*By Carlo Versano*
Shares of Tesla dropped Tuesday on news the Department of Justice had launched a criminal investigation into Elon Musk's now-infamous tweet about taking the company private.
The probe is on top of an SEC inquiry and raises the stakes for Tesla and its mercurial chief executive, said Mark Spiegel, a managing member of Stanphyl Capital and a vocal Tesla short-seller.
"There's never just one cockroach," he said Tuesday in an interview on Cheddar.
In a statement to Cheddar confirming the investigation, a company spokesman said, “Tesla received a voluntary request for documents from the DOJ and has been cooperative in responding to it. We have not received a subpoena, a request for testimony, or any other formal process. We respect the DOJ’s desire to get information about this and believe that the matter should be quickly resolved as they review the information they have received."
The company's latest problems began when Musk tweeted in early August he had secured funding from a Saudi Arabian investment fund to take the company private at $420 a share. He ultimately admitted that statement was premature, and a series of other missteps by the CEO sent shares down as much as 33 percent from recent highs. After a seemingly-rare sandal-free stretch, the stock was actually up 12 percent last week, but Tuesday's news ended that run.
Spiegel said Tesla's problems are "coming to a head" and he expects Musk will not remain CEO for much longer, especially now that federal investigators are snooping around in the company's affairs.
Worsening matters for Tesla, competition in the luxury electric car space is just now accelerating; high-end models are in the works at Audi, Jaguar, Mercedes, and Porsche.
"The only thing that's been running this stock has been hype," Spiegel said.
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/the-ultimate-bear-case-for-tesla).
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
