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UPDATE: Elon Musk Is the Face of a Civil Police Campaign in Brazil

Did you know that the CEO and product architect of Tesla Motors works part-time as a police officer in Brazil? The billboard you can admire above is one of many that are scattered around Campo Grande, the capital and largest city of Brazilian state Mato Grosso do Sul.
Elon Musk as a civil police officer in Brazil 1 photo
Photo: correiodoestado.com.br
After Campo Grande residents started posting pictures of the billboard on social media networks, the local media reported about the amusing mess-up. Unaware of the situation until it was too late, the state civil police press office took note and addressed the issue with the ad agency that used a photograph of Elon Musk to produce the billboard’s visuals.

The studio pic of Elon Musk utilized by the ad agency was first uploaded on the Internet in February 2012, according to a simple search on TinEye.

Due to its CC0 1.0 Universal license, the picture spread like wildfire around the World Wide Web, primarily for illustration purposes. Reports from the Brazilian media claim that the ad agency believed that the picture was a mere stock photograph without knowing who the man in the black t-shirt was. Curiously enough, no report published by the Brazilian media mentions the name of the agency that made this mistake.

The funniest thing, though, is that the agency photoshopped the coat of arms of Mato Grosso do Sul’s civil police department on Elon’s black t-shirt. Did this happen out of incompetence, sheer ignorance, or both?

The answer is both if we’re to be completely frank. After all, Musk is known around the world for achievements such as Tesla Motors, PayPal, the SpaceX project, as well as Hyperloop high-speed transportation technology. On an ending note, it’s a given that the agency’s higher-ups will lay off the culprit responsible for this confusion and Elon Musk will laugh his socks off upon hearing the news.

UPDATE: B9 reports that Oceano Comunicação is the name of the agency and that all the billboards with Elon Musk posing as a police officer have been taken down. Musk's reaction on Twitter is priceless, though.
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About the author: Mircea Panait
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After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well.
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