Elon Musk was working illegally on a student visa and faced concerns that he would be “deported” when he started living in the United States, a bombshell report revealed on Saturday.

The South African-born multi-billionaire also admitted in an email that he had “no legal right to remain in the country” when he left college and founded a company that he later sold for more than $300 million . The Washington Post reported. His brother was also here illegally and committed what one expert called “entry fraud.”

The revelation comes after Musk, the CEO of Tesla, conspiracy theory that has become mainstream in the US. the Republican party. Bloomberg called him “X’s biggest promoter of anti-immigrant conspiracies.”

His ally Trump advocates the mass deportation of millions of undocumented migrants. The former president has also railed about “chain migration.”

But the To inform Detailed reporting on Musk’s own immigration journey shows that the world’s richest man abused his student visa to start his first company, Global Link Information Network, which became Zip2. Investors were so concerned that he could be “deported” that they sought advice from an immigration lawyer.

Musk was born in South Africa and obtained Canadian citizenship at the age of 18 through his Canadian-born mother, Maye. He first studied in Canada and then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he was granted a student visa.

In 1995, he moved to Palo Alto, where he got a place at Stanford University, which would have earned him a new student visa. Student visas give holders the right to work part-time to support their studies.

But the After revealed that Musk had never registered at all – which would have invalidated his student visa. Instead, he worked on his start-up. Leaving education to work, even if it is technically unpaid, is downright illegal, Leon Fresco, a former immigration attorney at the Justice Department, told the newspaper.

“If you do anything that helps facilitate monetization, like design code or try to make sales to aid monetization, then you’re in trouble,” Fresco said.

Musk has said he recruited his brother to help him run the company. But Kimbal has said he actively lied to border agents after previously being denied entry to an airport on the grounds that he was working illegally in the U.S. when he tried to return from visiting their mother in Canada. He had a friend drive him across the border and lied that they were going to see David Letterman’s show so he could turn what he described in an interview with journalist Graham Bensinger into a critical meeting with investors.

“That’s entry fraud,” Ira Kurzban, the former president and general counsel of the American Immigration Lawyers, told the After. “That would make him inadmissible and permanently barred from the United States,” he said, unless the sentences were waived. Furthermore, hiring someone without the legal right to work in the US is a federal crime.

The Musks’ illegal status worried one investor, Mohr Davidow Ventures, so much that when he put $3 million into the company in 1996, the agreement included a clause that gave the brothers and a third person 45 days to make a obtain legal status.

Derek Proudian, who served on Zip2’s board and later became CEO, told the story After the sentiment from investors was: “We don’t want our founder to be deported.” He added: “Their immigration status was not what it should be to legally work running a business in the US.”

Another investor told the newspaper anonymously: “Perhaps we naively never investigated whether he was a legal citizen.”

The After reported that the lawyer used by the company told both men not to tell the whole truth about their “leadership” roles, and to clean up their resumes with U.S. addresses.

Zip2 was sold to Compaq in 1999 for $305 million, with Musk netting $22 million. The company set him on a path that saw him become CEO of PayPal, which in turn led to his involvement with Tesla and the founding of SpaceX. According to him, he is currently worth $274 billion Forbes. He became an American citizen in 2002. False statements regarding prior immigration status on a citizenship application are illegal and may be grounds for revocation. It is unknown whether Musk made false statements.

In 2005, Musk wrote in an email to Tesla’s co-founders, which was submitted to a California court, about his departure from Stanford: “I didn’t really care about the degree, but I had no money for a lab and no the legal right to stay in the country, so that seemed like a good way to solve both problems.”

In 2013, the Musk brothers appeared on a panel at the Milken Institute Global Conference, where Kimball said they had been “illegal immigrants,” and Musk interjected, saying it was “a gray area.”

The Daily Beast has reached out to Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro, for comment. The After said he, Musk and the manager of Musk’s family office did not respond to his request for comment.