Trevor Milton was found guilty of three of the four counts of securities and wire fraud last year|Miljostiftelsen ZERO|CC BY 2.0
The embattled Nikola EV truck founder, Trevor Milton, was sentenced to four years and fined $1 million on Monday for defrauding investors and lying about the company’s technology.
Milton was indicted last year on several fraud charges. Prosecutors claim he caused a loss of more than $660 million by fabricating lies to bump up Nikola’s stock price.
He is accused of lying to the investors and public that Nikola’s EV truck prototype was zero-emission, hydrogen-powered, drivable, and had made sales. None of it was true.
Prosecutors compared the case to disgraced Theranos cofounder Elizabeth Holmes, who was convicted last year for defrauding investors and sentenced to more than 11 years in prison. Holmes had also lied about the operability of Theranos-manufactured blood analyzers.
After stepping down from the company, Milton sold his Nikola shares for $100 million in mid-2020 and reportedly spent $83.5 million on luxuries like an airplane and estate in the Turks and Caicos Islands.