‘David and Godzilla’ fight with Tesla, NSW man says

A 75-year-old man from NSW who says he doesn’t have “two bob to rub together” has become involved in a high-stakes court case against Elon Musk’s Tesla.

Keith Leech, 75, from the NSW mid north coast has been told by the Federal Court to take down sensitive files about Tesla after the company lodged a case early this year. Picture: Supplied

A 75-year-old former electrical engineer who lives in the NSW bush says he has become involved in a “David and Godzilla” fight against Elon Musk’s Tesla, after the electric car giant launched a Federal Court case against him.

Tesla has accused NSW man Keith “Keef” Leech of leaking sensitive information about the company and its cars online, including customer complaints, technical reports and images of car parts and asked the Federal Court to instruct him to remove the materials and reveal who else he shared them with, court documents report.

It comes after NSW Federal Court judge Jonathan Beach slammed as “completely unrealistic” a request to issue an urgent arrest warrant for Mr Leech last week after he allegedly breached orders made in early January asking him to remove documents he “obtained direct or indirectly” from Tesla whistleblower Lukasz Krupski.

Mr Leech told The Australian he did not get the documents served on him until Monday, when he found court orders under the doormat of his home in the mid-north coast of NSW.

“I have since taken all the material down,” Mr Leech said.

“I sent the material to lawyers acting for victims of Tesla accidents and WikiLeaks,” he said.

Mr Leech said he would “be a fool” if he wasn’t concerned about the court proceedings.

“Those who have been brave enough to whistleblow against Tesla have been viciously retaliated against,” he said.

“I live in the bush, I don’t have two bob to rub together. It’s a David and Godzilla fight.”

Last year German newspaper Handelsblatt published details of accident reports and customer complaints about autopilot software, which were allegedly leaked by Mr Krupski.

SpaceX, X (formerly known as Twitter), and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Picture: Omar Marques

A statement of claim filed with the Federal Court and obtained by The Weekend Australian states Mr Krupski had access to confidential and commercially sensitive information before he “misappropriated … and then retained” about 23,000 documents from Tesla servers.

“On a date or dates presently unknown to Tesla, Mr Leech obtained some of the documents retained by Mr Krupski (the Tesla materials) whether directly or indirectly from Mr Krupski,” the documents read.

The materials included technical reports, spreadsheets tracking costs, complaints and repairs, screenshots or PDF print outs of customer complaints, images of car parts and “miscellaneous documents such as meeting notes”, the court documents state.

Tesla says on December 30 Mr Leech posted on X, saying: “I was given this data in confidence and I’m sorry that I had to break my promise”.

“Mr Leech has subsequently published parts of the Tesla materials online and provided parts of the Tesla materials to third parties via online sharing facilities,” the documents read.

It included a “video reproduction of all or part of the Tesla materials”, hosted on video sharing platform Vimeo, which has since been removed.

It also showed a screen capture video with Mr Krupski logged into his Tesla computer and accessing data from Tesla’s systems.

Tesla further says Mr Leech provided public access to all or part of the materials via a Dropbox link, contained in a folder called “LEAK”.

Tesla, according to their statement of claim, say Mr Leech infringed their copyright and as a result they continue to suffer loss and damage.

The documents allege Mr Leech, who goes by the alternative name of “Keef Wivaneff”, holds or held put options in Tesla “from which he would profit if Tesla’s share price decreased”.

They say he operated multiple X, YouTube, GoFundMe, Instagram and Reddit accounts under the various names of “Whompy Wombat (The wombat formerly known as Keef)”, “WombatPickled”, “Keef Whatever”, “Whompy Wheels” and “Electricgrapefruit” among others.

While two of his X accounts have been suspended, with a note reading “X suspends accounts which violate X rules”, a social media fundraising page called “Help spill the beans on Whompy Wheels and save lives” remains online and has collected $1694.

Court orders handed down last week instructed Mr Leech again to remove all the information he allegedly posted and inform the court who else he sent it to. He was served the orders at his residence on the NSW North Coast and via his Reddit and Instagram Threads accounts.

Tesla has been contacted for comment.