Elon Musk Found Guilty of Misleading Twitter Investors, Massive Fine Awaits

Elon Musk has been found guilty by a jury in a United States court for misleading investors regarding the Twitter acquisition.

This case relates to a series of Musk’s statements on Twitter in 2022 during the platform’s acquisition process.

Musk’s statements at the time triggered fluctuations in Twitter’s share prices and influenced investment decisions by several shareholders.

The guilty verdict was read out by the jury at the US District Court in San Francisco on Friday (20/3/2026).

In the trial, the jury concluded that Musk’s social media statements about the Twitter acquisition were misleading or inaccurate, thereby causing losses to investors.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers stated that Musk could be required to pay compensation of up to $2.5 billion (approximately Rp42 trillion).

The case originated in 2022 when Musk announced he would buy Twitter for $44 billion (approximately Rp745 trillion).

However, during the process, he stated that the deal was “temporarily on hold” while awaiting clarity on the number of fake accounts (bots) on the platform.

Those statements caused market volatility and led several investors to sell their shares at lower prices.

Nevertheless, Musk ultimately completed the acquisition in October 2022 and later renamed Twitter to X.

“Elon Musk deliberately deceived investors to save billions of dollars,” said one of the investors’ lawyers, Aaron Arnzen, during the trial.

However, the jury did not fully uphold all the allegations.

Musk was only held responsible for some of his posts, including the statement about the acquisition deal being “temporarily on hold” and unable to proceed without additional data on bots.