In August 2018 Musk tweeted he was considering taking Tesla private at $420/share with "funding secured." The SEC charged that the statement was misleading because financing wasn't formally locked, and Musk settled: he and Tesla each paid $20 million and he stepped down as chairman (keeping the CEO role), with no admission or denial of wrongdoing — a civil regulatory settlement, not a criminal fraud conviction. Then, in February 2023, a federal civil jury in San Francisco found Musk and Tesla not liable on all counts in the shareholder class action over the tweet, deliberating under two hours. So an over-stated tweet that drew an SEC settlement is real; "fraudster" is not — a jury that heard the full case cleared him of fraud liability.