Elon Musk Misled Twitter Investors Ahead of His $44 Billion Takeover in 2022, Jury Finds

Lawyers for tech mega-billionaire say they plan to appeal verdict

By Todd Spangler

Todd Spangler

NY Digital Editor

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Elon Musk artificially drove down the price of Twitter‘s stock in 2022 with tweets claiming the social-media company had underreported how many fake and spam accounts were on its platform, a federal jury found.

The verdict was handed down Friday in a civil trial in California against Musk brought on behalf of Twitter shareholders, who alleged that Musk was attempting to back out of his agreement to buy Twitter or negotiate a lower price. The jury found that Musk’s tweets in 2022 — saying he was suspending his takeover of Twitter (citing his skepticism about Twitter’s claims that spam and bot accounts were less than 5% of the total) — were materially false or misleading. However, the jury also found that Musk was not liable for “engaging in a scheme to defraud investors.”

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