Summary
Elon Musk’s pro-Trump group, America PAC, selects $1 million giveaway winners based on their potential as spokespeople rather than randomly.
The Philadelphia district attorney Lawrence Krasner alleges this violates state consumer protection laws. “This was all political marketing masquerading as a lottery, albeit an illegal lottery,” Krasner said.
The U.S. Department of Justice has warned America PAC the giveaway could violate federal law, according to media reports, but federal prosecutors have not taken any public action.
The outcome of the lawsuit could impact the group’s ability to continue the contest, which has already awarded $16 million to registered voters in battleground states.
Lolz. Sounds like somebody found a way to not get arrested.
Except that they stated multiple times, publicly, that the winners are picked randomly. So if they are not running a lottery then they have defrauded the participants.
They only did a few, and then found a way out. If you “reveal” some other reasoning behind the curtain, that is what is considered admissible, legally in the US.
Example:
DA: “You are accused of running a lottery to get people to vote for a specific candidate, which is illegal. Is that what happened?”
Musk: “Nope, we lied about it being random, and the winners were specifically chosen, which is not a violation of the law”
Except it is a violation of the law, just a different law. They defrauded the public by collecting something of material value (registrant information) under false pretenses. It’s textbook fraud
