An Arizona man who pleaded guilty to setting fire to a Cybertruck and damaging the wall of a Tesla dealership has been sentenced to 60 months in prison and 36 months of supervised release, according to a statement released by the US Department of Justice. This burning of property takes place in April 2025, when Tesla CEO Elon Musk is in the middle of taking the chainsaw to the federal government and what is called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Ian William Moses, 35 years old from Mesa, Arizona, was captured on surveillance cameras on the morning of April 28, 2025 at a Tesla dealership in the city. Moses was wearing a black hooded shirt and mask where he was seen placing firewood near the building.
Moses is seen pouring fuel on the launch pads and the building, as well as three Tesla vehicles, including the Cybertruck. He ignited the launch logs, which caused some damage to the building and destroyed the Cybertruck, according to photos released by the DOJ.
Moses left the scene on a bicycle and was arrested at the scene, less than two hours after the fire started.
“Car burning will never be an acceptable part of American politics. Mr. Moses’ actions put the public and first responders at risk and could have easily turned into death,” U.S. Attorney Timothy Courchaine said in a statement posted online.
“This five-year sentence reflects the seriousness of these crimes and makes it clear that politically motivated attacks on Arizona communities and businesses will be met with full accountability,” Courchaine continued.
A large number of incidents involving Tesla dealers, cars, and charging stations took place in the spring of 2025, at least 51 in the US and 17 in other countries, according to last year’s count by Fox News, although it should be noted that Fox includes “key and graffiti” in its statistics. There are at least five federal lawsuits involving the arson of Tesla dealerships, according to Fox.
The vandalism was, in part, a response to Elon Musk’s embrace of fascism under President Donald Trump and the billionaire oligarch’s Nazi wishes during the president’s second inauguration.
The attack on Tesla dealers was also linked to Musk’s destruction of the US federal government, which led to the layoffs of hundreds of thousands of government workers and the destruction of all government agencies. The foreign aid agency USAID was destroyed at Musk’s direction—he explained on Feb. 2025 as feeding it through a wood printer—even though the DOGE had no legal authority to dissolve something created by Congress.
USAID’s destruction is expected to kill millions of people in the next decade, with more than 700,000 deaths, according to a tracker kept by researchers at Boston University. About 88 people die per hour.
Unlike the welder in Arizona, Musk did not face legal consequences for bringing down the federal government and killing hundreds of thousands of people for his actions. But maybe that’s because most deaths are just an imaginary story. In America’s dysfunctional media landscape, a flaming Cybertruck tends to be a more powerful image than a starving child in the middle of nowhere.
