The Tesla Files Unveil More Accounting Fraud Than Imagined

A lot of these are relatively small, kind if a paper-cut in terms of overall problems at Tesla.

But Used Cars Booked as "Delieveries"', or "Booking the Same Car as a Sale Multiple Times", or "Proof of Overstated 'Deliveries' Via Google Invoice" means that money simply does not exist. The money was made up, never happened, and issues like "CFO Refuses To State True Cash Balances" means that the amount of missing money might be larger than expected.

There's always accounting errors in businesses. But when its malicious (and some of these allegations look malicious), it might rise to the level of criminal fraud.

We are very early in this process though of court cases. The real issue is that it took a leak + private-citizen suing Elon Musk/Tesla to bring these out to light. But lets see if the ball can get rolling.

The big question I have is how much fraud is this? I think $millions or even $10s of millions can be swept under the rug for a company of Tesla's size. But if this is $Billions of fraud, that might be too much and they'd be taken out by the court system and angry investors (as the stock price would surely be affected).

This isn't a small problem they can pay a fine and ignore it. Legally it's possible they might find some way to wriggle out of responsibility. But they're still screwed. It's not just the law they need to worry about they need to worry about. In this case, since Elon has a weird cult of personality with his investors he might be fine on that front. Usually when this kind of thing is revealed about a company the shareholders dump and run but that is not going to happen here I think. What is going to murder Tesla is loans.

A floundering company with a good rep can survive quite a while on loans. Many big finance companies give great interest rates to big companies they think they can do large-scale business with in the future. So a company that can convince people they're on track for great profits can often get fantastic terms. I guarantee you that has stopped. No credible finance company will likely touch Tesla now. None of the numbers they give can be trusted. So Tesla's ability to gain new loans has just evapourated. Since they are committing accounting fraud they are not selling as much as they claim and therefore almost certainly need new loans just to keep going.