The US Department of Justice has withdrawn ‘accusations’ against Elon Musk, who has developed an electricity-saving device.
There is no evidence to support any of these claims, and Mr Musk’s companies do not produce the device mentioned.
A post on Facebook is falsely claiming that the US Department of Justice withdrew “accusations” against Elon Musk for producing an “electricity-saving device”.
The post has been shared over a thousand times and includes an image of Mr Musk outside a factory with the words “Pro Power Save” on its side.
A caption with the post says: “A major win! The DOJ formally withdrew the accusations against EIon Musk, acknowledging that his electricity-saving device efficiently lowered 90% of power costs. EIon inked a deal to increase the output of the factory and continue to sell at cost price. Packages have been delivered to different locations.”
But we can find no evidence that Mr Musk has created such a product, or is involved in developing or selling one.
It's not clear who is behind the page the Facebook post links to, which in turn links to a Pro Power Save website. We contacted Pro Power Save for comment but did not receive a response.
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Clicking the post leads to what claims to be a news report about a supposed legal case against Mr Musk, and the “electricity saving invention”. It directs readers to a site where the device can be bought.
The report uses a photo from 2014, in which Mr Musk answers questions following a news conference in Nevada.
But an image of Mr Musk holding a document in front of a factory, featured in both the article and the post, appears to have been faked, possibly using Artificial Intelligence (AI). We can find no examples of the image having been published elsewhere.
The page also claims that Mr Musk created the device after “Dorothy Smith”, a 64-year-old Tesla employee, supposedly died of heat stroke after her electricity service was cut off during a heat wave.
But an image of the couple used to support this claim—which has a news ticker appearing to be from NBC news—is of Lew Palter, an actor who appeared in Titanic, with his daughter Catherine Read Palter. He died of lung cancer in 2023, aged 94.
The post for the device is similar to past posts about another device called “WattSaver”. This was also supposedly created and endorsed by Mr Musk, a claim that was debunked by Reuters in August 2023.
Mr Musk has never posted about the Pro Power Save device on X (formerly Twitter).
Mr Musk is involved in solar energy production through his company Tesla, which sells solar panels and home energy storage products.
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) had announced in August 2023 that it was suing another of Mr Musk’s companies, SpaceX, for allegedly discriminating against hiring refugees. SpaceX countersued, and a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction against the justice department.
In a filing to the Securities and Exchanges Commission last year, Tesla also said it has received requests for documents and information from the DoJ. The company said: “To our knowledge no government agency in any ongoing investigation has concluded that any wrongdoing occurred.”
Last year the DoJ also filed statements about its view on data practices at X, another of Mr Musk’s companies.
We have contacted Mr Musk by email about the electricity saver claim, and will update this article if we receive a response.
Websites imitating news outlets may convince people to make financial decisions based on fake endorsements from trusted public figures.
Full Fact has previously written about fake articles that use prominent figures’ faces and names to promote products online, including false claims that Martin Lewis endorsed a cryptocurrency platform in a BBC interview, and a fake BBC article claiming that Robert Peston had promoted an online trading platform live on ITV. Citizens Advice describes how you can protect yourself online.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because Elon Musk did not make these “electricity saving devices”, and we can find no evidence that any ‘accusations’ about them were ever made by the US Department of Justice.
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