Submitted 2 weeks ago by Beep@lemmus.org to technology@lemmy.world
https://text.npr.org/2026/03/20/g-s1-114660/elon-musk-misled-investors-twitter-purchase
A jury has found Elon Musk liable for misleading investors by deliberately driving down Twitter’s stock price in the tumultuous months leading up to his 2022 acquisition of the social media company for $44 billion. But it absolved him of some fraud allegations, finding that he did not “scheme” to mislead investors.
For the rest of us, there would be a seizure of assets and a prison term.
God bless Willy Nelson…
Basically, and it’s not even like this is a corporation that has some level of money machine go burr, it’s straight up one man who did this and is responsible it should be cut and dry and he should be spending the next few decades in prison.
I don’t understand why these courts charge a set fine for stuff like this. This is clearly an extremely unique case. The man is 20% to being a trillionaire.
Or needs to be done is they need to charge a percentage of his profits. Say 20 to 30%?
Antonin Scalea capped punative damages
Because that’s the law.
… and the billionaires draft the laws.
This idea needs to be fine tuned. The problem is that parasitic oligarchs don’t have a real income.
For those who don’t know, the parasite oligarchs take the vast amount of stock that they own and take it to a bank. The bank gives the parasite a loan with the stock as collateral. Right off the vat, the parasite gets to claim debt on their taxes. The parasite will then take the loan and use it to buy more stock or companies or anything that generates more wealth.
Loan gets paid off with the generated wealth. Due to generous tax loop holes put into place by politicians). The parasite gets to claim that they didn’t make any money and get a tax bill of zero and sometimes a refund.
This scheme is called “buy, borrow, die.” It’s legal. The stocks are typically not sold off, so capital gains taxes are avoided. Loans and debt are not taxable. It’s effectively profit with relatively low risk. The point is that the level of entry is extremely high. One must already have large amounts of money to qualify for these kinds of loans.
The problem, of course, is that if you start taxing debt, like people taking out loans, it’s not just going to be millionaires, as you called them “parasites,” paying those taxes. It will be everybody taking out a loan, including the poor and the middle class.
The proposed solution is to tax people based on net worth. If you’re worth above a certain amount, then you get taxed at a very high percentage.
With that being said, if that were the case and Elon Musk were taxed like this, he would only pay around $12–$13 billion out of the roughly $800 billion he already has. In essence, it would still be pocket change to him.
At this point, wealthy people not paying taxes has become a kind of game, who can pay the least.
What really needs to be done is they need to charge a percentage of his profits. Say 20 to 30%.
Lol. That’s not how the state serves capitalism. Fixed fines!!! Gotta put the burden the poor every time.
Spoiler alert: he won’t pay or admit any wrongdoing.
admit any wrongdoing.
So, the Trump school of leadership.
This has really spread these days, including living in filter bubbles.
That is the price of new phone for him compared to us…
It should be % based of his income. Otherwise it’s not a punishment
This does not work because he will find a way to have 0 income (legally). I don’t know how we can make the billionaires pay, but we should tax the assets not the incomes.
A gun works pretty good, or maybe something like Logan’s run but instead of it being age based it’s wealth based.
It should be the amount he made from it + a fine. It’s how the serfs get handled.
How much as he made from his Twitter deal? He made it illegally, confiscate it all.
That’s the problem with Mr. musketeer he doesn’t actually show income. That’s why we’re always complaining about how billionaires don’t pay income tax.
Is this your first time in capitalism? That’s how every fine works. There are no punishments for the privileged.
The president is a pedophile who has been prosecuted for like 30 felonies.
That’s it, again?
JAIL TIME!
If I steal a bread to feed my hungry children I’ll go to jail, but this guy ficks around with billions and all he gets is a tiny slap on his fingers?
He’s made billions more after and because of it so he doesn’t give a shit about a meaningless, billion dollar fine.
It’s an ego thing, he’ll hire a bunch of really expensive lawyers and drag it out as long as he can. This is what the rich do.
if you drag it out, a billion dollar fine becomes a million real fast
That’s a power thing. Avoiding accountability to the rule of law.
Lose change amount
That’s assuming they can even get him to pay it.
Ya for about 10% of that cost the lawyers will keep working hard to contest.
I don’t know how much he has liquid. The article says that “most” of his 814B is tied up in Tesla stock. Selling a couple of billion worth of stock isn’t trivial.
Oh No, point 2 % of his net worth
0.2%
literally less than a traffic ticket in terms of scale
I mean I dislike the guy as much as you, but almost all of his “wealth” is paper wealth. He må very well not be able to liquidate 2% of his wealth (fine with me).
He doesn’t have to liquidate shit, none of them do. They borrow against their holdings.
Point is that if I commit fraud or steal anything over 10 dollars I might go to jail
This guy lies steals and cheats by the billions and he gets a hug
Jail the motherfucker already
0.2% not 2%
Reminds me of the same defense some people make in divorce court
Paper wealth a theoretical wealth, he will have to borrow that $2B using paper value as collateral.
…is Musk worth a trillion dollars now?
I mean, financially, yeah I think so. Which is ironic, since as a person he’s worth about as much as a large turd in a small bag.
Drop in a bucket. He should be fined of the money he paid to buy Twitter.
Cool, so when this reaches Appeals court (which is where it’s absolutely going next because they’ll definitely appeal it), that 2.1B$ fine will get knocked down to 10$ and a blowjob (for Elon).
But hey, the Washington Post or whatever can get a nice little headline out of it where they pretend billionaires face any sort of punishment in this Capitalist hellscape for 5 seconds so that’s nice.
To be clear, the punishment wasn’t him loosing 2B, he wouldn’t even notice the difference. The punishment was being told he was wrong by a jury of his “peers”.
So the public paid to see another billionaire do things nobody else can do and get away with it. Nice.
I wasn’t invested in Twitter, but when I heard he was trying to get out of it I bought some stock. I knew he couldn’t get out of the deal because it doesn’t work like that and he’s a dumb ass.
My only regret was not buying more.
Next time please also let me know I should do that
He’ll pay it, then make it back by lunch.
They should repossess it and place it in the hands of a responsible steward…
He’ll have it back in a month…
I think he can cut you a check for that in the court room.
Money no longer talks. You need hard time for these societal meddlers.
He must pay a pittance, to be paid in 20 equal installments of one-twentieth of a pittance each.
Hope the Saudi’s treat a fraudster as harshly as a journalist
And now the people he owes will never be broke. They’ll always have that money coming “some day”.
Nothing ever happens though, so he’ll just take a loan and stop be beat as wealthy as he already was
Can’t wait to see how the system fails to make him account for this, again.
Whatev.
HAH.
Mulligrubs@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
So that’s like me paying a $20 fine. GOOD JOB
frongt@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Except he almost certainly won’t be paying anywhere near that amount, if anything.
org@lemmy.org 2 weeks ago
Right, he’s just not gonna pay. It’s not like they’re gonna go get the money from his bank account. Can you imagine Elon Musk being garnished? Never gonna happen