this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
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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.

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[–] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 2 points 34 minutes ago

Money no longer talks. You need hard time for these societal meddlers.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 16 points 2 hours ago

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?

[–] brownsugga@lemmy.world 13 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

Oh No, point 2 % of his net worth

0.2%

literally less than a traffic ticket in terms of scale

[–] sunbeam60@feddit.uk 7 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (4 children)

I mean I dislike the guy as much as you, but almost all of his “wealth” is paper wealth. He may very well not be able to liquidate 2% of his wealth (fine with me).

[–] iglou@programming.dev 13 points 3 hours ago

He doesn't have to liquidate shit, none of them do. They borrow against their holdings.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 hours ago

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

[–] SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 3 hours ago

Reminds me of the same defense some people make in divorce court

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Paper wealth and theoretical wealth, he will have to borrow that $2B using paper value as collateral.

[–] drislands@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

...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.

[–] quarkquasar@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago

He must pay a pittance, to be paid in 20 equal installments of one-twentieth of a pittance each.

[–] gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 3 hours ago

Nothing ever happens though, so he'll just take a loan and stop be beat as wealthy as he already was

[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 17 points 21 hours ago

Drop in a bucket. He should be fined of the money he paid to buy Twitter.

[–] anotherspinelessdem@lemmy.ml 17 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] zbyte64@awful.systems 1 points 3 hours ago

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".

[–] mechoman444@lemmy.world 56 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (6 children)

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% shy of being a trillionaire.

What really needs to be done is they need to charge a percentage of his profits. Say 20 to 30%.

[–] ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] mechoman444@lemmy.world 1 points 58 minutes ago

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.

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 hours ago

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.

[–] Quill7513@slrpnk.net 7 points 1 day ago

Antonin Scalea capped punative damages

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[–] CovfefeKills@lemmy.world 29 points 1 day ago

That is the price of new phone for him compared to us...

[–] Triumph@fedia.io 254 points 1 day ago (20 children)

If the punishment is a fine, it's only illegal for poor people.

The only war is class war.

[–] cannedtuna@lemmy.world 114 points 1 day ago (15 children)

Considering he’s made $400B since acquiring Twitter, this was just a minor cost of doing business.

[–] oyo@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 hours ago

And there is almost zero chance he actually pays this. If anything, it will be a fraction of the amount in 20 years after he exhausts appeals and pushes deadlines to the max.

[–] kautau@lemmy.world 57 points 1 day ago (5 children)
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[–] MrSulu@lemmy.ml 76 points 1 day ago (2 children)

For the rest of us, there would be a seizure of assets and a prison term.

[–] HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 21 hours ago

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.

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[–] GreenBeanMachine@lemmy.world 22 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)
[–] Etterra@discuss.online 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's assuming they can even get him to pay it.

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[–] Mulligrubs@lemmy.world 107 points 1 day ago (1 children)

So that's like me paying a $20 fine. GOOD JOB

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 52 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Except he almost certainly won't be paying anywhere near that amount, if anything.

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[–] WanderWisley@lemmy.world 46 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Spoiler alert: he won’t pay or admit any wrongdoing.

[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

admit any wrongdoing.

So, the Trump school of leadership.

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[–] rogsson@piefed.social 29 points 1 day ago (5 children)

It should be % based of his income. Otherwise it’s not a punishment 

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

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. They're not fining the creep at all. That's reality.

[–] yabbadabaddon@lemmy.zip 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 21 hours ago

A gun works pretty good, or maybe something like Logan's run but instead of it being age based it's wealth based.

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[–] Insekticus@aussie.zone 52 points 1 day ago

That's a fine of $2 out of a total of $800.

I'd speed past cameras if I was running late, and that was the fine.

[–] SethTaylor@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

He'll have it back in a month...

[–] 13igTyme@piefed.social 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

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. Thanks for the money, idiot.

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[–] minorkeys@lemmy.world 28 points 1 day ago (4 children)

He's made billions more after and because of it so he doesn't give a shit about a meaningless, billion dollar fine.

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[–] 1984@lemmy.today 17 points 1 day ago

So the public paid to see another billionaire do things nobody else can do and get away with it. Nice.

[–] stephen@lazysoci.al 38 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I wish “massive white color crime” for the expediency that a “Black dude swelling a bit of weed” got.

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