Deaths Mount as Lawyers Flee Tesla

Tesla has systematically hidden, delayed, or minimized reporting of its safety failures while maintaining its public image and stock valuation. The fact that a Japanese pedestrian death occurred so close to the high-profile Uber case, yet received minimal coverage, suggests coordinated efforts to suppress damaging information. But this pattern of deception runs far deeper than most investors realize.

Lawyer Exodus: No Legal Team Can Defend Them

Tesla can’t keep lawyers. The general counsel position rotates almost every year, and this isn’t normal corporate turnover—it’s a massive red flag that screams internal fraud and illegal practices.

The evidence is staggering:

• Todd Maron (Musk’s former divorce lawyer): Left in December 2018
• Dane Butswinkas (veteran trial lawyer from Williams & Connolly): Hired in December 2018, quit after just two months in February 2019, citing “poor cultural fit”
• Jonathan Chang: Took over in February 2019, left by December 2019
• William Berry: Left in March 2022
• Brandon Ehrhart: Named in 2023, the company’s sixth legal leader since late 2019

But it gets worse. Tesla lost twelve lawyers in 2022 alone. Industry experts note that general counsel departures at this frequency are virtually unprecedented among major public companies. As one legal analyst observed: “General counsel folk don’t abruptly leave a job like this. Three in a row? My lawyer colleagues tell me this has so many red flags, there has to be something very bad going on.”

This isn’t a coincidence—it’s a pattern that suggests the company routinely engages in practices that no ethical lawyer wants to be associated with.

Hidden Death: Tesla’s Pedestrian Killer Cover-Up

While the world focused on Uber’s pedestrian fatality on March 18, 2018, Tesla was quietly dealing with its own deadly secret. Yoshihiro Umeda, a 44-year-old Japanese man, was killed on April 29, 2018—just six weeks later—when a Tesla Model X on Autopilot “suddenly accelerated” and crashed into pedestrians and motorcycles stopped at an accident scene near Tokyo.

Court documents filed in federal court describe this as the first “Tesla Autopilot-related death involving a pedestrian,” yet it received a fraction of the media attention that Uber’s case generated. The Tesla system failed to recognize stationary vehicles, motorcycles, and pedestrians, instead maintaining highway speed into a group of people trying to help accident victims.

This wasn’t an oversight—it was the beginning of Tesla’s systematic campaign to suppress information about Autopilot deaths while maintaining its “safer than human drivers” marketing narrative.

Software Lies: Cruel Experimentation on Human Lives

Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” technology is fundamentally defective and has become a public safety crisis:

The Death Toll:

• 2,300+ crashes involving Tesla’s driver assistance systems, compared to just 55 for GM’s SuperCruise
• 59 documented Autopilot deaths, including multiple pedestrian fatalities
• Tesla’s systems disengage less than one second before impact on average, effectively abandoning control at the moment of certain collision

The Cover-Up Pattern:

• Months-long delays in reporting crashes to NHTSA, violating federal requirements
• Tesla told NHTSA these delays were due to “errors” in their data collection systems
• The company has waited months to report crashes that occurred “several months or more” before filing required safety reports

The Technical Failures:

• Vision-only systems that cannot detect pedestrians unless they’re near crosswalks
• Failure in basic driving conditions like sun glare—the same condition that killed Yoshihiro Umeda
• Systems that misclassify objects multiple times per second, treating each new classification as a “brand new object”

Tesla continues to market this technology as “Full Self-Driving” while internal data shows it requires constant human supervision and fails in predictable scenarios.

Quality Crisis: Cars Nobody Actually Wants

Tesla’s vehicles are plagued with fundamental defects that the company has been unable to resolve:

The Recall Reality:

• 83 total recalls since production began
• 52 require physical dealership repairs—so much for “software-defined vehicles”
• 376,241 vehicles recalled in 2025 alone for failing power steering systems
• The Cybertruck averages one recall every 2.25 months since launch

Build Quality Breakdown:

• Record inventory levels with no customer backlog for the first time in company history
• Chronic problems including water leaks, seat belt failures, charging port malfunctions
• Exterior panels that detach while driving (46,000 Cybertruck recall)
• Consumer Reports documents widespread quality control issues across all model lines

The “Stealth Recall” Strategy:

Tesla has been caught requiring customers to sign non-disclosure agreements for safety-critical repairs, labeling them as “goodwill” fixes rather than recalls. NHTSA has called these agreements “troublesome” and noted they limit defect reporting.

The Demand Cliff: A Company in Free Fall

The market has finally seen through Tesla’s promises:

Sales Collapse:

• First annual sales decline in company history (2024: -1.1%)
• Q1 2025: -13% year-over-year while overall EV market grew 10%
• No waiting lists: Model Y available for immediate delivery—a first in company history

Global Market Rejection:

• Europe: -49% sales drop in early 2025
• Australia: -70% year-over-year decline
• Multiple European countries: -40% to -50% across the board
• China: Losing market share to BYD and other domestic competitors

Tesla is desperately offering unprecedented incentives—0% financing, free charging, deeply discounted leases—and still can’t move inventory.

Financial Irregularities: Multiple Whistleblowers Sound Alarm

The financial reporting problems go far beyond normal corporate accounting disputes:

SEC Whistleblower Complaints:

• 2021 complaint alleging Tesla “improperly categorized repairs and had poor control over internal systems used to capture data that later rolled up to financial reports”
• Lukasz Krupski’s “Tesla Files”: 18,000 internal documents detailing alleged securities law violations
• Martin Tripp’s evidence: $150 million in waste and scrap costs allegedly hidden from investors

Sales Number Manipulation:

• 40% discrepancy between Tesla’s reported sales figures and actual vehicle registrations in some periods
• Fake pre-orders: Multiple Cybertruck customers report being charged for orders they never placed
• Canadian government investigation: Tesla claimed 8,653 EV incentive sales in 72 hours, with one store allegedly processing 2,558 sales in a single day

The SEC’s Response:

The Securities and Exchange Commission assigned just one person to review one portion of the 2021 whistleblower complaint, then closed the investigation without interviewing the whistleblowers or reviewing the 18,000 supporting documents they offered to provide.

The Enron Parallel: Why Tesla’s Collapse Will Be Worse

Like Enron, Tesla’s massive valuation is built on promises rather than profits:

The Valuation Disconnect:

• 200+ price-to-earnings ratio while earnings decline for consecutive quarters
• Stock price based on promises of robotaxis, humanoid robots, and energy storage—none of which generate meaningful revenue
• 1.6% of S&P 500 weighting means Tesla’s collapse will drag down millions of 401(k) accounts

The Key Differences from Enron:

• Tesla has actual body count: Real people are dying while the company covers up safety failures
• Much larger market impact: Tesla’s market cap and index presence dwarf Enron’s influence
• Retail investor exposure: Unlike Enron’s institutional investor base, Tesla is heavily held by individual investors and pension funds

The Coming Reckoning: Why Investors Must Exit Now

As Fred Lambert points out, some investors already get it, why the Elon Musk and Peter Thiel fraud scheme is fraud:

Tesla could fall 90% tomorrow, and I wouldn’t buy a share, because it’s just crazy overvalued Palantir, I wouldn’t buy a share—crazy overvalued.

Tesla exhibits every characteristic of a major corporate fraud:

1. Systematic safety cover-ups with documented fatalities
2. Unprecedented legal counsel flight indicating internal illegality
3. Multiple SEC whistleblower complaints with extensive documentation
4. Sales manipulation and reporting irregularities
5. Product defects the company cannot resolve
6. Collapsing demand despite desperate incentives

The Immediate Risks:

• Federal criminal investigations into Full Self-Driving claims
• Potential securities fraud charges based on whistleblower evidence
• Product liability lawsuits from Autopilot deaths
• Market share erosion as competitors deliver superior products

The Systemic Risk:

Tesla’s 1.6% S&P 500 weighting means its collapse will trigger broader market disruption. Index funds holding Tesla will be forced to sell, amplifying any decline and affecting millions of retirement accounts.

The Bottom Line

Tesla is not a car company or a technology company—it’s a stock promotion scheme that has run out of road. The pattern of dead lawyers, dead customers, and dead sales tells the story of a company that prioritizes stock price over human lives.

When Enron collapsed, it was primarily about financial fraud. When Tesla collapses, investigators will find both financial fraud and a trail of preventable deaths that the company systematically covered up to protect its stock price.

Tesla will collapse. The question is only how many more innocent people will be killed by them.

Investors should consider these documented patterns of regulatory violations, safety failures, and executive departures when making investment decisions. Tesla’s unprecedented legal counsel turnover alone represents a level of internal dysfunction rarely seen among major public companies.