Tesla has slammed one of its prominent company Twitter critics with a restraining order the same person who recently saw and photographed a Model 3 filmed by Tesla ahead of the planned "investor with autonomy day" on april 22nd . On Friday, the Alameda County Magistrate Court granted the company a temporary restraining order, which was first heard by PlainSite.org . It is unclear whether the restraining order has been complied with.

Tesla claims California resident Randeep Hothi "harassed, stalked and endangered" three of its employees driving Model 3s on a Bay Area highway last week. The company says Hothi "chased these employees on the public road for about 35 minutes, driving variously in front of, behind and behind them, and swerving dangerously close to the vehicle." Tesla claims Hothi even swerved close enough to the Model 3 to The safety feature was activated to avoid accidents.

The automaker also claims that, in February, Hothi struck one of its employees while entering and guarding the company's Fremont, Calif. factory. It says Hothi did not stop and "fled the scene."

Hothi must stay at least 100 yards away from Tesla's Fremont factory or the employees named in the restraining order. He must also stay 10 yards away from any Tesla vehicles with manufacturer license plates within five miles of the factory. The order is effective until May 7, when a hearing is scheduled.

Neither Tesla nor Hothi responded to requests for comment.

Posting under the username @skabooshka, Hothi posted images of the Model 3. on Twitter on Thursday . He noted that there were cameras mounted on the rear and inside the car, and theorized that the Model 3 was being filmed for Monday's event. He claimed he saw the car violate speed limits, and noted that it performed simple tasks such as lane changes, implying that Tesla could misrepresent the footage at Monday's event.

Hothi is, according to his Twitter account, one of Tesla's many touts. Peddlers are people who bet money that a company's stock price will go down. Those who focus on Tesla have created. a thriving community on Twitter where they collaborate around the "cashtag" $ TSLAQ to try to identify what they believe to be fraudulent activity by the company and its CEO, Elon Musk.

Musk has a long history of mocking people who short Tesla stock. In recent years he has promised "burn them" in recent years, and he and your company including previously made one of the most prominent anonymous short sellers on Twitter, a user by the name of @MontanaSkeptic. By filing for the restraining order on Friday, and including information about @ skabooshka's Model 3 tweets, Musk's company has once again outed one of its most prominent short sellers. (@MontanaSkeptic, whose real name is Lawrence Fossi, started a GoFundMe for Hothi's legal defense that has already raised more than $ 75,000.)

Tesla says Hothi's actions go beyond photographing the Model 3 test. In its original request for the restraining order, Tesla said Hothi "has a history of trespassing at Tesla facilities," and that he "unlawfully" took photos and videos of those locations and uploaded them to Twitter. Hothi and other Tesla peddlers often post photos and videos of employee parking lots in an effort to estimate whether the company is operating at full production. They also photograph the parking lots Tesla uses to hold inventory, which they say offers insight into how much demand there is, or isn't, for the company's cars. Much of their crowdsourcing research ends. on the tslaq.org website .

Shortly after PlainSite made the restraining order public,

Musk responded to a2018 tweet accusing Hothi of being the person behind the @skabooshka account. That tweet linked to a document on an image-hosting site accusing Hothi of targeting Tesla because his brother allegedly works for Volkswagen. "This is extremely messed up. @VW what's going on? Musk wrote.

(Last August, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had sent an e-mail to the CEO of Volkswagen Group asking him if "a Volkswagen employee criticized Tesla on Twitter, using a fake name." Musk told the Journal that "Diess replied that he was the boy's brother. much. ?)

"I will not rest. This is my promise," posted the account @skabooshka on Saturday night. Tesla is a zero. @elonmusk will go to jail ?