Billionaire Elon Musk's attempt to buy social media platform Twitter is in "serious jeopardy" according to a new report.
Citing three people familiar with the matter, The Washington Post said the deal was in danger due to the company's spam account numbers being unable to be verified.
The Tesla CEO had agreed to a US$44 billion deal to buy the microblogging platform, but doubt arose when he announced in May he was putting it "temporarily on hold" as he didn't believe Twitter's spam account numbers.
The platform said those accounts made up just 5 percent of total accounts, but Musk didn't believe that was accurate.
Twitter shot back, saying it intended to close the deal at the already agreed price and terms.
"Twitter has and will continue to cooperatively share information with Musk to consummate the transaction in accordance with the terms of the merger agreement," the company said in a statement.
The controversial billionaire - who was revealed yesterday to have had twins last November with an executive at his company Neuralink - failed to do due diligence on the purchase, according to Twitter.
The platform has tried to appease Musk's concerns by providing him and his team the entire 'firehose' of data, which includes more than 500 million tweets each day, so data could be verified.
But according to the Post, Musk's team is now "expected to take potentially drastic action" now it has concluded spam accounts aren't verifiable.
"The person said it was likely a change in direction from Musk's team would come soon, though they did not say exactly what they thought that change would be," it said.
If Musk pulls out of the deal he must pay a US$1 billion penalty, but legal experts have said Twitter could try and force the purchase through because of Musk's failure to do due diligence.
