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.

23 points

Lolz. Sounds like somebody found a way to not get arrested.

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55 points

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.

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7 points
*

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”

Proof: https://apnews.com/article/musk-million-sweepstakes-lottery-pennsylvania-krasner-4f683c48eb7dcc57f183e54ef16e7320

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35 points

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

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12 points

Shocker

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39 points

Grifting the rubes….grifting the rubes

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112 points

I don’t think that makes things any better.

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103 points

Well, it’s no longer an illegal lottery. So that’s good.

It’s just a rigged lottery. Slightly different thing. Also illegal, but for slightly different reasons. More unethical and fraudulent than before.

So it makes things better, and then makes things way worse.

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26 points

Yeah, I’ve got absolutely no clue why they thought this would be a better defense

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7 points

Somehow it worked, I don’t understand how though

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2 points
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65 points

So….if they’re not random, does that violate the definition of lottery in PA state?

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65 points

It’s whatever it needs to be at the time to keep Musk out of trouble.

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16 points

It’s a shovel! And it keeps on digging!

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8 points

It’s some sort of quantum lottery … or not

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2 points

“Hey, you said I’d get a million dollars and this is only sixty-two bucks!”

”You changed the amount by counting it.”

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