Nikola Founder Trevor Milton Found Guilty of Fraud

Trevor Milton, the founder and former chairman and CEO of electric heavy truck maker Nikola, was found guilty in federal court on Friday of three of four counts of fraud relating to false statements he made to drive up the value of Nikola's stock. CNBC reports: Milton was charged with two counts of securities fraud and two counts of wire fraud, all related to statements he made about Nikola's business while he was chairman and CEO of the company. Jurors found him guilty on one count of securities fraud and both of the wire fraud counts. Milton faced up to 25 years in prison if convicted on all four counts.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan had alleged that Milton lied about "nearly all aspects of the business" he founded in 2014 during his time leading the company. Those lies, prosecutors said, were intended to induce investors to bid up the price of Nikola's stock. "On the backs of those innocent investors taken in by his lies, he became a billionaire virtually overnight," Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos said in his opening statement in September. Timeline of events:

June, 2016: Nikola Motor Receives Over 7,000 Preorders Worth Over $2.3 Billion For Its Electric Truck
December, 2016: Nikola Motor Company Reveals Hydrogen Fuel Cell Truck With Range of 1,200 Miles
February, 2020: Nikola Motors Unveils Hybrid Fuel-Cell Concept Truck With 600-Mile Range
June, 2020: Nikola Founder Exaggerated the Capability of His Debut Truck
September, 2020: Nikola Motors Accused of Massive Fraud, Ocean of Lies
September, 2020: Nikola Admits Prototype Was Rolling Downhill In Promo Video
September, 2020: Nikola Founder Trevor Milton Steps Down as Chairman in Battle With Short Seller
October, 2020: Nikola Stock Falls 14 Percent After CEO Downplays Badger Truck Plans
November, 2020: Nikola Stock Plunges As Company Cancels Badger Pickup Truck
July, 2021: Nikola Founder Trevor Milton Indicted on Three Counts of Fraud
December, 2021: EV Startup Nikola Agrees To $125 Million Settlement
September, 2022: Nikola Founder Lied To Investors About Tech, Prosecutor Says in Fraud Trial

Babe in the woods ...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The crypto billionaires are laughing their tails off ... what an amateur dimwitted crook.

They are the professionals.

Wondering what happened to all those Tesla shorts. There used to be a dim witted one here with a binary user name.

Enough of the subscription dickbars Slashdot!

[bruce_the_moose]

John Gruber call them dickbars [daringfireball.net] as in, "that's a dick move." Seems appropriate.

Re:

[phantomfive]

Crazy thing is that Slashdot already has my email. I don't need to type it in again.

Is that how much thought they are also going to put into their newsletter?

Re:

[waspleg]

I just checked, and the email address on my account is 20+ years old. A free webmail service that has long LONG since ceased to exist. My account still has my AIM name and ICQ id # too. Lol.

Firefox + uBlock Origin/Privacy Badger/etc. DNS blacklists etc. But, really, just ublock is likely enough for most shit including /.

If they're spamming a newsetter, that's a new low. I see no ads, I used to buy shit from Thinkgeek but they fucked that up *shrug*.

Re:

[phantomfive]

I tried to subscribe once, but that didn't work either.

Fuck this guy

[atomicalgebra]

For the amount of money he received he could have built an entire fleet of hydrogen trucks. Hell I could have built an entire fleet, and I know jack about mechanical engineering. He lied and took significant VC capital which should have gone to meaningful clean transportation projects.

Re:

[gmack]

He could have outsourced the entire thing to Ballard [ballard.com] and still had money left over.

I went back

[buck-yar]

I went back to the Badger PR story on slashdot. Scanned through the comments, only a couple of people were getting after the company on never releasing anything. Plenty of folks defended the scammer
One guy even wrote "If not hitting self imposed dead lines is an issue then you should sell all your Tesla stock right now.If not hitting self imposed dead lines is an issue then you should sell all your Tesla stock right now."
The avg person is so easily fooled. If there's a high quality computer sketchup or they see it on TV, automatically gets downloaded into their brain with full trust.
Imagine the laughter at Nikola? Well until Hindenberg research did a little research.

Seeing it on TV

[Firethorn]

One of his fraudulent moves was to say that he had an operational truck. He'd show you video of it "going down the highway" even.

Turns out, he couldn't even make a crappy EV truck that could do 60mph for like 10 miles.

He found a bit of highway that was on an incline and rolled the truck down it, manipulating the video to make the terrain look flat and the truck going faster than it was.

Roughly speaking, all the truck had was brakes.

You give me $1M, drastically less than this guy, and I'd be able to give yo

Re:

[drinkypoo]

You give me $1M, drastically less than this guy, and I'd be able to give you at least a "prototype" truck that is an EV.

Yes, that's what's truly bonkers here. You could literally buy off the shelf stuff and hang it on a used truck, and maybe pay someone to do some fiberglassing to make it look less old... for less than a quarter of that. You could probably do the whole program including hiring the necessary principals and paying for the facilities for $1M. Not only was it a really tragically bad scam, but it was stupidly incompetent as well. Where are all the talented grifters? The low low price of congresscreeps has really

Re:

[mobby_6kl]

Where are all the talented grifters?

The talented ones are at Tesla!

Re:

[Firethorn]

Then, when somebody asks why it's obviously a Peterbilt truck, you answer that yeah, the frame is Peterbilt, this is your drivetrain test mule. Truck frames are a solved problem, not one we're really trying to address, not in the Mark 1. Optimizing the frame for EV/Hydrogen use is for the Mark 3.

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[Bu11etmagnet]

> One guy even wrote "If not hitting self imposed dead lines is an issue then you should sell all your Tesla stock right now.If not hitting self imposed dead lines is an issue then you should sell all your Tesla stock right now."

Who cares about dead lines? It's the live lines you have to be careful with.

Not disagreeing, but

[backslashdot]

what about all the sellers of "supplements" and free energy schemes (e-cat, cold fusion etc.).

Re:

[ShanghaiBill]

what about all the sellers of "supplements"

If you read the label carefully, you will notice they don't actually make any specific medical claims.

and free energy schemes (e-cat, cold fusion etc.).

Are any of those commercial products? It is not illegal to lie to people if you aren't taking their money.

Re:

[backslashdot]

Many of the free energy people are taking investor money.

Was he alone? Or is he the fall guy?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Back in 2018 no one believed Tesla could succeed. Most of Wall St analysts bought the story, "There is no way a California software tinkerers can make a luxury car that enough people would buy". They did not expect the market to sustain after the nearly unheard of 100,000 bookings for a car sight unseen. "These guys must be drinking cool aid, no sane person would buy that car".

They shorted the hell out of Tesla and were just waiting for it to go bankrupt to cash in on their shorts.

Tesla demand proved to

Say it ain't so!

[paul_engr]

I am absolutely SHOCKED , i tell you. SHOCKED. Magic 800 mile hydrogen fueled trucks don't exist? Renderings that don't ever materialize but make outlandish claims for the investors can get you in trouble?!??!? That actually is shocking. Fuck Milton

Hmmm

[paul_engr]

Someone should tell Milton to go roll down a hill

Isn't the first line a lie?

[glitch!]

The first line of this story is, "Trevor Milton, the founder and former chairman and CEO of electric heavy truck maker Nikola,"
Does this not state that the company is a maker of heavy trucks? Secondly, do they actually make heavy trucks? If not, is this not a lie?!