Tesla has revealed that it recently fired an employee at its Fremont, California factory after they allegedly “maliciously sabotaged” part of the facility.
In an email sent earlier this week by Tesla’s vice president of legal and acting general counsel, Al Prescott, it was revealed the car manufacturer quickly responded to the incident and operations at the factory were only briefly disrupted.
“Two weeks ago, our IT and InfoSec teams determined than [sic] an employee had maliciously sabotaged a part of the Factory,” Prescott wrote in the email. “Their quick actions prevented further damage and production was running smoothly again a few hours later.”
Tesla has not named the employee but claims that the male worker tried to “cover up his tracks” before blaming a co-worker and destroying a company computer. “Ultimately, after being shown the irrefutable evidence, the employee confessed. As a result, we terminated employment,” Prescott added in his email, The Detroit News reports.
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This isn’t the first time Tesla has encountered some form of sabotage from within. In 2018, Musk stated in an internal email that an employee by the name of Martin Tripp was trying to sabotage the company and went as far as to claim he was going to shoot up its Nevada factory, although police soon determined the man was not such a threat.
In a separate incident in 2016, Tesla sued an ex oil-services executive for impersonating Musk in an email to former chief financial officer Jason Wheeler.
“We place tremendous trust in our employees and value everyone’s contribution,” Prescott’s email continued. “However, whatever the personal motivations of the attacker were, these are crimes, violations of our code of conduct, and are unfair to other employees. We will take aggressive action to defend the company and our people.”
