Trevor Milton, the founder and former CEO of EV startup Nikola has been charged by a grand jury on three counts of fraud over false claims he made about the company to attract investment. Because of his claims, Milton became a billionaire after taking Nikola public through a SPAC deal as the price of its stock went up. He made several claims about the company's progress towards bringing electric and fuel cell trucks to market.
He was outed by Hindenburg Research which made allegations and reportedly exposed deception by Nikola and its founder Trever Milton which were corroborated by publications like Electrek and Bloomberg.
Nikola's rebuttal to these allegations also didn't help matters as it didn't address the allegations but rather skirted around it. The most critical allegation was the fact that the video of its hydrogen truck driving was faked, something to which the company admitted to doing though it didn't apologise for the same. Instead, Milton and his team claimed that the deception was fine due to a technicality.
As the pressure started to increase Milton left the company and had been rumoured to be under federal investigation by authorities in the US since September 2020. After he left the company, he sold millions worry of stock which was used to buy a lavish mansion in Utah and still was worth billions of dollars depending on the stock price of the company which was always fluctuating.
Nikola's founder and former CEO was charged with fraud
Due to these events, GM cancelled a deal to build Nikola's electric-hydrogen Badger pickup truck and the company was forced to refund the deposits to reservation holders.
"Milton's scheme targeted individual, non-professional investors - so-called retail investors - by making false and misleading statements directly to the investing public through social media, and television, print and podcast interviews," said the prosecutors.
After he surrendered he pleaded not guilty and was released on a $100 million bond. His legal team Chas also released a statement that claims that Milton is a victim of a botched investigation.
"Trevor Milton is innocent; this is a new low in the government's efforts to criminalize lawful business conduct. Every executive in America should be horrified," the spokesperson said. "Mr Milton has been wrongfully accused following a faulty and incomplete investigation in which the government ignored critical evidence and failed to interview important witnesses," said a statement released by Trevor Milton's legal team.
