Judge Approves $1.5 Million Musk Trust Settlement Despite Red Flags Over $150 Million Claim
Updated
Updated · Fortune · Jul 9
Judge Approves $1.5 Million Musk Trust Settlement Despite Red Flags Over $150 Million Claim
3 articles · Updated · Fortune · Jul 9
Summary
$1.5 million will be paid by Elon Musk’s revocable trust—not Musk personally—after Judge Sparkle Sooknanan approved the SEC deal while calling its structure unprecedented and troubling.
Sooknanan said the SEC dropped its earlier push to recover $150 million in alleged savings from Musk’s late 2022 Twitter stake disclosure, leaving only a civil penalty that goes to the government.
The judge wrote that the SEC had never before settled a Section 13(d) case with a trust alone, even though Musk is the trust’s sole trustee and beneficiary and it holds more than $180 billion in Tesla stock.
Her ruling said the court could reject the agreement only if it made a mockery of judicial power, while noting the case shifted sharply in May 2026 when the SEC added the trust and moved to drop Musk himself.