of the People's Democratic Republic of Korea disagrees with you.

Re:Why do names reflect the opposite so often?

[Zontar The Mindless]

*wins thread*

Re:Why do names reflect the opposite so often?

[Anonymous Coward]

And so do the United States of America.

Re:Why do names reflect the opposite so often?

[Alomex]

It's an old rule of marketing. An adjective either very accurately describes the product or is the complete opposite, nothing in between.

Say for example, if you have a cereal called Nature's Best. It either is an organic tree-hugging, all vegan, hemp-tshirt inspired cereal or is the worst junk full of sugar and additives.

The explanation is straightforward, either you are an honest person and describe your product accurately or you are a crook, in which case you maximize your lie since it makes business sense.

Re:Why do names reflect the opposite so often?

[Anonymous Coward]

And so do the United States of America.

Yeah, Florida and Texas can fuck right off.

Re:Why do names reflect the opposite so often?

[Thelasko]

Quest Integrity Group

When people proclaim their good qualities so publicly, it's because they want to con you.

Apparently their name refers to the physical integrity of oil pipeline hardware, and not the character of their employees.

Re:Why do names reflect the opposite so often?

[barc0001]

Exactly this. If they put it in their company or product's name, you can be quite sure that it's lacking in the company or product.

Re:Why do names reflect the opposite so often?

[mjwx]

"United" States of America?

Re:Why do names reflect the opposite so often?

[HiThere]

In your particular example you exhibit a problem with this simplistic rule:
Say for example, if you have a cereal called Nature's Best.

The problem here is that different people will consider different qualities to be "best" even in the context of a breakfast cereal.
E.g.: "How much honey should it contain?" My answer would be none, but I know people who really believe that it should have enough to make it sticky...and they aren't all kids.
Eg.: "Should it contain ground hemp?" I think most people would say no, but some would say it should be mainly hemp.
Etc. You can go on like that for every proposed ingredient. My wife would strongly maintain that it should have absolutely no added salt. For me it should have less that 10 grams of non-fiber carbohydrate/serving. Etc.

Shows the lengths....

[rahvin112]

This is standard practice nowadays. There are AstroTurfing campaigns and attacks like this going on all the time these days. There is no such thing as playing fair and letting the market decide. Ever since Tesla started plans to produce a mass consumer electric vehicle that's not handicapped and a piece of shit the oil industry has been working against them. This is why every single Model S crash is a massive public affair with news stories all over the wire. Oil companies are funding these types of articles and paying journalists to write them, probably in some cases writing them for them.

I'm glad Musk pursued the investigation and determined the person that made the call so they can get them on the stand. Expect nothing less at this point than the astroturf nonprofit that employs the guy to try to keep him from talking to anyone and when he does they will throw him under the bus and ruin his career to make it look like "one bad apple".

Like I said, standard practice these days. You can't really believe anything you see these days because of how corrupt journalism is, and the internet has only made it worse.

Re:Shows the lengths....

[sg_oneill]

Its not so much that they are paying journalists off, the rots further up the corporate chain with editors and bureau chiefs. And you'll rarely see the direct hand of the oil industry but rather the think tanks they hire.. These guys will wine and dine the editors, and invite them out on yachts and the like , while whispering conspiracy theories about scientists being in cohorts with the reds or whatever nonsense suits the agenda of the minute. Tesla and Elon Musks companies in general represents an existential threat to the hydrocarbons industry. Not only are thesae cars gas free, he's working on the electricity itself being solar. Theres just no role in this world, outside of general chemistry, for the oil industry to lurk. So the whispers start up. "Elon will kill the auto dealerships" "Tesla cars are unsafe". "Tesla cars cant be repaired at joes garage". etc etc etc. And soon the editors are whispering down the line "If that commie journo Bill turns in another fluff piece about solar, deep six it to the center pages where nobody will read it, and throw in some opposing views from the heratige foundation". And oldBill who actually votes republican but is committed to accurate journalism gets labeled a commie and has his work devalued , whilst some punk fresh out of journo school who writes raving partisan nonsense cripped straight out of the herativge foundation press releases gets the promotion.

Re:Shows the lengths....

[I'm New Around Here]

People dying while using the Tesla Autopilot is certainly bad publicity.

Re:Shows the lengths....

[Nehmo]

People dying while using the Tesla Autopilot is certainly bad publicity.

Idnk, When I see the articles, I entertain the idea of getting one. I estimate by the time I get one, they will have ironed out the problems with the auto-drive. (Actually, I'm just dreaming. At the current prices, someday I may be able to afford an e-bike, but that's about all. I might be able to make one, though. Hobbyking sells batteries a lot cheaper than Tesla.)

Re:Shows the lengths....

[jordanjay29]

By the time it'll matter, Teslas will probably be the luxury option for self-driving car rides around town. Why own one, and pay for all the maintenance, when it appears when you need it and doesn't when you...don't?

Re:Shows the lengths....

[silentcoder]

>Its not so much that they are paying journalists off, the rots further up the corporate chain with editors and bureau chiefs

Don't forget owners. Remember a few months ago when a bunch of editors at Breitbart resigned in protest because, they claimed, Trump was paying the owners to give him positive coverage ?

And that's breitbat, playground for the alt-right [read: neo-NAZI skinheads without charisma] - hardly a symbol of impartial, honest journalism to begin with and their editors hardly averse to a significant amount of spin. It must be serious bribery requiring coverage that goes from 'spin' to 'flat out bullshit' for that lot to resign in protest.

Re:Shows the lengths....

[silentcoder]

>while whispering conspiracy theories about scientists being in cohorts with the reds

That one's been happening for ages. Ayn Rand fervently believed, and publicly claimed, that all research indicating a link between smoking and lung cancer was a communist plot. She died of smoking-induced lung-cancer and maintained her refusal to accept the science even on her deathbed.

Re:Shows the lengths....

[Lumpy]

fortunately nobody that matters has died from it. only incredibly stupid people that for some reason was making a large amount of money.

Every single death was 100% moron level on the drivers part. as in this person should not be allowed to use a fork at dinner level.

Re: Shows the lengths....

[MachineShedFred]

The person who coined that lie was probably a VP at a Madison Avenue PR firm.

Re:Shows the lengths....

[Anonymous Coward]

People die every day in a variety of vehicles with a variety of faults (blinds spots, bad weight distribution, poor tires, small brake pads, etc) and no one bats an eye. Tesla has a couple fatalities (quite possibly due to driver negligence) in almost 100k vehicles over several years that have traveled well over a hundred million miles on Autopilot and its front page news. I don't know if its a conspiracy to take down Tesla but it certainly is some wildly misplaced concern, I guess there is a reason why studies show that humans are terrible at gauging risk..

Re:Shows the lengths....

[kaatochacha]

They don't use the term "reds" anymore, that's 1950s-1980s dated. The correct usage today is "racist".

Re:Shows the lengths....

[mspohr]

People die every day by not paying attention in their cars.
Tesla tells you every day to pay attention. If you don't, you could die.
Some people can't follow simple directions.

Re:Shows the lengths....

[HiThere]

I don't think a conspiracy is needed. It's unusual and exciting news on a slow news day, that's all that it takes.

Re: Shows the lengths....

[HiThere]

Actually I believe he was a CEO of a manufacturing company...let me check. OK, I was probably wrong:
'There's no such thing as bad publicity' is often associated with Phineas T. Barnum, the 19th century American showman and circus owner. Barnum was a ... http://www.phrases.org.uk/mean...

Re:Shows the lengths....

[HiThere]

I don't have sources either, but there have been multiple stories in the past with multiple groups manipulating the press to the point of writing the stories that they print (often with minor changes). OTOH, bribery, as such, is rarely shown. It doesn't seem to be needed when a nicely written article suffices.

Re:Shows the lengths....

[martinfb]

It is a Trump thing, too! He's good at it!

Re:Shows the lengths....

[jtanium]

Ayn Rand fervently believed, and publicly claimed, that all research indicating a link between smoking and lung cancer was a communist plot. She died of smoking-induced lung-cancer and maintained her refusal to accept the science even on her deathbed.

It would appear she did not die of lung cancer, but actually heart failure.

Re:Shows the lengths....

[silentcoder]

The fact that she had terminal lung cancer had *nothing* to do with her heart failing right ? Now that's some serious reaching there...

Re:Shows the lengths....

[jtanium]

Wait. The official cause of death is listed as Cardiovascular Disease and I'm the one who's reaching? I never said lung cancer didn't contribute to it, just that the official reason is heart failure and saying she died of lung cancer is perpetuating a myth.

There is ample evidence showing smoking increases the risk of Cardiovascular Disease, so it's safe to say that smoking contributed to her death, just not in the manner you described.

I suppose "cardiovascular disease" or "heart failure" don't have the same emotional impact as "lung cancer"...

Re:Shows the lengths....

[silentcoder]

When a person with terminal lung cancer in the final stages dies of heart failure - only an idiot thinks it's NOT the cancer that killed her.

By that same reasoning - EVERYBODY dies of heart failure except the ones who take a bullet to the brain, in just about every other case the heart goes before the brain does (which is the official definition of dead).

Re:Shows the lengths....

[silentcoder]

Besides which - the attempt to 'dispell the myth' is just a typircal randroid attempt to divert the issue. So it becomes about a coroner's report instead of the part that is utterly true and actually important: that she claimed the link between smoking and lung cancer was a communist conspiracy. You don't want to talk about that part because it's
1) true
2) ridiculous
3) obviously ridiculous

And when you deal with those you have to admit that EVERYTHING she said meets was obviously ridiculous.

Re:Shows the lengths....

[jtanium]

I didn't talk about Ayn's rejection of science because there is no argument there. She clearly did it to her own peril.

My argument is simply that she didn't die of lung cancer because the facts don't seem to support that. Had she died of something such as respiratory failure or pulmonary hemorrhage it would be very clear that she died of lung cancer.

Re:Shows the lengths....

[silentcoder]

Think for a second. Lung cancer progressively impacts your ability to breath meaning you get less and less oxygen meaning your heart has to work harder and harder moving blood around faster to keep supplying oxygen to your organs.
It's not even controversial that lung cancer patients often die of heart disease by wearing their hearts out before the lung cancer itself can kill them, it's a common fact. When the lung cancer is from smoking - which also can contribute to heart failure (though this was not widely known at the time) - the combination is pretty much guaranteed. You take an already damaged heart and make it work three times as hard as it otherwise would - it's going to fail fast.

There is a common line in biology (at least among warm-blooded creatures) that a heart is only good for about a billion beats. The longevity of a species is directly tied to how long it takes them to hit that number. Elephants have slow hearts and live many decades. Starlings have rapid hearts beating over 200 times a second - and live less than 2 years.
And alone of all species on the planet - humans actively try to increase their heartbeat and work their muscles more than they bare minimum. No other animal does that. No lion runs except when the hunt requires it. No antelope goes above a walk unless it's being chased. Because every time you use a muscle it is damaged, you get micro-injuries on every movement and the more you use it the worse it becomes - muscles wear out, the heart is no exception. Every other animal tries to spare their muscles as much as possible by living their lives as sedentary as they can - and use them only when it's required to find food or escape being it.
Humans alone use them for the sake of using them. Humans alone think 'excercise' is a GOOD idea.

Apple

[sexconker]

Is Apple going to sue Elon Musk for impersonating Steve Jobs?

Re:Apple

[Gussington]

I know you're only trying to be funny but Elon builds fast cars and rockets, while Steve built a telephone that was slightly better than the existing telephones of the day (until the competition caught up and made even better telephones).
I'll leave it the reader to decide which is cooler.

Re:Apple

[Nehmo]

Everyone stands on the shoulders of giants, including Elon. I'll leave you to ponder.

True. He stepped on a lot of people.

Re:Apple

[hawguy]

I know you're only trying to be funny but Elon builds fast cars and rockets, while Steve built a telephone that was slightly better than the existing telephones of the day (until the competition caught up and made even better telephones).

I'll leave it the reader to decide which is cooler.

I'm no Apple fan, but the iPhone was far beyond the other phones of its day (the Blackberry and Treo were state of the art at the time), the first Android wasn't released until a year later and was not nearly as usable. Nokia's Symbian line and Psion had some good phones at the time, but lacked the broad appeal of the iPhone (and a few years later, the broad appeal of Android)

While the iPhone may have lost the edge that make it better than all competitors, when it launched it was much more than "slightly better" that existing phones.

Re:Apple

[amicusNYCL]

Way to rewrite history there, pal. It's not like the only thing Jobs did was build a better phone. He also literally invented the first portable music player in history, and then re-invented it (again). In fact, I distinctly remember an event when he revealed the newest all-new re-invented portable music player, and it was impossibly small, it said so right there in the marketing literature. Impossibly small, but he built it anyway. He builds things that are literally impossible to build. Call me when Elon comes out with an impossibly small car or rocket and then we can compare him to Jobs.

Re:Apple

[hyades1]

Pretty toy versus space travel. Yeah, I'll take Musk for the win on this.

Re:Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

The closest to an iPhone that was released before the iPhone was probably the HTC Touch, which didn't have 3G either. It was running Windows Mobile 6.0 with a an overlay for finger-based input on the screen (TouchFlo). It even had copy/paste a year before the iOS featured it.
What made the first iPhone a revolution was the use of a capacitive touchscreen when just about every body else used a resistive touchscreen, and even more importantly, iOS which brought finger-based input to a whole new level.

Re:Apple

[Zontar The Mindless]

Thanks. I enjoyed that immensely. :)

Re:Apple

[amicusNYCL]

Holy hell I actually looked up the ad. There's one for the time capsule.

Little known fact: those are 10-foot tall animatronic hands, because it's not possible to build something that small which holds a whopping 1,000 songs.

Re:Apple

[dunkelfalke]

Maybe to some people, but to me the first iPhone was even inferior to even the first Windows Mobile phone I have bought in 2002 and lightyears behind my then current HTC universal. I mean, ridiculously low display resolution, lack of such basic concepts like running third party applications, copy&paste or multitasking. IPhone has been a feature phone with a touch screen at the release time, not a smartphone.

Re:Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

While it may not have been a touch screen, I was using a Nokia N95 smart phone (full web browser, apps, GPS, 3G, wifi) when the iPhone came out.

First iPhone didn't have apps remember, only HTML based things. It also didn't have a GPS or 3g (and the UK didn't have Edge at first)

Jobs added polish and a better firm

Re:Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn Slashdot mobile page, it knows I'm criticising the Jesus phone.

To finish, Jobs added polish and a better form factor, he didn't invent the smartphone or add any novel functionality.

Re:Apple

[jordanjay29]

has yet to reach 1965 levels of space travel technology.

To be fair, NASA has been moving backwards in space travel technology since 1972.

Re:Apple

[silentcoder]

Jobs never built a thing in his life. He just got really, really good at a certain kind of marketing - no not marketing to the public (he had people for that) - marketing himself to engineers and designers as a visionary boss who will let you create great things.
Which put him in a position to get rich off of other people's groundbreaking work - with never a reward for those who did the breaking of the ground. That pattern goes all the way back to when he first met his 'friend' Steve Wozniak.
Woz at least recognised the contributions of Apple's other engineers to the outcomes - which is why he gave a crapload of his Apple shares (then worth a great deal of money) away to other apple staff before he left the company.
It wasn't that Jobs was greedy and Woz was generous (though that's true) - it's that Woz, an engineer of the first order, understood teamwork and team effort, while Jobs - a classic psychopath only ever saw other people as useful tools for enriching himself. Looking at the same thing - Woz saw a group of people who created something awesome with him. Jobs saw a bunch of people he could rob.

Re:Apple

[gTsiros]

far beyond? it was at least two years behind.

christmas of 2005 i got an htc wizard

it was incomparably better than the iphone

and it came about two years earlier

Re:Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm no Apple fan, but the iPhone was far beyond the other phones of its day (the Blackberry and Treo were state of the art at the time)

Seriously? Aren't you forgetting about a Finnish company that completely dominated the smartphone scene at the time?

The first iPhone was a very slick feature phone, but it was by no means a smartphone. It did not have apps and it lacked a lot of functionality that was common even in cheap phones at the time. Moreover, it was the first phone ever to be tied to one specific mobile network. In the beginning, it was impossible to buy it without an extremely expensive bundled subscription to one particular network. There was really no reason to want it. However, the excellent marketing, the years of rumours and secrecy and the way the media treated Jobs and Apple at the time made it popular. It is a marketing success story, but there is nothing particularly good about the product as such. It did popularise the touch screen, however.

Re: Apple

[Zeromous]

Treo has copy/paste long before due to its palm pedigree

Re: Apple

[BarbaraHudson]

The walkman was from 1979. That's pretty much the Apple 1 era (Apple was incorporated in 1977). There were tons of other portable music players before Apple. Even Soubdblaster (Creative Labs) had an mp3 player (NOMAD) in 1999.

Re:Apple

[Big Hairy Ian]

I'm not an Apple fan but I do seem to recall Jobs being responsible for bringing us the Apple Mac and Pixar amongst other things.

Re:Apple

[Lumpy]

You are Hilarious. I carried one of those abominations.

Now my Palm Treo, THAT utterly kicked the ass of everything from Apple or the crap that ran Windows CE.

The problem with it was it required someone with an IQ over 100 to run it. Which mean the majority of the population found it frustrating to use.

Re:Apple

[Lumpy]

also got good at FUCKING the people that built the stuff. he fucked over Woz, the man that actually made apple what it is, he fucked over everyone that did not just nod and say yes-sir.

He may have went down the right paths, but he stepped on a lot of people's faces while wearing soccer cleats to get there.

But then all the "tech giants" were raging assholes that fucked over the people that did the real work to get there. Gates was notorious for it.

Re:Apple

[silentcoder]

Yep, I never suggested he was particularly unique for that. Just that this is, indeed, who he was.

Generally - the people who actually create things are almost never the people who get rich from them. That's at least in part because those people care about creating something great, not about getting rich. It's practically a job requirement - you can't care about the greatness of the creation AND about the profitability of the company since the two goals will create vastly conflicting requirements.

Re:Apple

[dunkelfalke]

I owned basically every HTC device starting with Wallaby and finishing with HD2 and I really liked them. My last Palm was Palm III, so I can't really comment on Treo, but I wasn't impressed with PalmOS in the 1990ies.

Re:Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet the neighborhood kids TP your house fairly regularly if you act like this in real life.

Re:Apple

[luis_a_espinal]

I know you're only trying to be funny but Elon builds fast cars and rockets, while Steve built a telephone that was slightly better than the existing telephones of the day (until the competition caught up and made even better telephones). I'll leave it the reader to decide which is cooler.

I'm not a fan of Jobs, and I'm certainly not an iPhone fanboy, but GTFO, the first iPhone was leaps and bounds better than anything available at the time. It was a paradigm shift in both mobile phone and personal computing technologies.

General dislike for someone or something should not preclude us from being objective.

Re: Apple

[praxis]

**First stage** of an orbital launch vehicle and space shuttle are not cognates.

Re:Apple

[HiThere]

No. No. No. No. Steve Jobs never ever invented a product. He pushed others to invent products, he sold products, he evangelized product. He was important, he rescued Apple from bankruptcy, but he was not a product designer. He was a salesman and an art critic (in the wider sense of art). He demanded excellence, and often got it.

Steve Jobs was quite important, but he wasn't the company.

Re:Apple

[Gussington]

Yeah but it's not a rocket that actually flies to space though is it? Come on, a slightly better phone or a rocket, which one would you prefer?

Re:Apple

[Gussington]

Well played sir :)

Re:Apple

[Gussington]

We've already had this argument a million times in here. The point is do you prefer a slightly better phone or and the fastest car in the world? Or a rocket?
I'm no fan of Elon either, but I think most people would think cars and rockets are cooler than phones and laptops

Re:Apple

[Gussington]

Neither of which are rockets...

Re:Apple

[luis_a_espinal]

We've already had this argument a million times in here. The point is do you prefer a slightly better phone or and the fastest car in the world? Or a rocket? I'm no fan of Elon either, but I think most people would think cars and rockets are cooler than phones and laptops

You are changing the goalposts. I'm not talking about comparing cars and rockets or whether the later is way cooler than the former (what a stupid strawman.) I'm talking about (and taking you to task) this which you wrote:

while Steve built a telephone that was slightly better than the existing telephones of the day

That's bullshit no matter how you cut it. Rockets cooler than phones? Of course! The first iPhone being just slightly better than the phones of the time? Utter garbage and disingenuous history revisionism.

Re:Apple

[Gussington]

You are changing the goalposts... That's bullshit no matter how you cut it... The first iPhone being just slightly better than the phones of the time? Utter garbage and disingenuous history revisionism.

Fuck off no-one cares about these tired iPhone arguments anymore. It's just a phone, get over it.
The thread is about whether Elon is a copy of Steve, or a better version altogether. I think he's much better since the stuff he is doing is much cooler.

Re:Apple

[luis_a_espinal]

You are changing the goalposts... That's bullshit no matter how you cut it... The first iPhone being just slightly better than the phones of the time? Utter garbage and disingenuous history revisionism.

Fuck off no-one cares about these tired iPhone arguments anymore. It's just a phone, get over it.

You care enough to argue back, don't you? We are not arguing about iPhones (that's you again moving the goalposts). We are arguing about your technologically inaccurate statements. You don't like being called on inaccurate statements? Then motherfuckingduh don't make inaccurate statements. Or better yet, let it go (since you claim no one cares about these arguments anymore.)

The thread is about whether Elon is a copy of Steve, or a better version altogether.

Yes, then stick to that theme and don't post inaccurate shit like saying the first iPhone was just *slightly* better than the technology available at the time (which is inaccurate and easy to disprove by just pulling up the specs of every single major phone at the time.)

I think he's much better since the stuff he is doing is much cooler.

No one said otherwise. Feel free to hump that strawman, just don't complain when you get blisters.

Re:Apple

[Gussington]

And you spent time and effort to write all that? Apple takes fanboyism to a new level...

Obviously a shitty email

[glitch!]

If I got an email with such shit, I would reply with a demand to try again with correct spelling and grammar. And of course I would expect this to be some kind of attack, and report it to others in my company.

Re:Obviously a shitty email

[i.r.id10t]

and I would demand that the person use their corporate account, not some yahoo/gmail/hotmail/whatever address that happens to match spelling on the user part ...

Re:Obviously a shitty email

[DishpanMan]

I was reading this as The Plague from hackers.

Re:Obviously a shitty email

[Gussington]

If I got an email with such shit, I would reply...

The only correct response to spam is ignore and delete. Any other response only gives more power to the spammer.

Re:Obviously a shitty email

[Nehmo]

If I got an email with such shit, I would reply with a demand to try again with correct spelling and grammar. And of course I would expect this to be some kind of attack, and report it to others in my company.

You're supposed to report bad grammar?

Re:Obviously a shitty email

[amicusNYCL]

Apparently the correct response is to trace and sue. I would suggest that response gives even less power to the spammer.

Re:Obviously a shitty email

[The-Ixian]

I would print out the e-mail, annotate with a red pen and write F- with a frowny face at the top. Then scan it and send it back with a copy to his parents.

It continued...

[Anonymous Coward]

why you so cautious w Q3/4 gm guidance on call? also plz list my gr8test wkneses an prsnl failngs. can also leave cpy of all imprtant secrt financial docs by bench at park? thx for hrd wrk, i am yr leedur. em. oil is dum, lol!

Strange Wording

[quantaman]

Is that really how Elon Musk writes emails?

Either that guy is copying actual internal emails sent by Musk or he's the most incompetent spear phisher ever.

Re:Strange Wording

[Luthair]

It actually doesn't surprise me that more technologically illiterate people would write very informally to people they work with very closely, particularly if they commonly used blackberries, etc.

Re:Strange Wording

[thegarbz]

Is that really how Elon Musk writes emails?

Elon Musk doesn't even tweet like that. This is barely a step above:

Plz I can haz corporate secretz
kthxbye.

Re:Strange Wording

[silentcoder]

Are you sure it's a step ABOVE ? I think it's actually a step BELOW.

With that one, chances are it would get spam flagged and forgotten, with the one he DID send it got traced and he is now being sued. Arguably a worse outcome.

Re:Strange Wording

[rch7]

It looks more like a trolling not phishing. Unless E.M. really writes emails like 16 year old girl :/

Does it really reflect the opposite?

[SuperKendall]

I hae to assume that is short for "Quest for Integrity Group".

Still looking since 1994!

Re:Does it really reflect the opposite?

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the douchebag's email style it is more likely Qust 4 integry grp

The other question is...

[sconeu]

Is Jason Wheeler going to get his ass fired and become *FORMER* CFO?

Re: What a maroon

[WarJolt]

You've never drunk emailed someone?

Impersonation Seems Unlikely

[Luthair]

I wonder what the lawsuit is actually for. I have a hard time believing Tesla could sue for someone impersonating Elon, wouldn't he himself need to do it? Perhaps attempted theft of trade secrets?

One wonders what this clown would have done with the information, had he been successful and used it for financial gain then I assume he could have run into legal problems with the SEC if caught.

Re:Impersonation Seems Unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

From the complaint, the lawsuit is actually for:
1. Violation of California Penal Code 528.5 (which seems to allow any person damaged by impersonation to sue, not just the one impersonated).
2. Unlawful, deceptive, and unfair business acts and practices in violation of California Business & Professions Code 17200.

Re:Impersonation Seems Unlikely

[IwantToKeepAnon]

One wonders what this clown would have done with the information, ...

Lost opportunity, they could've honey-potted him with lots of fake info to get big oil going totally wrong!

Re:Impersonation Seems Unlikely

[Luthair]

Notwithstanding any other provision of law, any person who knowingly and without consent credibly impersonates another actual person through or on an Internet Web site or by other electronic means

Why oh why does this specifically call out electronic means? Why isn't there a single statute which would also cover writing letters, etc. why do they need different handling?

Re: What a maroon

[Frosty Piss]

Couldn't he at least registered a domain like "TeslaHolding.com" or something? Sad. And, like AOL email, I didn't know anyone still used Yahoo email...

Re: What a maroon

[I'm New Around Here]

Another failure of our Saturday morning lack of cartoons.

You nin-cow-poop.

Re: More proof this Muskie guy is a moron

[hawguy]

He is using his company Tesla to kill with its bad autopilot.

Not *everyone*, just the dumb but wealthy people.

So wait...

[mark-t]

It's okay if an FBI agent impersonates a journalist but it's not okay for an oil company exec to impersonate Elon Musk?

Re:So wait...

[silentcoder]

Where's the relevance here ?
The two cases literally have nothing in common.
The first is a criminal case. The second a civil case. That is: completely different standards of evidence and procedures.
The first is in federal court under federal law.
The second is in California state court under California state laws.

The only thing the two cases have in common is they involve somebody impersonating somebody else - that is not ipso facto a crime or a cause for civil action. If it was the entire cast of Saturday Night Live would be in jail or getting sued every week.

This particular case violated California state laws since
1) the impersonation caused actual harm
2) It falls under California's law against deceptive business practises.

Re:So wait...

[HiThere]

You're correct. They should BOTH be illegal. The question is my mind is whether an officer of the law lying is worse than a CEO lying. It's clear, however, why a different CEO would think attempting to impersonate him for business advantage is worse. What's peculiar is that the law appears to agree so strongly with the CEO.

Too soon?

[Tablizer]

Katz: "It's not easy impersonating Elon, I had to blow up 3 rockets to do it."

Re: What a maroon

[Zontar The Mindless]

My wife and I have backup Yahoo mail accounts, since GMail has an odd habit of not working in China, where we frequently travel.

Yahoo is not bad for Web-based mail, BTW.

mighty fine

[guygo]

Them's some mighty fine integrities you got there, Mr. Katz. Mighty fine.

It's Amazing...

[freeze128]

I don't really know Silicon Valley Corporate culture.... Is it really acceptable to:

Send a business email from a YAHOO email account?
Send an email that looks like a 16 year old girl's text to her BFF?

I would have thought that a big company like Tesla would have its own internal email server, and I also would have thought that there would be some sort of decorum in the workplace.

Re:It's Amazing...

[Anonymous Coward]

no bro

em here.

we no wen 2 use spelling, n wen 2 abbrev

l4mer.

-em

Wait, what?

[fireylord]

Maybe I am mistaken, but how is this not a Federal crime?
I'm surprised if so that Tesla didn't just call in the FBI.
IANAL, maybe someone could weigh in with more knowledge on this?

Can You Say "Insider Dealing"????

[ytene]

I think you might be on to something, not because of the email itself, but because of the potential content that the impersonator sought to obtain.

You see, if Tesla had fallen for the trick and had sent back any form of confidential and financial information, then the recipient would have effectively received "Insider Information" pertaining to Tesla's finances. The SEC takes a *VERY* dim view of this sort of thing [hint: illegal-level dim view] on the basis that a person who trades on the basis of "Insider Information" has, effectively, a massive advantage over the whole of the rest of the market.

The precise law under which a prosecution might be considered might vary, but this easily has the potential to fall within the scope of specific trading laws, but also basic fraud, because "obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception" is the [a] textbook definition of fraud.

Now, for a successful prosecution, the SEC/DoJ would have to be able to show intent, to which the defence would doubtlessly be, "But I did it for the lolz"... However, the one thing that goes in the SEC's corner for that dispute would be that Mr Katz is himself a CFO. He cannot possibly disclaim any knowledge of the seriousness of an attempt at gaining insider information.

This is the sort of test case that I would personally like to see prosecuted, with the DoJ asking for punitive damages. The only way to stamp out this sort of thing is to "catch people at it" and then throw the book at them, to make it crystal clear that such underhand practices will not be tolerated by the market. Further, if Quest Integrity Group have even a shred of the decency that they claim in their name, they will immediate dismiss their CFO for Gross Misconduct. How they react to this will be a very clear indicator of their corporate culture...

Re:Illiterate cretins...

[jandersen]

First of all: "using a similar email address as Musk's"

It's "using a similar e-mail address TO Musk's" (American cretins).

And secondly - the e-mail itself is an illiterate load of rubbish, no capital letters, 'txt speak', etc. WTF?

I too sometimes find myself irritated by things that seem to be common, American usage, but the thing is - the correct form of a language is decided by the native speakers of that language, and American English is slowly becoming a different language from British English; and of course, what is taught in British schools as 'correct' is only one version of the many, equally valid, English dialects. Just because they speak Geordie in Whitehall, that doesn't mean it isn't correct. BBC Parliament would be a whole lot more fun to watch if they did.

Missed opportunity

[dr.Flake]

Best would have been to feed the phisher wrong information and observe the results. You need to see where the information goes beyond this moron. Getting him slapped for it is of minor importance. Could have used the news article from the FBI with the enclosed malware to trace the real IP's

Standard Intelligence Agencies practice i would say.

 

Re:Illiterate cretins...

[drinkypoo]

First of all: "using a similar email address as Musk's"
It's "using a similar e-mail address TO Musk's" (American cretins).

No, it's "using an e-mail address similar to Musk's", you incompetent buffoon.

That's similar to Musk's email?

[wonkey_monkey]

Todd Katz [...] emailed Tesla's chief financial officer using a similar email address as Musk's [...]. According to the lawsuit, Katz used "elontesla@yahoo.com"

Why would Elon Musk be using an email address that is in any way even remotely similar to "elontesla@yahoo.com"?

Re:What a maroon

[networkBoy]

I think they missed a golden opportunity:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
Why they didn't concoct some really misleading information and send that out I don't understand...

They could have had a field day!
-nb

Re: What a maroon

[Pascoea]

Still have my Yahoo e-mail that I have had since 1999. My only complaint is they are trying to make it like g-mail with conversation grouping that drives me insane. It works, their spam filtering is decent (if not too aggressive at times), it's free, and doesn't have a mailbox size limit that I'm aware of (although, I just checked, my oldest message is from 2008, so not sure about the limit).

Couldn't he at least registered a domain like "TeslaHolding.com" or something

Yeah, you have a point there. That's dumb as hell. It's like the paypalsupport@aol.ca shit. Come on man, at least make an effort.

Re:What a maroon

[kaatochacha]

Good lord, this. It's a shining opportunity. Follow that up by an attempt to recall the email, and an email sent to the address asking them to delete without reading, and sounding nervous.

Re: More proof this Muskie guy is a moron

[kaatochacha]

"[every country on the planet] is a country with an economy built by slavery". Every . Single. One.

I don't think it's illegal.

[bussdriver]

I am not a lawyer but The Yes Men comes to mind. I remember stories of reporters posing for things as well.

I think it is rather clear it is not a crime because they are suing and there is no mention of criminal charges. They may find some civil regulation but it sounds to me more like retaliation where the lawsuit itself and the bad PR is the goal; maybe some money is settled or somebody resigns because of the bad PR.

I knew somebody who was frivolously sued by a multinational - he would have won if he didn't go bankrupt during the years of litigation; so he settled, they won and his lawyer won.

Re: More proof this Muskie guy is a moron

[HiThere]

But some did it more recently than others.

Of course, parts of the US economy currently operate based on slavery. I'm talking here about the prison labor system rather than things that are only metaphorically slavery.

Re:What a maroon

[Dayze!Confused]

Perhaps he thought the CFO would think Elon Musk took one from Clinton's playbook and was using private email for official business.

Re:What a maroon

[peawormsworth]

He used a throwaway yahoo account!

If he was smart he still could have avoided detection even through yahoo.

Tesla is seeking ... compensation for the cost of the investigation ...

How much does it cost to pay yahoo to cough up the IP number or other identifying information of one of their users?