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

[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?"

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?

[Anonymous Coward]

And so do the United States of America.

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.

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....

[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.

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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[amicusNYCL]

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

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

[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.

Does it really reflect the opposite?

[SuperKendall]

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

Still looking since 1994!

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.

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.

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.