What happened
Egor Kriuchkov, a 27-year-old Russian national who entered the US in July 2020, approached a Russian-speaking Tesla employee at the Nevada Gigafactory and offered payment to introduce malware into Tesla's network. The offer began at $500,000 and rose to $1 million in cash or bitcoin. The employee reported the approach, cooperated with the FBI, and Kriuchkov was arrested in Los Angeles after attempting to flee the country. Elon Musk publicly confirmed the incident.
How the deception worked
Kriuchkov built rapport with the employee in person over social meetings before naming the ask. The proposal was for the employee to run attacker-supplied ransomware inside the plant network, either by opening a malicious email attachment or plugging in an infected USB stick, while the conspirators ran a simultaneous distributed denial-of-service attack to occupy Tesla's security team. The group intended to exfiltrate Tesla files and extort the company for their non-release; Kriuchkov said the malware itself had cost $250,000 to develop. The scheme died at the first step because the employee, rather than accepting, told Tesla and then wore a wire for the FBI.
AI involvement · No AI reported
No AI involvement was reported.
The control that would have caught it· our reading, not a claim from the sources
A no-blame, clearly advertised channel for reporting bribery approaches is the control that actually catches insider recruitment, since no technical control sees the offer being made.
Sources (1)
This entry summarises public reporting. It is not a legal finding, and details can change as investigations conclude. Found an error? Send a correction.