IT House reported on December 19 that Trevor Milton, the founder of Nikola, a once-glamorous electric truck company, finally paid the price for his lies today, and was sentenced to 4 years in prison, confiscated property and fined $1 million. In addition, he will receive a 3-year supervised release after serving his sentence.
Milton was convicted by a jury last year of three counts of fraud and wire fraud, but has not received a sentencing until today. His deception mainly involved exaggerating the extent to which the company's electric truck technology had developed, particularly in relation to the counterfeiting of a hydrogen-fueled truck called "One". **The medium truck appears to be moving, but in fact it is just sliding down a slope.
Milton's lies were not limited to this one**, and he misled the public into believing that Nikola's technology had made a major breakthrough through a series of false statements, which attracted many **investors to flock to the stock price after Nikola's IPO through SPAC in 2020, which at one point propelled Milton to the throne of a paper billionaire.
However, this empire of lies was eventually debunked by a report by short-seller Hindenburg Research, which reported a number of problems for Nikolai, which led to Milton's disgrace and the company being subjected to the US Exchange Commission1$2.5 billion in fines.
Prosecutors had asked for Milton to be sentenced to 11 years in prison, while his maximum sentence could be up to 60 years. Investors lost $6 on Nikola's share price from its highest point of $80 shares to less than $1 today, they said$600 million (IT House Note: Currently about 47.)0.6 billion RMB).