Our fourth Reality Check report: Tesla, Inc. $TSLA. The company's financial disclosures are largely fraudulent and litigation is piling up because CEO Elon Musk is a habitual liar unfit to serve as an officer or director of any publicly traded company. plainsite.org/realitycheck/t… 
This report consolidates our work, and the key insights of the "$TSLAQ" community on Twitter, from the past year and a half into one comprehensive document. It's 100 pages with over 300 footnotes. The evidence against Tesla and Elon Musk is damning and irrefutable.
Anyone who follows Tesla knows that the details are endless and the news moves very fast, so this report will undoubtedly be outdated in an instant. But the key principles are there: consumer fraud, securities fraud, and accounting fraud, all borne of a perpetual need for cash.
Much of the content won't be new to some, but having all of the evidence in one place is important. Something is very wrong with this company, and it starts at the top.
That being said, there are some new points. We'll share some highlights later today.
Yikes. Hopefully no one was hurt.
As predicted, the report is already outdated—within minutes. But there is a section in the report entitled "Fires." (It's unclear if this fire is actually related to Tesla, but EVs clearly do pose special fire risks.)
As predicted, the report is already outdated—within minutes. But there is a section in the report entitled "Fires." (It's unclear if this fire is actually related to Tesla, but EVs clearly do pose special fire risks.)
The single most important question that journalists should take away from this report is that $TSLA's key metric, "deliveries," is a black box. Tesla IR, its CFO, and Elon Musk have all refused to define it, and refused to deny that it includes shipments *to Tesla itself*.
It's easy to deny an incorrect claim. Musk denied having any money in a Curaçao-based company within a few hours. The fact that Tesla does not want to talk about the meaning of its single most important metric — even with @LoraKolodny — is as big of a red flag as there is.
So back to that question: what are Tesla's *actual* sales? And how do those differ from what the public has been told about "deliveries?"
Name one other company in Silicon Valley that has a fugitive in the accounting department. Go ahead. $TSLA
And just when you think you've indexed every important case and included it in the report, it turns out there's one more, this one about pro-Tesla social media troll David Tayar. plainsite.org/dockets/45xa07…
Tayar's abuse of Yelp and social media sites was so pronounced that he was subject to a permanent injunction signed by a federal judge in 2016 telling him to stop. (Assara I LLC was Tayar's company.)
Setting aside the wisdom of Qazi's campaign of criminal harassment, Elon Musk—the CEO of a car company—welcomed the marketing efforts of someone previously charged with driving with marijuana, and then arrested six years later on multiple drug charges. Now, practically family.
Musk's TV proxies: On the left, ARK's Cathie Wood, who sold off over $120 million+ of $TSLA stock as she promised it would go skyward—but didn't mention her sales on @CNBC (which didn't ask). On the right, Ross Gerber, who still won't answer questions about his questionable bio.
@CNBC It's still unknown who $TSLA's General Counsel actually is, weeks after the last one departed. There are few other $81 billion+ companies that don't have a General Counsel.
@CNBC $TSLA stock is hitting all-time highs just as reliable indicators of sales—not the company's rigged, undefined numbers—show substantial declines. Meanwhile, the federal tax incentives have disappeared and more competition is coming.
@CNBC Musk claims that Tesla vehicles last "11 years" based on no hard evidence, but 20.4% of Teslas in Norway sustained damage from an accident in 2018. And just today, it's believed that EVs collapsed an entire parking garage in Norway and set it aflame, closing a major airport.
@CNBC The latest version of the $TSLA "AI" "neural net" that Cathie Wood loves to prattle on about literally cannot tell the difference between a small child and a plastic cone.
@CNBC Tesla's own demo of its technology was very impressive for an academic project—and nowhere near ready for deployment on actual roads, as families of dead Tesla owners can attest.
Here's that video from Autonomy Investor Day. The flickering on the opposite side of the highway is not a feature.
Yet NHTSA will not disclose crucial information about crashes that have already transpired because $TSLA has insisted that the government keep its so-called "trade secrets"—which might result in significant legal liability if known—confidential.
The @FTC has done nothing about Musk's repeated, unbelievable claims about "money printers" despite multiple lawsuits.
@FTC A consistent pattern: false claims move $TSLA stock.
@FTC Correction: the initial version of the executive summary misstated the trailing metric as price-to-earnings ratio. It should have said earnings per share growth. The larger point remains that Tesla is still unbelievably overvalued.
@FTC Left, from PlainSite's $TSLA report Page 38. Right, Christmas Eve BBB complaint.
