Billionaire Nikola Founder Trevor Milton Guilty of Defrauding Investors
Nikola Corp. founder Trevor Milton was convicted of fraud for misleading investors in the electric truck company, a stunning downfall for the door-to-door salesman turned billionaire who promised to revolutionize the auto industry.
Milton, 40, was found guilty Friday of one count of securities fraud and two counts of wire fraud by a federal jury in Manhattan, in a boost to the US Justice Department's efforts to crack down on corporate crime. He was acquitted of a more serious securities fraud charge but still faces as many as 20 years in prison.
Read More: Milton Described as Serial Liar, and as Victim of Distorted Case, in Closings
He briefly shook his head as the verdict was read out, raised his left hand to his face and looked back at the nearly two dozen family members and friends gathered in the benches behind him.
“I think the evidence was clear,” Juror No. 5, a woman with gray hair and glasses, said afterward. She declined to give her name.
Meteoric Rise
Milton is due to be sentenced on Jan. 27.
“I did nothing wrong,” Milton said outside the courthouse. “I was talking about the business plan.”
Asked about his plans, he said “Got to keep fighting. That's all you can do, especially when you didn't do anything.”
It's been a wild ride for the charismatic entrepreneur, whose fortune has declined to hundreds of millions of dollars after having once reached the billions shortly after the company listed its shares in June 2020. Milton, who remains the company's biggest individual shareholder, founded Nikola in 2014 and built it into a company valued at $34 billion when it went public, more than Ford Motor Co. at one point.
The meteoric rise of the startup, which had no revenue at the time, came amid a wave of
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