Nikola Founder Trevor Milton Sentenced To 4 Years For Securities Fraud (techcrunch.com) 34
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Trevor Milton, the disgraced founder and former CEO of electric truck startup Nikola, was sentenced Monday to four years in prison for securities fraud. The sentence, by Judge Edgardo Ramos in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, caps a multi-year saga that at one point sent Nikola stock soaring 83% only to come crashing down months later over accusations of fraud and canceled contracts. The sentencing hearing comes after four separate delays, during which Milton has remained free under a $100 million bond.
In his ruling, Ramos said he would impose a sentence of 48 months on each count, served concurrently, and a fine of $1 million. Milton is expected to appeal the sentence, which Ramos acknowledged. Milton sobbed as he pled with Judge Ramos for leniency in a long and often confusing statement ahead of the sentencing. At one point, Milton said he stepped down from the CEO post at Nikola not because of fraud allegations, but to support his wife. "I stepped down because my wife was suffering live threatening sickness," he said in his statement, which reporter Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press shared on social media post X. She suffered medical malpractice, someone else's plasma. So I stepped down for that -- not because I was a fraud. The truth matters. I chose my wife over money or power."
During the sentencing hearing, defense attorneys said that Milton wasn't trying to defraud investors or intending to harm anyone. Instead, they argued he simply wanted to be loved and praised like Elon Musk. Prosecutors pushed back and said he lied repeatedly and targeted retail investors. Federal prosecutors recommended an 11-year sentence, but Milton faced a maximum term of 60 years in prison. The government also sought a $5 million fine, forfeiture of a ranch in Utah and an undetermined amount of restitution to investors. Restitution will be determined after Monday's sentencing hearing. 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
In his ruling, Ramos said he would impose a sentence of 48 months on each count, served concurrently, and a fine of $1 million. Milton is expected to appeal the sentence, which Ramos acknowledged. Milton sobbed as he pled with Judge Ramos for leniency in a long and often confusing statement ahead of the sentencing. At one point, Milton said he stepped down from the CEO post at Nikola not because of fraud allegations, but to support his wife. "I stepped down because my wife was suffering live threatening sickness," he said in his statement, which reporter Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press shared on social media post X. She suffered medical malpractice, someone else's plasma. So I stepped down for that -- not because I was a fraud. The truth matters. I chose my wife over money or power."
During the sentencing hearing, defense attorneys said that Milton wasn't trying to defraud investors or intending to harm anyone. Instead, they argued he simply wanted to be loved and praised like Elon Musk. Prosecutors pushed back and said he lied repeatedly and targeted retail investors. Federal prosecutors recommended an 11-year sentence, but Milton faced a maximum term of 60 years in prison. The government also sought a $5 million fine, forfeiture of a ranch in Utah and an undetermined amount of restitution to investors. Restitution will be determined after Monday's sentencing hearing. 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
Nelson said it best (Score:3)
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ClarksonOhNoAnyway.gif [twimg.com] ;)
I wish a friend of mine could have lived to see this (died of cancer a few years ago) - she was one of the big players involved in exposing him :(
This could have just as easily have been Elon Musk (Score:1, Troll)
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I honestly feel for the guy. I have been a tech entrepreneur. I still work with many. Few people have what it takes to step into the arena. Even fewer have what it takes to win in it. Many will criticize him for what he did. None of those critics matter, because few understand the pressures, the challenges, the s
I wouldn't call him a tech entrepreneur (Score:1, Flamebait)
He absolutely overpromised. It is a verifiable fact that he lied about the range on the early Teslas in order to overcome range anxiety. It's an equally verifiable fact that he lied about the abilities of his self-driving cars and brought in huge a
Re:I wouldn't call him a tech entrepreneur (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think Musk or Tesla ever did, but Nikola sure did with one of their supposed trucks. They can mince words all they want, but I see fraud. They should have named the product "Nikola Soapbox Derby", instead of "Nikola truck".
Re:I wouldn't call him a tech entrepreneur (Score:5, Informative)
Technically, "no", but, functionally "yes": A 2016 video that significantly overstated self-driving capabilities was revealed just this year. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/t... [cbsnews.com]
The video was shared in a 2016 blog post titled "Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Teslas," that is still available. Before the nearly 4-minute video begins, the screen flashes text reading, "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself."
The video then shows a Tesla pulling out of a driveway, stopping at intersections and red lights, traveling on a highway, delivering a person to an office complex and then parallel-parking itself, set to the sound of the Rolling Stones' "Paint it black." The driver's hands hover just below the steering wheel for the duration of the video.
CEO Elon Musk promoted the demonstration on Twitter, writing, "Tesla drives itself (no human input at all)." ...
The news service cited a deposition from Ashok Elluswamy, the company's director of Autopilot software, that was taken as part of a lawsuit over a driver's 2018 death in a Tesla.
"The intent of the video was not to accurately portray what was available for customers in 2016. It was to portray what was possible to build into the system," Elluswamy said, according to a transcript of his deposition cited by Reuters.
Elluswamy said the car was driving a predetermined route in the video and that drivers intervened to take control during trial runs, Reuters reported. He also testified that, during attempts to show the Model X could park itself without a driver, a test car crashed into a fence in Tesla's parking lot, Reuters reported.
So just because Nikola was scammier (Score:2)
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The Nikola truck rolling downhill became an icon of the fraud, but it it wasn't even remotely the worst thing that Milton pulled.
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It's not just that he's never invented anything in his life, it's that he's never even presided over the invention of anything. The rocket tech is almost entirely from NASA with the few improvements in reusable rockets we've seen under SpaceX just being an offshoot from the NASA engineers he poached. As for Tesla The battery tech came from public universities and everything else that Tesla tried to do in terms of advanced automation failed spectacularly. I hear he did once right and acceptably okay asteroids clone when he was a kid so I guess there is that but it's hardly what I would call an invention.
If the only thing he ever did was to do more for electric vehicles than anybody else, he would probably deserve a statue. That's not idol worship, it's just common sense.
And you can't have it both ways. If he succeeded only through government, then government seemed to need him in order to succeed. Government certainly didn't succeed at electric vehicles or (anytime recently) space without him.
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a statue is idol worship otherwise what's the point of a statue
Wow, really? All statues? A statue of MLK?
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But the hero worship of Musk is ridiculous. I think the Twitter disaster has shown that Musk is not someone to be admired, rather he is just some bigoted apharteid era Afrikan
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Oh look here. All the talking points of the typical Musk hater.
It never seems to matter that all those points have been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked for up to a decade now. They never get tired of typing them up again and again. And the "conclusions" (if you can call them that) are no better. It is like listening to MAGA types chewing the fat about someone named Clinton or Obama. The process is the same.
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Well, nothing succeeds quite like success. Milton failed. Musk succeeded. Big time.
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but I do respect him for what he's achieved.
That's like respecting someone for winning the lottery. Elmo was born wealthy, and lucked out with a few investments in the dot-com era. Did you know he wanted to rename PayPal "X" despite everyone around him, supported by market research, saying it was an incredibly stupid idea? He got pushed out because he's incompetent.
He's burning Twitter to the ground faster than anyone thought possible though a seemingly endless parade of obviously bad decisions. Everything we've learned about his CyberTruck fias
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I'm sorry, but no. What Milton did was worse than Holmes. It wasn't "fake it until you make it", it was "just flat out lie about things that you absolutely know are total bullsh*t it until you can cash out and leave someone else with the bill". Which has been the guy's entire career, ripping off one group of people after the next, but relying on charisma to get people like you to assume that he "really meant well". The frauds he's carried out through his career (which didn't start at Nikola) haven't bee
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Since this article is specifically about Milton's sentence, I disagree with this notion. What Milton was convicted of was defrauding investors by lying about the capabilities and progress of his vehicles. While the allegations against Holmes are similar, her lies endangered people's lives. If her tests had shown any false negatives, the patients could have lost preci
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Musk repeatedly lied about the capabilities of his cars. The difference is
that his company actually made and sold cars which were, at the time, the best in the world.
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No car company founded after Ford survived. Until Tesla.
Yes, Tesla relied on some government money to survive until they got the Model 3 into successful mass production and became profitable. You love government, so you should be trumpeting Tesla as a success story. "Look! Government works!"
Instead you are posting angry rants. You need to go touch grass or something.
Elon Musk is definitely guilty of repeatedly being over-optimistic about ship dates. But he has an excellent record of delivering what he
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horse dung.
What Elon and Milton did are completely different.
Elon promised a future state of technology based on very rosy predictions but he never claimed something existed that did not. IE Elon said "we *expect* to have self driving cars in a few years" he never said "I have a fully self driving car I can show you right now" that is a important difference.
More to the point he never put on an entirely faked demo while claiming it was a working model.
I get you hate Elon, because he is both successful while
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Also, all of Musk's rocket launches were faked.
Unpossible (Score:5, Funny)
I had it on good authority from the ACs here on Slashdot that only women CEOs get jail time for fraud and white men are able to do what they want. I'm shocked! Shocked I say! Who would have thought that there is actual equality in the eyes of the law here.
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I believe they would point out that if he were not white, he'd have gotten the full 60 years (or at least the 11 the prosecution asked for).
He stole money from actual rich people (Score:3)
I mentioned this elsewhere, but Musk got away with it because he managed to run his scam so long that the Big Money is insulated from the eventual crash that'll hit when the more well established guys get into luxury EVs.
How to make your lawyer cringe: (Score:2)
The truth matters. I chose my wife over money or power.
Yikes! What about every other person?
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He also, apparently, chose his wife over his freedom, which doesn't really do his wife any favors.
The big question for me is, if he's got $100 million for bail, why is he only being fined $1 million? Especially the since odds are the "restitution" will be pennies on the dollar, and not very many of them.
Is that his defense? (Score:2)
Yes your honour, he's sad little man who deserves our contempt.
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Intent is the difference between, say, 2nd degree murder and manslaughter. I'm sure there are similar distinctions for financial crimes.
Somehow (Score:4, Interesting)
The most amazing thing to me about the Nikola story is that somehow the company is still open and trying to move forward. After the scandals and revelations, not to mention the catastrophic financial statements that went down I thought that the surviving investors would have had enough and just forced the whole thing to shut down.
Yet they made it this far. There's a story there of a group of people none of which are named Milton who showed a lot of grit and probably went through hell.
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They've sold something like 300 of their trucks now. Honestly, I figured they were fully done for when the "rolling down the hill" scan was revealed.