Ponzi Factor | V-Log 3 | Tesla $420 scam

Hey everybody! So I was gonna do a V log about how to do research with the SCC filings, but instead this came up with respect to Tesla and how Elon Musk said he is not gonna take the company private after he tricked everybody on August 7th about how he was gonna take the company private and pay everyone $420 a share, and how he had the money to do so.

I've been following financial news for the past couple weeks, mainly because the story and the facts that were coming out are not speculation on whatever their Ponzi ass is gonna do. It has legal implications about whether or not Elon committed fraud or market manipulation. Unfortunately, I hate watching financial news, but I had to follow this one. Now it looks like it's coming to a rap because Elon, a couple hours ago on Friday night, announced he's not gonna take the company private.

So we're gonna hear more about this as this story develops because it's not over. The SEC is still after Elon, and a whole bunch of other people are suing him as well, so we'll see what happens. Instead, I'm gonna tell you a little bit about what I've been through over the past week with respect to this story and why this story didn't exactly bother me. Even though Tesla was an example I used in my book, and that example of a scam with this new information coming out would have been a positive-sum situation that's good for investors.

Even though I only talked about Tesla for no more than, let's say, 400 words, I did use them as an example, so of course that worried me just a little bit for about 30 seconds. Here's why: from my experience, every single time a public company says that they're gonna do something magnanimous for the investors, as things develop and as you do deeper research, it always turns out to be far worse for the investors than it was at the initial point.

It took me about seven years to write the book. I had to change certain things along the way because new things developed. This is a world of finance, after all. Initially, when I started the project in 2012, I said that Google never paid dividends. But at one point it scared me because according to a certain financial database, it said that Google did pay dividends in 2014 to the tune of 50 cents on $600 stock. 50 cents on a $600 stock is nothing.

But from a logical definitive point of view, I couldn't really say that they never paid dividends if they paid 50 cents. However, when I looked deeper as to why they just paid a one-off 50-cent dividend in 2014, I wondered, well, if they were trying to give money back to investors, why did they only do it once to the tune of 50 cents? Well, it turns out that it wasn't actually a legitimate dividend payment, regardless of what financial databases were recording it as. It was actually due to a litigation, a lawsuit that Google had from their shareholders because they issued those Ponzi assets.

This was the first time I experienced, well, you look a little deeper, it looks like they paid dividends, did something nice, but you look a little deeper... not only did they not pay dividends, but they actually got sued for doing something far worse. Another time was actually a year ago, when I completed the book in 2017 during the summer, and I realized as I was doing final fact-checking that Google bought back 5 million shares in 2016. I said, "Oh my gosh, I have to address that."

But here's the thing: when I looked into it a little deeper, as in their SEC filings, what I found is that their SEC filings for shares outstanding in 2016 showed that it actually increased by 3 million. So did they buy back 5 million? I believe they probably did. Now, just 8 million additional shares find their way into the market according to their SEC filings.

It did. So here we go, right? No share buybacks. They said they bought back 5 million, did something good, but looking at their SEC filings, hey, not only do they not buy back 5 million, not with the number of flex, it actually shows that they issued another 3 million. This was my experience several times, and there were more times just like that, where I finished writing something and come across a situation that looks like the public company did some good for the investors, and it turned out to be something that not only was it not good but really far worse for the investor in the end if I didn't find that information out at all.

So when Tesla or Elon now say he was gonna buy back shares at $420, it made me jump but only for literally a couple seconds. Then I defaulted—really not on, oh do I believe Elon, do I think he's a liar—not that. I just defaulted on my experience with Google and the fact that in all my research and all my experience, whenever it looks like a company did something good for their investors, it always turned out to be something far worse.

And here we go with Tesla. I don't know what's gonna happen next week, but there's a reason why Mr. Musk chose tonight, Friday night, to announce the fact that he is not gonna become a private company. It's because he didn't want his stocks to get hammered tomorrow as everyone's gonna be screaming saying this is gonna be obviously a fraud. He made out the whole thing, and he wants everyone to digest this over the weekend and hopefully not try to destroy him until Monday.

Well, next week is another week, so we'll see how this all plays out. As it stands, Mr. Musk is not taking the company private. Tesla is still upon the assets, and nothing has changed over the past week aside from the fact that Elon Musk might be going to jail soon.

Alright, thank you all pretty much. Talk to you later. Bye!