Every layer that could have stopped Tesla fraud was designed to monetize harm after it occurred. Prevention of murder was never in scope, which enabled Elon Musk to get rich on fraud even despite mass suffering.

Criminal fraud prosecution of a sitting CEO requires DOJ willingness. SEC enforcement requires a functioning SEC. NHTSA enforcement requires a functioning NHTSA. All three were initially weakened by Trump’s indifference.

The indifference worsened into directly hollowing out protections, when he gave Musk a federal position whose explicit function was deleting the investigative apparatus with his name on the docket.

What Musk-at-DOGE actually represented was the subject of pending federal investigations being handed authority to delete the investigators and reclassify himself as untouchable. DOGE was a ruthless, murderous, sharpened acceleration of a 120-year-old template of harm-for-profit. Every prior case involved lobbying, revolving doors, regulatory capture from outside. DOGE was direct appointment of the defendant to dissolve any offices or courts protecting the public.

Pending investigations by the government vanished because the agencies were gutted by the subject of the investigations.

Tesla harms already remained dubiously legal because no US institution was ever given full authority to stop a car from being sold over a design flaw, until enough people have died to force a NHTSA recall, where the recall is negotiated with the manufacturer. Musk money was then not only generated by fraud because the US enforcement stack was built to extract penalties after the fact, but also because he captured the part of the stack that could still catch the fraud later.

Compare this with other countries. China and the EU use pre-market approval. A car must be certified by the regulator before it can be sold. When the Dutch Data Protection Authority ruled Sentry Mode violated GDPR, Tesla had to change the feature from on-by-default to opt-in and add a flashing-lights warning before it could keep shipping. When Chinese authorities decided Tesla’s always-on cameras were a surveillance risk, the cars were banned from military bases and government compounds. FSD was blocked from Chinese roads until Tesla met data localization requirements. The regulator has a veto, because they protect the public from obvious fraud.

Without fraud, there would be no Tesla.

Why? Four million cars worth little more than a 1992 Kia, or even negative value as threat to public safety, carry false FSD promises, false robotaxi promises, false autonomy timelines, and false HW3 “all hardware needed” claims. They repeatedly “veered” uncontrollably, exploding and killing trapped passengers. Courts constantly issue “death trap” dollars to grieving families. Without fraud there would be no trillion-dollar market cap and no Musk compensation package. Arguably there would be no Musk story at all, except about a criminal who goes to jail before hundreds of lawsuits have to be filed.

The most important thing to understand about this litigation landscape is the timing. The lawsuits being resolved right now — Benavides, Huang, and the handful of post-verdict settlements — all stem from crashes that happened in 2018-2020, when Autopilot was less capable and far fewer vehicles were on the road with the feature. FSD beta only launched publicly in late 2020. The hundreds of thousands of vehicles that have been running FSD in the years since will generate a second, much larger wave of litigation that is still in its infancy.

Tesla stockpuppets re-ratified Musk’s pay package by majority vote after a Delaware court voided it as a breach of fiduciary duty. People still believed the lies and bought cars on promises the CEO had already broken publicly. The victim participation angle in the fraud is truly problematic.

NHTSA has no veto, so Musk has more and more victims every year. NHTSA has a complaint form and an investigation pipeline measured in years. They won’t even accurately report the Tesla deaths, as I’ve explained here before, because Trump blocked honoring the dead to instead personally promote Tesla profit on harms.

Musk made money because the US treats CEO claims about product capability as puffery, treats securities fraud as a civil penalty paid from shareholder funds, and treats consumer fraud as recoverable only through individual arbitration and slow class actions. The 2018 SEC weak-kneed settlement set the template. Sneeze twenty million. Laugh at a fig-leaf Twitter oversight provision. Keep the job, keep the equity, keep mass killing innocent people.

The billionaire equity has compounded faster than the penalties for depraved indifference, reckless homicide, wrongful death… fraud.

This is not a Trump invention, because Trump isn’t capable of inventing anything. It is the default setting of US corporate liability since at least 1906 and the Meat Inspection Act, which was itself a response to Upton Sinclair documenting mass harm the regulator refused to see.

Ford Pinto? A known fuel tank defect, doors that wouldn’t open, internal cost-benefit memo, no executive prosecuted.

You think lawsuits about door handles failing in a fiery crash are new? Think again. That’s just Ford Pinto economics coming back into accounting like Elon Musk DGAF. Seems like Tesla at least has a direct precedent here.

GM ignition switch? 124 dead, GM knew for a decade, $900M deferred prosecution, no executive prosecuted.

Purdue/Sacklers? Over 500,000 opioid deaths, $6B settlement, Sacklers kept most of their wealth, no Sackler prosecuted.

Boeing 737 MAX? 346 dead, MCAS fraud on the FAA itself, $2.5B deferred prosecution, no executive prosecuted.

BP Deepwater Horizon? 11 dead, $20B penalty, no senior executive criminally prosecuted.

Johns Manville? More than 40 years of asbestos concealment, bankruptcy used as liability shield.

Takata? Over 30 dead, mass recall, company bankrupted, executives paid fines.

Leaded gasoline, leaded paint, leaded buckshot… don’t even get me started.

Tobacco? 50 years of cancer fraud, Master Settlement extracted money and prosecuted nobody.

Regulators were designed to arrive after the funerals, enabling shareholders to re-ratify fraud, doubling-down on a century of the same deal from Pinto to Purdue, allowing a defendant to be appointed where he could dissolve his own investigators.