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Martin Tripp, the former Tesla worker who was embroiled in a bitter legal battle with CEO Elon Musk for more than two years, was ordered to pay his former employer $ 400,000 after admitting to leaking confidential information to a journalist.
The settlement is meant to end one of Tesla’s most sordid tales, in which Tripp, a former process technician, has shaken horns with the billionaire CEO over allegations that Tesla was wasting an amount ‘to cut the gas. blast ‘of raw material as it ramped up production of the Model 3 sedan.
Musk then accused Tripp of “sabotage” and personally ordered investigators to hack Tripp’s phone and spy on his messages. Tesla even misled local police about a possible mass shooting by Tripp at the company’s Nevada plant.
But in the end, Tripp came out on the losing side. The payment is part of a proposed settlement of a lawsuit filed by Tesla in 2018 alleging that Tripp hacked into the electric car company’s system and transferred “gigabytes” of data to third parties. As part of the deal, Tripp admitted to breaking trade secret and computer crime laws when he told a Business intern reporter that Tesla wasted a significant amount of raw materials in the production of its Model 3.
Tripp also agreed to pay Tesla $ 25,000 for continuing to reveal information about the company, despite being ordered by a judge to stop. Tripp had posted a large number of documents and videos online, many under a confidentiality order in the case. In August, Tripp fired his lawyers and began representing himself in this case. It was also revealed that a Tesla short seller, The Funicular Fund, was funding Tripp’s legal defense.
Earlier this year, a judge dismissed Tripp’s libel case against Tesla, in which the former tech accused the company of spreading false rumors about him. After Tripp applied for whistleblower status with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Musk emailed a reporter at The Guardian telling them that a tipster had contacted Tesla to say that Tripp could “come back and shoot people” at the Nevada Gigafactory. The local sheriff determined the threat was not real, but Tesla issued a press release, which was picked up by multiple media outlets.
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