Tesla Ex-Employee Snapped Up By FBI

In a story more in line with a primetime TV drama (or high school drama), a former Tesla employee has been charged with spreading unfavorable (and confidential) company information. This information includes employee reviews and customer complaints. The employee in question, Nima Kalbasi, is presumed to have hacked into his former manager’s email to access this material, which was then posted online, along with his own “false and misleading” commentary, according to the FBI.

Given the information has been taken down, it’s not clear how juicy the material was, but I’m willing to guess it would have made headlines further had it been anything worthwhile. Whether or not it is worth the six years in prison that Kalbasi is facing, we may never know. The 28-year old mechanical engineer is charged with two counts of felony computer intrusion and one count of misdemeanor computer intrusion. He appeared in court in San Jose, California, on August 27th, two days after being arrested on his way back to the U.S. from Canada.

Both sides are keeping quiet on the matter for now. This incident is not the first of its kind for Tesla, whose website and Twitter account were taken over earlier this year by hackers. For more on that, see: “When A Hack Is Not A Hack (Yep, We’re Talking Tesla).”

Some members of the Tesla Motors Club forum have a hunch as to a forum member who might be Nima Kalbasi. A poster by the username “Eds” had been saying that he had inside information that the soon-to-launch Tesla Model X had supply problems that would significantly delay its production (again) and that initial Model X SUVs shipped to customers would have issues. Tesla has indicated in a recent conference call that supplier issues may mean Tesla can’t produce as many of the SUVs as initially intended, but I think it’s safe to say that very few people would believe Elon Musk would ship a product to customers that had known issues — his perfectionism is actually considered to be something he could ease up on.

This may be as much as we ever learn about this story, but if we learn more, we’ll be sure to drop a note here.