Nikola Founder Trevor Milton Indicted on Three Counts of Fraud

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.

Fry him.

[Anonymous Coward]

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:

[mschuyler]

You must not be familiar with Milton and Nikola. It isn't about capitalism; it's about fraud.

Re:

[Geoffrey.landis]

You must not be familiar with Milton and Nikola. It isn't about capitalism; it's about fraud.

You do know that the post you are responding to is a troll, right?

He doesn't really think "you" hate capitalism, he's just trying to get a reaction.

Re:Fry him.

[geekmux]

Why do you hate capitalism?

The more relevant question is why the FUCK do you embrace and love corruption.

Re:

[MacMann]

unregulated unfettered capitalism

That is a contradiction, there is no such thing as unregulated capitalism. For capitalism to happen there must be enforcement of contracts, for one. For capitalism to happen there must be protections against fraud.

People that demand controls on capitalism rarely define some limiting principle on this regulation. That is disturbing as an overly regulated is as much a tyranny as the unregulated market. The people that fear untrammeled capitalism always fail to define just how trammeled it should be.

Re:

[garyisabusyguy]

FYI - the more powerful corporation can enforce mediation in their contracts and avoid ever appearing in court for their actions, legal or otherwise

This is very common and you are probably already giving away the right to sue via click through agreements

Re:

[DuroSoft]

Yeah god forbid if multi-national corporations couldn't enforce their precious contracts!!! Oh the humanity!!

Re:Fry him.

[jellomizer]

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.

Re:Fry him.

[EnsilZah]

There's also Volta Trucks.
I heard someone wanted to call their EV startup Ohm, but the name met with some resistance.

Re:

[TheGratefulNet]

almost, but not quite.

it was passed thru DC but Mr. Capacitor blocked it and after that, nothing DC made would go thru.

Re:

[Darinbob]

What do you have against saute or fricasee?

Not Just Nikola Harmed

[Thelasko]

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

[timeOday]

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:

[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

[Ecuador]

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...

Re:

[Thelasko]

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

[atomicalgebra]

For a fraction of the money he scammed I could have actually built a hydrogen truck. I hope he hangs.

Re:

[stabiesoft]

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.

Re:

[atomicalgebra]

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

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

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]

Re:It's far too common

[garyisabusyguy]

I think that a combination of Dunning-Kruger, sunk cost fallacy and cognitive dissonance is what keeps people "hooked" to these cons, no matter if they are a company, a cult leader or a politician

They are lied to and convinced they were right all along, they continue to believe because they have already put so effort into it and they shy away form the shame and pain of being wrong.

Re:

[gweihir]

Indeed. That is a pretty good summary of the issue, I think.

Re:

[gweihir]

This seems to be the full text of your reference: https://venturebeat.com/2016/1... [venturebeat.com]

Move fast and break things...

[thragnet]

especially the law.

Crystal

[DuroSoft]

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.

Was pretty obvious back when

[gweihir]

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

Yeah yeah he committed fraud, but...

[paul_engr]

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

Re:

[GrumpySteen]

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.