With tears in his eyes, Trevor Milton made his final plea to a judge in a Manhattan courtroom this week to avoid a prison sentence that could be 27 years or more under federal guidelines.
He did not intend to harm anyone and “did not commit these crimes,” he said.
It came to little. Milton was sentenced this week to four years in prison and fined $1 million for defrauding investors in Nikola, the electric truck company he founded.
The tears and pleas were a far cry from the slick salesmanship Milton displayed when he unveiled Nikola’s six-wheeled truck, designed to haul juggernauts across the US using electric or hydrogen power.
In 2016, in the style of a Steve Jobs presentation, he paced a stage in front of a gleaming white prototype as he claimed his company had $4bn in pre-orders. Plans were announced for a fleet of hydrogen refuelling stations across North America.
Truck owners would get one million miles of free hydrogen fuel from stations to be built from 2019, Milton promised.
He said: “It’s a bit expensive, ok, you could probably buy a jet with what it cost to build this thing, so we’re going to try and stop people from driving away, but this thing is fully functional and it works, which is really incredible.
“What we show you, we can actually deliver, and that’s the best thing about Nikola.
That proved not to be the case. Judge Edgar Ramos told Milton this week: “The law does not give a pass to good intentions.
“Over the course of many months, you used your considerable social media skills to promote your company in a way that was materially false.”
Founded in Utah in 2014, Nikola was one of a wave of electric car companies set up in the last decade to compete with Tesla as investors bet big on the death of fossil fuels. Nikola’s competition with Elon Musk’s company was obvious – it was also named after Nikola Tesla, the pioneer of electricity.
While Tesla aimed to reinvent passenger transport, Milton said Nikola would clean up the US trucking industry. His hydrogen-powered trucks would transport vital goods across the vast American continent without emissions.
However, the 41-year-old’s promises came unstuck in 2020, shortly after he entered the New York Stock Exchange.
Short seller Hindenburg Research got wind of the fact that Nikola’s truck didn’t actually work, or even come close to working. In a now infamous episode, Hindenburg revealed that a video posted by Nikola showing the truck in motion was actually footage of it rolling down a hill.
Hindenburg Research called the company “an elaborate fraud built on dozens of lies”.
The company admitted shortly after Hindenburg’s report that the truck did not work, although it also downplayed the significance of Hindenburg’s claims.
Nikola was initially valued at $3.3 billion when it went public and enjoyed a rally that briefly saw it worth more than Ford, topping $30 billion.
But the shares plunged after Hindenburg’s claims and are down 90% from their peak.
That turned out not to be the case. Judge Edgar Ramos told Milton this week: “The law does not give a pass to good intentions.
“Over the course of many months, you used your considerable social media skills to promote your company in a way that was materially false.”
Founded in Utah in 2014, Nikola was one of a wave of electric car companies set up in the last decade to compete with Tesla as investors bet big on the death of fossil fuels. Nikola’s competition with Elon Musk’s company was obvious – it was also named after Nikola Tesla, the pioneer of electricity.
While Tesla aimed to reinvent passenger transport, Milton said Nikola would clean up the US trucking industry. His hydrogen-powered trucks would transport vital goods across the vast American continent with zero emissions.
However, the 41-year-old’s promises came crashing down in 2020, shortly after he went public in New York.
Short-seller Hindenburg Research got wind of the fact that Nikola’s truck didn’t actually work, or even come close to working. In a now infamous episode, Hindenburg revealed that a video posted by Nikola showing the truck in motion was actually footage of it rolling down a hill.
Hindenburg Research called the company “an elaborate fraud built on dozens of lies”.
The company admitted shortly after Hindenburg’s report that the truck did not work, although it also downplayed the significance of Hindenburg’s claims.
Nikola was initially valued at $3.3 billion when it went public and enjoyed a rally that briefly saw it worth more than Ford, topping $30 billion.
However, shares plunged after Hindenburg’s claims and are down 90% from their peak.
