‘Zero Emission’ Truck Fraud: Candid Camera Meets Nikola (Trevon Milton to the Slammer?)
By Kennedy Maize -- December 27, 2023
Ed. Note: A classic Candid Camera episode is where a car without a motor makes a downhill stop at a service station for a checkup. The attendants are stunned to find the car is engineless. Fiction and funnies turned into fact with Trevor Milton, whose hydrogen/fuel cell/electric truck company, Nikola Corp., pulled this stunt with a rolling truck in a promotional video. Kenneth Maize has the story in “Trevor Milton, E-truck Nikola Corp. Founder, Headed to Prison?“
“It was mostly smoke and mirrors. The company had acquired “gliders,” truck platforms without engines. In one notorious case highlighted by Hindenburg, Nikola in 2018 posted a YouTube video of a battery-powered Nikola cab and trailer … moving rapidly along a desert highway. Hindenburg said the truck wasn’t moving under its own power. Nikola had towed the engineless truck to the top of a hill, and it was rolling because of gravity.”
U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos in Manhattan Monday (Dec. 18) sentenced Trevor Milton, founder and former CEO of e-truck company Nikola Corp. (NKLA:NASDAQ) to four years in prison for defrauding investors. Prosecutors had sought a sentence of 11-years in the slammer. He will be out on bail pending an appeal.
Ramos also ordered Milton to pay a $1 million fine and forfeit a Utah property. Nikola is currently based in Phoenix, Ariz.
https://www.masterresource.org/electric-vehicles/fraud-nikola-milton-defraud/
