Tesla CEO and co-founder Elon Musk has had no shortage of controversies plaguing both his personal and professional life over the past few years, and this latest bit of news sounds like the negative press isn’t going away anytime son. Roberto Escobar, the 72-year-old brother of the notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar, is reportedly planning a $100 million lawsuit to sue Musk for allegedly “stealing” the idea for his late brother’s flamethrower, over the limited edition “Not a Flamethrower” Musk released in 2018.
According to the New York Post, Escobar, who had served as an accountant for the family’s Medellín drug cartel, is claiming that Musk stole the plans during a trip to the Escobar compound in 2017:
He claims the idea of a “toy flamethrower” came from the way the Escobar brothers would burn their mountains of cash to keep warm — insisting that the model being sold by Musk is actually their copyright.
“We will soon file a $100 million case against him in America, and I will try my best to make sure he loses his stronghold in Tesla Inc.,” Escobar told The Telegraph. “He knows exactly what he has done to us.”
Perhaps the best part of this story is the very nonchalant side note that the Escobars would burn their mountains of cash to keep warm, but it is apparently 100 percent true. In 2009, Escobar’s son Juan Pablo Escobar (who has since changed his name to Sebastián Marroquín) said in an interview that when the family was hiding out in the Medellín mountainsides, his sister Manuela became overcome with hypothermia. So, their father did what any loving parent would do and burned $2 million in cash to keep his family warm. As one does!
Neither Musk nor his camp have yet to comment on the allegations.
(Via New York Post)