Elon Musk has to pay $20 million to settle with the S.E.C.
Elon Musk's ill-advised weed humor is going to cost him $20 million dollars and his chairmanship of Tesla, in accordance with a settlement agreement Musk and Tesla made with the the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Musk accepted the settlement on Saturday, Sept. 29, after initially rejecting a similar but less harsh settlement put forth when the SEC first announced it was suing Musk for fraud (the initial settlement called for a two-year suspension from the chairmanship and a $10 million fine).
The fraud in this case is the initial content of Musk's tweet, in which he announced that he would take Tesla private when the stock hit $420 and that he had "funding secured" to make that move.
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The tweet, and Musk's later retraction, had a legitimate market impact as investors panicked over the prospect of Tesla going private.
Alexis Nedd is a senior entertainment reporter at Mashable. A self-named "fanthropologist," she's a fantasy, sci-fi, and superhero nerd with a penchant for pop cultural analysis. Her work has previously appeared in BuzzFeed, Cosmopolitan, Elle, and Esquire.
