A Tortoise investigation finds the world’s richest man champions free speech in public but not private
ABritish caver who helped save the lives of 12 Thai children has demanded that Elon Musk reveal the full scale of surveillance used against him.
So what? Musk has an outsize influence on the US election as owner of X and a vocal supporter of Trump.
He’s styled himself as a free speech absolutist.
At the same time he has used private investigators and other tools to silence critics.
One of those critics is Vernon Unsworth, who sued Musk in 2018 for calling him a “pedo guy” on Twitter. A new Tortoise investigation reveals that the scale of surveillance used against Unsworth was greater than previously known: Musk used at least two sets of private investigators, both of which used deception to try to gather information.
Others allegedly surveilled for Musk include…
Tesla whistleblowers: Musk deployed private investigators to follow a Tesla employee “24 hours a day”. A former security operative at Tesla alleges the company also hacked into the employee’s phone. Other whistleblowers also allege that they were followed. Tesla has denied any wrongdoing.
Former partners: Musk’s team allegedly hired a private investigation firm on Australia’s Gold Coast to place Amber Heard, Musk’s then partner, under surveillance while she was filming Aquaman in 2017. Musk declined comment on this and other enquiries. It is understood that he denies any wrongdoing.
Pedo Guy. In July 2018, Unsworth found himself at the centre of a global news story. Twelve Thai members of a youth football team, aged 11-16, and their 25-year-old coach, were trapped deep in the Tham Luang cave system in northern Thailand.
Rising water levels meant the team was out of contact with the outside world for more than a week. Even after they were found, 4 kilometres from the cave mouth, rescuers faced a huge challenge getting them out. An audacious plan was put in place to drug the boys using ketamine before diving them out while unconscious. It worked. By 10 July, all the boys and their coach were rescued alive.
Unsworth had worked for 17 days straight coordinating the rescue when he was asked on CNN about Elon Musk. From the US, Musk had offered to send over a “tiny, kid-sized submarine” to help with the rescue.
Vernon told CNN that the sub was a non-starter and that Musk could “stick his submarine where it hurts”.
Musk retaliated by calling Unsworth a “pedo guy” – on Twitter.
Unsworth sued Musk for defamation.
Unbeknownst to Unsworth, Musk’s team then paid about $50,000 to a private investigator called James Howard-Higgins to dig up dirt on Unsworth. Howard-Higgins promised that he would go through Unsworth’s bins, pose as a charity worker to get information, and infiltrate his partner’s Facebook page.
No due diligence. A Google search would have revealed that Howard-Higgins was a fraudster, jailed in 2016 for stealing from his own company. At the US trial, which Musk won by portraying his Twitter comments as a joke, his team portrayed Howard-Higgins as a one-off. In fact another investigation firm called Orion was also tasked with getting information on Unsworth. Emails show how Orion emailed one of Unsworth’s friends, telling him, incorrectly, that they were “working on behalf of Vernon”.
Evidence suggests Orion’s ultimate client was Musk. Unsworth now wants answers. “Musk needs to reveal exactly what surveillance he used on me: which firms, and what methods,” he says. “His defamation still hangs over me six years later.”
Amber warning. Musk allegedly placed his former partner Amber Heard under surveillance in Australia having become suspicious that she was cheating on him.
Around the same time a local newspaper received an anonymous tip that an Aussie Rules footballer was “spending many nights at Amber Heard’s house” and “leaving early in the morning looking like the cat that swallowed the canary”.
The paper traced the message to SpaceX, one of Musk’s companies.
When one of its reporters spoke to Musk, he accepted that someone close to him had sent the tip but claimed it was done without his knowledge.
“My personal belief is that [Musk] definitely sent it,” says the reporter, Sally Coates. “Knowing how fast and loose he can be with online communication.”
What’s more… This is the free speech absolutist now sharing the campaign trail with Trump.
For the full story listen to Alexi Mostrous’s latest three-part investigation, Elon’s Spies.
