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Ex-Tesla Employee Agreed To Pay $400,000 For Leaking Trade Secrets

Court documents show that a former Tesla employee who was once called an “inner ghost” by Musk agreed to compensate the company for $400,000 for illegally leaking production problems at Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory.

This compensation is part of a proposed settlement agreement. Tesla accused a former employee named Martin Tripp in 2018 of Illegally leaked the trade secrets of Model 3 production and provided false information to reporters, according to the report.

As part of the settlement agreement, Tripp admitted to violating trade secret laws and the confidentiality agreement with Tesla. Tripp worked as a process technician at Tesla’s Gigafactory from 2017 to 2018. During his time at the company, he emailed reporters saying that the plant would not be able to meet Musk’s publicly stated goal of producing 5,000 Model 3s per week.

After discovering the source of the media’s information, Musk fired Tripp. Since then, the two have repeatedly insulted each other on social media. Tripp once filed a countersuit against Musk for defamation, but the federal judge in charge of the case rejected his prosecution and ruled that he failed to prove that Musk’s actions were actually malicious.