SAN FRANCISCO, United States (AFP) —  A federal jury in California found Friday that tech titan Elon Musk misled Twitter shareholders in an effort to drive down the company’s share price as he was poised to buy it in a $44 billion deal.

The verdict in a class action securities lawsuit means the world’s richest person could be ordered to pay out as much as $2.6 billion, according to damages calculated by jurors.

Giuseppe Pampena filed the suit against Musk on behalf of people who sold Twitter shares between mid-May 2022 and early October of that year.

Jurors agreed with the plaintiff that Musk violated a securities rule that bars false and misleading statements that artificially drive down a stock price, in this case, that of Twitter, the verdict form showed.

The civil complaint accused Musk of driving down Twitter’s stock price to gain leverage to renegotiate the purchase price or get out of the deal completely, causing people who sold shares to lose money.

Musk tweeted at one point during the process that the acquisition deal was temporarily on hold until Twitter executives could prove the percentage of “bots” — fake accounts run by software instead of real users — was as low as the social media platform claimed.

Musk abandoned his effort to get out of buying Twitter in late 2022 after the company took him to court to uphold the contract.

Musk has since merged the social media platform — now called X — with his artificial intelligence startup xAI and his private space exploration firm SpaceX.