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The Courts

Nikola Founder Trevor Milton Indicted on Three Counts of Fraud (cnet.com) 34

Posted by msmash from the time-of-face-the-music dept.
A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted Nikola's founder and former executive chairman, Trevor Milton, and charged the former executive three counts of fraud, the company confirmed. The grand jury charged Milton with two counts of securities fraud and wire fraud while allegedly lying about "nearly all aspects of the business." From a report: "Today's government actions are against Mr. Milton individually, and not against the company," a Nikola spokesperson said in a statement. "Nikola has cooperated with the government throughout the course of its inquiry. We remain committed to our previously announced milestones and timelines and are focused on delivering Nikola Tre battery-electric trucks later this year from the company's manufacturing facilities." The US Attorney's Office in Manhattan did not immediately return Roadshow's request for comment, but CNBC reports that Milton surrendered to authorities and will appear in court later today. Milton resigned as executive chairman of Nikola last September following an in-depth financial investigation report from Hindenburg Research. Hindenberg confirmed it took a short position on the company's stock when revealing numerous allegations against the company, including a number of falsehoods Milton presented.
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Nikola Founder Trevor Milton Indicted on Three Counts of Fraud More

Nikola Founder Trevor Milton Indicted on Three Counts of Fraud

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  • Fry him. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 29, 2021 @11:08AM (#61634543)

    I'm ok with startups that fail - in that they just can pull off the dream for one reason or another. You pay your money and take your chances.

    Fry the ones that actively deceive the investors.

    • Re:Fry him. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @11:29AM (#61634625)

      Just by naming their Company "Nikola" should put up red flags to investors.

      It is like the Bargain Bin DVD section you see a DVD labeled "Pixies are finding Nermal", with a bad CG Fish on the cover.

      Yes Tesla is rather popular in the electric car market, and you may want to compete against them, and you may want to attach some of the recent popularity of moving to EV onto your brand. However Just because Tesla is named from Nikola Tesla, who was a somewhat famous inventor in the field of electricity, which was a cleaver name to create a Electric Car Company name from, really doesn't bode well to just kinda copy that idea.

      I also have my doubts on Faraday EV as well just from the name.

    • What do you have against saute or fricasee?

  • Not Just Nikola Harmed (Score:4, Informative)

    by Thelasko ( 1196535 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @11:19AM (#61634573) Journal
    A lot of companies looked at Nikola's "success" and invested money in fuel cell technology. This fraud caused them to spend money on technology that isn't viable, [cleantechnica.com] rather than focus on improving lithium ion technology.

    • Re:Not Just Nikola Harmed (Score:5, Informative)

      by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @11:31AM (#61634633)
      I agree, if we want to keep being able to send massive amounts of retirement money to strangers as investments, this kind of accountability must be enforced.

      Makes me think a bit about the distinction between a software "mockup" vs "prototype" vs "application" though - gotta be very clear when something is less than it might appear to be, which is something that fails to happen quite a bit tbh.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That's why Elon abandoned Li+ technology as well... it isn't viable due to a raft of stability reasons.. and hence now using LiNiCoAl chemistry and working on LiFePo to get rid of Co. Other than deep discharge bricking the battery, LiFePo is one of the best technologies out there in the balance between manufacturing cost, weight, capacity, etc. The patent thicket is what's holding it back.

      H2 is one of those things that looks good on paper, but lots of real-world problems. Beyond the pedestrian 'driving a

    • Re:Not Just Nikola Harmed (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Ecuador ( 740021 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @12:11PM (#61634801) Homepage

      I am not sure I understand, but you are saying that companies like Scania (of the VW Group) invested on fuel cells because of a startup that was obvious vaporware from the start (even the name gave it away!)? When, for example a huge company like Toyota has been investing heavily on that dead end technology way before Nikola appeared? I seriously doubt it, if they were following someone, they were following Toyota.
      And in the end, almost any engineer/physicist/etc will tell you hydrogen fuel cells are a bad idea, if you invest money on them it's on you...

      • Auto manufacturers thought electric cars were infeasible for decades. Then Tesla came along and surprised everyone. When another startup came along promising a breakthrough in fuel cells, they jumped on it. Sure, in hindsight it was vaporware. But they don't want another Tesla disrupting the industry, so the invested in R&D.

  • Good (Score:3)

    by atomicalgebra ( 4566883 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @11:40AM (#61634655)
    For a fraction of the money he scammed I could have actually built a hydrogen truck. I hope he hangs.
    • And I'd like it to be a public one as a warning to others. I know better though. Theranos is an example. Heck from what I hear, Lizzy may get out of jail free by getting prego.
      • I hate that bitch. Hate. She was so greedy that 1st class was beneath her. She had to fly in a private plane everywhere. It is so hard to get funding for startups that it border on near impossible(even if you have something). So when these assholes steal billions it pisses me of to no end.

  • It's far too common (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Beryllium Sphere(tm) ( 193358 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @11:46AM (#61634679) Journal

    After the first few paragraphs, this is paywalled, but the first few paragraphs give you the idea. A Fortune reporter looked at just how widespread outright criminality is in the tech industry, and how people come to the defense of the crooks.

    https://fortune.com/longform/s... [fortune.com]

  • Move fast and break things... (Score:3)

    by thragnet ( 5502618 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @12:20PM (#61634843)

    especially the law.

  • Crystal (Score:3)

    by DuroSoft ( 1009945 ) on Thursday July 29, 2021 @05:41PM (#61636187) Homepage
    One rather unfortunate thing about this is their (I believe?) CTO has been very supportive of the Crystal programming language and Nikola was one of the early adopters when they (supposedly) were using crystal to run the web interface in their trucks.

  • Of course the usual victims claimed it was all obviously real...

  • The things that Trevor Milton promised were fantastical and they never showed a shred of fucking evidence to support any of it. Give me $500k and I can make some fakeass semi truck chassis and bolt some fake shit on it too. There is some blame on the part of the markass suckers who invested into Nikola without having done any due diligence because all they EVER had was renders of fale products and some BS mockup that they rolled down a hill. If you want to give money to "the next Tesla" and don't know sh

    • There is some blame on the part of the markass suckers who invested into Nikola without having done any due diligence

      Yeah... shift some of the blame onto those victims! If they hadn't fallen for Milton's lies, Milton wouldn't have told those lies. It's clearly their fault! Milton would have been honest if his investors weren't so dumb!

      Fraud is fraud regardless of whether anyone falls for it.

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