Judge Lets Fraud Case Over Musk's $1m Election Giveaway Proceed, Citing Its Non-Random Selection

A federal judge has refused to dismiss a fraud lawsuit over Elon Musk's $1 million election giveaway, finding that a jury could conclude the supposedly random selection was nothing of the kind.

US District Judge Robert Pitman in Austin denied summary judgment to Musk and his pro-Trump political action committee, America PAC, on plaintiff Jacqueline McAferty's fraud claim on 18 August.

In the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, Musk and America PAC promoted what looked like a $1 million-a-day lottery for registered voters across seven swing states, with Musk saying recipients would be chosen "randomly". Entrants had to hand over personal information and sign a petition supporting free speech and gun rights.

The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office sued to block the giveaway as an illegal lottery. The judge in that case declined to intervene, but the proceedings exposed how the scheme worked. Musk's lawyer Chris Gober acknowledged the $1 million recipients were not selected by chance but chosen in advance based on their suitability as America PAC spokespeople, arguing the payments were compensation for people who signed contracts and performed duties rather than prizes.

McAferty and fellow Arizona resident Joy Harvick then brought proposed class actions alleging Musk and America PAC induced voters to surrender personal data by promoting a random competition they had no real chance of winning. Both say they signed up after hearing through news and social media that petition signers had a random shot at $1 million. McAferty argues she would never have done so had she known there was "actually no chance to win".

Pitman adopted a June recommendation from US Magistrate Judge Susan Hightower, who found genuine factual disputes over whether Musk misled voters.

The case turns on the same question regulators keep running into with informal draws, where what a promoter calls the mechanism and what actually determines the winner diverge, a gap the Gambling Commission documented in its research on illegal lotteries and raffles on social media.