- Elon Musk's biographer set the record straight on whether Errol Musk ever owned an emerald mine.
- Walter Isaacson spoke to Musk's father Errol, who told him he exchanged a plane for emeralds.
It's long been speculated that Elon Musk's father, Errol Musk, owned an emerald mine in South Africa or at least had a half-share in a mine.
Elon Musk told online portal AskMen in 2014 during a phone interview his father "had a share in an emerald mine in Zambia", an archived version of the article shows.
But since then, the X owner has backtracked on that statement by repeatedly denying that his father ever owned an emerald mine.
"He didn't own an emerald mine & I worked my way through college, ending up ~$100k in student debt," Elon Musk tweeted in 2019 in response to a user on X, formerly known as Twitter, claiming Errol owned a mine.
In January, Elon Musk said "the fake emerald mine thing is so annoying (sigh)," when his mother, Maye Musk, shared a CBS News article on Twitter that made the same claims.
Well, it turns out that Elon Musk was telling the truth.
Walter Isaacson revealed in Elon Musk's biography, released this week, that Errol Musk never owned a mine.
He wrote that Errol Musk used to own a light plane in the 1980s and sold it to an entrepreneur in 1986 in exchange for some emeralds from a mine the businessman owned in Zambia.
Elon Musk's father, 77, told Isaacson the mine was never registered and that he imported raw emeralds and had them cut in Johannesburg.
"Many people came to me with stolen parcels," Errol Musk told the writer. "On trips overseas I would sell emeralds to jewelers. It was a cloak-and-dagger thing, because none of it was legal."
The biography also said Errol Musk's emerald business eventually caved in during the 1980s and that he subsequently lost his earnings from it.
Errol Musk didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.