Trevor Milton, former founder and CEO of electric truck startup Nikola, has been sentenced to four years in prison over securities fraud. In the ruling, Judge Edgardo Ramos in the US District Court in Manhattan said he would impose a sentence of 48 months on each count, served concurrently, and a fine of $1 million. Milton is expected to appeal the sentence, which Ramos acknowledged, reports TechCrunch.<\/p>\n
\u201cI stepped down because my wife was suffering life-threatening sickness,\u201d Milton said in his statement. \u201cShe suffered medical malpractice, someone else\u2019s plasma. So I stepped down for that \u2013 not because I was a fraud. The truth matters. I chose my wife over money or power,\u201d he was quoted as saying. Milton, 41, was convicted by a jury in October 2022 of one count of securities fraud and two counts of wire fraud.<\/p>\n
He was found guilty of lying to investors about the development of Nikola\u2019s electric trucks to inflate the company\u2019s stock price, according to reports. Prosecutors have accused Milton of deceiving investors since 2019 by making improper statements, including that Nikola had built a truck from the \u201cground up\u201d. The company paid a $125 million penalty in a settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In October, an arbitration panel in New York ordered Milton to pay the company $165 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Trevor Milton, former founder and CEO of electric truck startup Nikola, has been sentenced to four years in prison over\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":17743,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[5492,5222,5488,5493,795,5487,5490,5489,5491],"class_list":["post-17739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech","tag-arbitration-panel","tag-de-carbonizing-transport","tag-ev-trucks","tag-judge-edgardo-ramos","tag-new-york","tag-nikola","tag-securities-fraud","tag-trevor-milton","tag-us-securities-and-exchange-commission-sec"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}