Appearing on Media Buzz with Howie Kurtz on Fox News to discuss Elon Musk's refusal to move forward with his acquisition of Twitter, Fox Business Network correspondent Charles Gasparino mentioned the F-word: fraud.  Stating that if Musk's contention is correct — that Twitter has been lying about the prevalence of bots in its traffic since its IPO in 2013 — that would constitute securities fraud and could land Jack Dorsey and other executives at Twitter in prison.

On the other hand, Musk could face incarceration if he loses his case now that Twitter has hired a legal team to attempt to force him to complete the transaction as earlier agreed upon, and if Musk refuses to obey a court order to proceed with the acquisition.

Transcript excerpts via The Right Scoop:

"Here's what I will say, Howie. That this is a huge, huge story because if Elon Musk is right, if Twitter since its IPO in 2013 has been lying about its bots, you know, those fake accounts, that it's not 5% or less. If they've been putting out public statements of that nature that are lies … man, that's called securities fraud," said Gasparino. "That means jack Dorsey and all the other guys that are running, have run Twitter can go to jail."

"IF that can be proven," Howard Kurtz emphasized.

"If that can be proven. If it's wrong, right, if Elon is wrong, a federal judge — if he's just making this up, and, you know, remember, he waived due diligence, he said last and final offer, he didn't do anything pre-bidding to basically back up his claim — If he is wrong and if they're right about the bots being 5%, a federal judge could make him buy this deal at the agreed-upon, at the price he put up, $54.20 which was $44 billion," Gasparino continued. "And if he says no to that, if he defies the court order, which he has done in the past, he's defied stuff, then he goes to jail."

Gasparino acknowledges that disputes like this often end in a negotiated settlement between the two parties, with jail not an issue.

Here is video of the complete four-and-a-half-minute segment via Air.tv.