Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

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Just two years ago, he was regarded as the hottest start-up in the United States, and was praised as "Musk second" by the media. The new energy car company he founded is regarded as Tesla's future competitor. Its market capitalization once surpassed that of Ford Motor, a century-old car company, and its personal assets exceeded 8 billion US dollars. Two years later, his public image has become a notorious liar. He was not only kicked out of the company he founded, but also faced a long prison sentence for fraud.

After five hours of court debate, a federal jury in New York agreed on Friday that Treveor Milton, founder of the US new energy car Nikola, was found guilty of three of the four charges, including one count of securities fraud and two counts of telecommunications fraud. Not guilty of another count of securities fraud.

According to the American judicial system, juries are responsible for convictions and judges are responsible for sentencing. Milton's sentence will be formally pronounced on January 27 next year, and the maximum sentence he is convicted on each charge is 20 years. Although Milton will not necessarily be sentenced to a maximum sentence, it is impossible to escape from prison.

As the court read the jury's verdict, Milton, 40, shook his head and looked at his family in the gallery. The once magnificent Musk II is now as notorious as Elizabeth Elizabeth Holmes. What awaits them in the future is a long time in prison.

Holmes, the founder of Silicon Valley blood test company Theranos, was known as "Jobs second" for his magic technology of "blood test", and the company was valued at $9 billion at one point. But with the scam exposed, Theranos has gone bankrupt and Holmes has been convicted of several fraud charges and will be sentenced next month. John Carreyou, the journalist who exposed her scam, turned the scandal into a book called Bad Blood.

Similar to Holmes, Milton also used lies to falsely publicize his products and technology, blowing a "hydrogen energy car Tesla" bubble, deceiving investors and eventually losing all their money. The mature products and technologies he shows to the public are only semi-finished products in the process of research and development.

Damian Williams, the United States attorney for the Southern District of Manhattan, who charged Milton, demonstrated many of Milton's false statements on social media and in public in court. Prosecutors said, "Milton has lied to Nikola investors again and again. This is fraud."

Even Nikola, the business he founded, was eager to break away from Milton. After Milton's conviction, a Nikola spokesman said the company is pleased to see that this page is finally over and will focus on implementing its current business strategy in the future. Nikola, which already has a market capitalization of only $1 billion, is cooperating with the U.S. government and agreed to pay $125 million to settle securities fraud charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Witnesses who came forward to testify against Milton's fraud also included middle and senior Nikola employees as well as investors. Several Nikola executives testified that they had been worried about Milton's public comments because there were so many inaccuracies. Nikola CEO Russell (Mark Russell) said in court that executives even changed the password of his Twitter account at one point in order to silence Milton on social media.

Milton, who walked into the courtroom waiting to be sentenced.

Imitate Musk to be Tesla the second, Milton has been carefully building his "Musk second" public image before the fraud and lies were exposed. He never conceals his imitation of Musk. His life trajectory, entrepreneurial direction, product positioning and marketing style can clearly see the shadow of Musk and Tesla, and even his name is imitating Tesla.

Like Musk, he likes to spend time on social media, unscrupulously promoting his hydrogen-powered dreams and products, and his speech style is confident (or arrogant). Similarly to Musk, Nikola executives even forcibly changed his Twitter password at one point to stop him from making irresponsible public remarks.

Milton also dropped out of college to start a business, founded a number of companies, sold alarms, and set up a car selling website. At the age of 28, he turned to new energy vehicles and founded a natural gas truck company, which was sold for $100 million a few years later. The freedom of wealth was realized just after the age of 30.

In 2014, the 32-year-old Milton officially founded Nikola Motor Company with an ambition to be the Tesla of the car industry. As we all know, Tesla's name comes from the surname of scientist Nicola Tesla (Nikola Tesla). Milton named his new energy car company after Tesla's first name Nikola.

The entrepreneurial track he chose also has the shadow of Tesla. Tesla's products range from sports cars to cars, while Nikola cuts into trucks. Milton wants to be the Tesla of the car world. But compared with Tesla, Nikola chose a different way to enter the market, making electric and hydrogen-fueled trucks. Tesla also released electric semitrailer trucks in 2017, but only recently began to deliver them.

In fact, Milton wanted to be an electric heavy truck when he started his business, but then shifted his focus to hydrogen-powered vehicles. Although his idol Musk publicly mocked the foolishness of the idea of hydrogen-fueled cars, Milton thought this was the future direction of the car. The biggest advantage of hydrogen-fueled cars is that they can fill up the "tank" as quickly as refueling, rather than waiting to be recharged slowly.

The ecological market capitalization of hydrogen energy surpasses that of Ford Milton, which shows the market, investors and the public an almost perfect dream of hydrogen energy travel. Nikola, which is buying land in Arizona and building both a car assembly plant and a hydrogen plant, plans to bring hydrogen prices close to gasoline in a few years.

In April 2019, Nikola officially launched the Class 8 class hydrogen fuel semitrailer truck Nicola One (which has been carrying more than 15 tons) with a self-weight of 9 tons (unveiled in 2016), powered by 1000 horsepower, dragged by 18 wheels of heavy trucks, with a range of up to 750 miles, and delivery is scheduled to begin in 2021. Compared with the hydrogen fuel heavy truck of Tesla's electric heavy truck Semi,Nikola, it has many technical advantages, at least in paper parameters. Since then, Nikola has also released hydrogen-powered pickups and many other models.

At the same time, in order to attract corporate customers to abandon diesel heavy trucks, Milton also designed a subversive business model for Nikolai, which will be the first in the industry to introduce "all-inclusive" leasing, including vehicle, service, maintenance and fuel costs. make the long-term life cycle cost the same as or even lower than diesel models.

This means that customers only need to pay for the use, rather than buying the whole heavy truck, greatly reducing the misgivings of companies about the future of new energy vehicles. According to Milton before the listing, Nicola One's service orders have exceeded $10 billion. Anherser-Busch, the American beer giant alone, ordered 800 trucks, while they booked only 40 Tesla Semi. Nikola expects sales to reach $3.2 billion in 2024.

The main technology partners announced by Nikola include CHN Industrial of the Netherlands (Iveco is a subsidiary), Bosch of Germany, Meritor of the United States, Worthington, a precision steel company of the United States, Hanwha, a supplier of solar energy solutions of South Korea, and Nel, a supplier of hydrogen production solutions from hydroelectric hydrolysis of Norway. Some of these companies were also investors in Nikolai's $500m D-round financing in 2019, of which case New Industries invested $250 million.

It is under this beautiful vision that the listing of Nikola has been warmly welcomed by investors. In June 2020, Nikola landed on Nasdaq through a backdoor listing, and although not a single car was mass-produced, their hydrogen travel vision was still popular in the market. Just days after going public, Nikola's market capitalization has soared more than tenfold from its pre-IPO valuation of $3.3 billion.

At one point, Nikola's intraday market capitalization reached $34 billion on June 9, 2020, surpassing the century-old automakers Ford and Fiat Chrysler (now renamed Stellantis). Milton, who owns 1/4 of Nicola, is worth more than $8 billion. Milton said proudly, "We're going to crush the Ford Fmur150."

In September 2020, Nikola announced a pickup agreement with GM. Milton said GM would co-produce electric pickups for Nikola, of which Nikola would provide 70% of the technology, giving GM an 11% stake in Nikola. The news sent Nikola's shares soaring by 40 per cent.

This advertisement is a complete hoax.

A lot of lies have been exposed, however, Musk's richest man's arrogance is based on Tesla's solid technology, while Milton used boast and lies to create a bubble. Nikola's hydrogen-powered dream bubble was soon burst, and share prices plummeted, leaving chicken feathers.

On September 10, 2020, short seller Hindenburg Research released a 67-page research report alleging that Milton had been falsely promoting Nikola for years and constantly falsifying core technical parameters and product development progress. Hindenburg Research is based on anonymous revelations from an Nikola insider. The short-selling report exposed Milton's fraud scandal.

Milton quickly refuted the short report at first, promised to confront the charges one by one, and announced that he would sue Hinderburg for libel. "cowards run and leaders continue to fight," he wrote confidently on Twitter. " But in the following trading days, watching Nikola's share price fall sharply and lose more than half of its market value, Milton did not dare to respond publicly.

In the following days, well-known financial media continued to follow up to verify the details of the fraud revealed by the Hinderburg short report. Four days later, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Justice launched securities fraud investigations into Milton and Nikola, and investors hired law firms to open fraud lawsuits.

So what lies did Milton tell? Nikola has previously released a commercial showing a hydrogen-powered heavy truck galloping along the desert highway, showing that its semi-trailer truck has outstanding performance and mature technology. But in fact, the truck was just a prototype shell car that could not drive at all and was dragged up the hillside by the truck. This completely fake product advertisement was "created" by Milton himself and released according to his request.

Milton's lies are much more than that. Nikola's so-called $10 billion order for heavy trucks is just the intention of corporate customers, not a real order contract. The partnership agreement between Nikola and GM is actually GM's supply of hydrogen batteries to Nikola, Nikola's release of so-called hydrogen-powered pickups and even revamped GM trucks. GM abandoned its cooperation agreement with Nikola at the end of November 2020 after the fraud scandal was revealed.

There is a lot of evidence that Milton's false propaganda has been unscrupulous. He claims that Nikola can produce hydrogen fuel on its own, and that the cost can be reduced to $4 per kilogram, only 1/3 of that of other hydrogen fuel producers. But Nikola insiders confirmed that the new carmaker simply did not have the technical capacity to produce hydrogen fuel.

The so-called new pickup is just a revamped GM product.

Faced with sexual assault charges, Milton resigned as executive chairman of Nikola on September 20, 2020, after many lies were exposed. Under his exit agreement with Nikola, Milton is not allowed to comment on Nikola on social media or any other online platform without Nikola's permission. On Sept. 22, there was news on Twitter that Milton had been arrested by the Federal Bureau of investigation (FBI) at Arizona airport, prompting media reports. Although the news is not true, it once again triggered a collapse of confidence among Nikola investors. Since then, Milton has closed her social media account.

September 2020 is Milton's nightmare month. In addition to the fraud scandal, he also faces sexual assault charges from several women, including his own cousin. Although Milton denies all these sexual assault scandals, his public image has been completely destroyed and will face legal charges.

First Milton's cousin accused him of sexually assaulting himself in 1999. After the sexual assault occurred in 1999, only the 15-year-old cousin Milton reported the case to the local police and family members, but Milton was not charged. In the same month, another woman accused Milton of sexually assaulting the 15-year-old herself in 2004, accusing him of being obsessed with unexperienced girls. The charge is still under investigation.

Come forward to testify against Milton's fraud, and even the real estate seller who sold the house to him. In 2019, Milton spent $32.5 million on a huge 2000-hectare estate in Utah, fulfilling his Westworld dream and setting a record for housing transactions in Utah.

However, the seller of the estate testified, and Milton described to him Nikola's vision for hydrogen energy in the future, enticing him to accept the sale of the estate with Nikola's unlisted shares. As the Nikola fraud was exposed and the share price fell sharply, the seller lost a lot of money.

As in the court case of U.S. Attorney Williams for the Southern District of New York, Milton has said publicly that his goal is to become one of the top 100 richest people on the Forbes Wealth list, and that he has been driven by greed and profit to deceive investors again and again.

"Milton is a Con Man. He lied to investors and swindled them out of their money. Let Milton's case serve as a warning to anyone who tries to cheat investors' funds with quick fraud. Frauds will come to a bad end. (It won't end well)"

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