Earlier this month, a Florida jury ordered Tesla to pay $243 million in a landmark verdict over a fatal Autopilot crash. Now the Washington Post has an extensive look at a crucial part of the plaintiffs' victory: a hacker uncovered the vehicle's electronic data from the crash, while in a Starbucks no less. The case centered on a 2019 collision in Key Largo, where a Tesla on Autopilot struck and killed 22-year-old Naibel Benavides Leon and left her boyfriend, Dillon Angulo, seriously injured. For years, the crash data that could clarify what happened that night was nowhere to be found, with Tesla telling investigators it could not be located. But "for any reasonable person, it was obvious the data was there," the hacker who eventually found it—identified only by his X handle @greentheonly—tells the newspaper. The Post recounts the remarkable moment:
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"Inside a Starbucks near the Miami airport, the plaintiffs' attorneys watched as greentheonly fired up his ThinkPad computer and plugged in a flash drive containing a forensic copy of the Autopilot unit's contents. Within minutes, he found key data that was marked for deletion—along with confirmation that Tesla had received the collision snapshot within moments of the crash—proving the critical information should have actually been accessible all along. The attorneys high-fived behind him."
This "lost and found" moment became a centerpiece at trial, where a Miami jury ultimately found Tesla 33% liable in the historic verdict. (The company is appealing.) Tesla described its data-handling as clumsy but not malicious, blaming confusion and technical errors. The judge concluded there was no intentional cover-up, but ordered Tesla to cover the plaintiffs' costs for retrieving the data themselves. Even though the judge didn't blame the company for deliberate deception, the way it all unfolded likely had a "significant impact on the verdict," says one insider. Read the full story.
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