By Kennedy Maize
Ed. Note: A classic Candid Camera episode is where a car without a motor makes a downhill stop at a service station for a checkup. The attendants are stunned to find the car is engineless. Fiction and funnies turned into fact with Trevor Milton, whose hydrogen/fuel cell/electric truck company, Nikola Corp., pulled this stunt with a rolling truck in a promotional video. Kenneth Maize has the story in “Trevor Milton, E-truck Nikola Corp. Founder, Headed to Prison?“
“It was mostly smoke and mirrors. The company had acquired “gliders,” truck platforms without engines. In one notorious case highlighted by Hindenburg, Nikola in 2018 posted a YouTube video of a battery-powered Nikola cab and trailer … moving rapidly along a desert highway. Hindenburg said the truck wasn’t moving under its own power. Nikola had towed the engineless truck to the top of a hill, and it was rolling because of gravity.”
U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos in Manhattan Monday (Dec. 18) sentenced Trevor Milton, founder and former CEO of e-truck company Nikola Corp. (NKLA:NASDAQ) to four years in prison for defrauding investors. Prosecutors had sought a sentence of 11-years in the slammer. He will be out on bail pending an appeal.
Ramos also ordered Milton to pay a $1 million fine and forfeit a Utah property. Nikola is currently based in Phoenix, Ariz.
A federal jury in October 2022 found Milton guilty of one count of securities fraud and three counts of wire fraud.
Milton, a former door-to-door salesman and college dropout, founded the company from his Utah basement in 2015 and took it public through a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) in 2020, raising over $3 billion. The SPAC was run by run by former General Motors vice-chairman Stephen Girsky. Girsky, who became chairman of the Nikola Board, was named Nikola CEO in August, succeeding Michael Lohscheller, who succeeded Milton.
Nikola was temporarily worth $13 billion, making it more valuable than Ford Motor Co. The company’s shares, which opened at $65.90/share not long after it went public, closed at 87 cents on Monday.
On September 8, 2020, the company announced a deal where General Motors would acquire 11% of Nikola and a seat on the board, a deal worth about $2 billion at the time. Nikola had earlier announced it would produce a fuel cell pickup named Badger, which did not exist even as a prototype,
Nikola’s shares began a precipitous decline after Hindenburg Research, an activist short selling firm, on September 10, 2020, released a devastating report on the company. Hindenburg said that “we believe Nikola is an intricate fraud built on dozens of lies over the course of its Founder and Executive Chairman Trevor Milton’s career.
We have gathered extensive evidence—including recorded phone calls, text messages, private emails and behind-the-scenes photographs—detailing dozens of false statements by Nikola Founder Trevor Milton. We have never seen this level of deception at a public company, especially of this size.” It later became known that Hindenburg had the aid of a Nikola whistleblower.
The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice launched a criminal investigation of Nikola that month. Milton resigned on Sept. 20, 2020.
Several analysts have suggested that the company is headed toward bankruptcy, possibly liquidation. The Motley Fool stock analysis web site commented, “There’s little sign that Nikola’s business will succeed over the long term, and those who buy the stock could still wind up suffering big losses even though it has already fallen so dramatically.”
During the trial, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams said, “Trevor Milton lied to Nikola’s investors—over and over and over again. That’s fraud, plain and simple, and this office has no patience for it.” The Wall Street Journal reported, “Witnesses testified that he lied to ordinary investors about nearly every aspect of Nikola.”
Nikola (it’s not coincidental that the chosen company name is also the first name of legendary electric pioneer Nikola Tesla) over the years claimed it had lined up orders for a variety of electric-powered heavy trucks, including battery-powered models and the latest, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. The initial offer was for a semi that would use natural gas to turn a turbine, generating electricity for an electric motor. That was followed by claims for a battery-electric truck and a hydrogen fuel cell electric power system.
It was mostly smoke and mirrors. The company had acquired “gliders,” truck platforms without engines. In one notorious case highlighted by Hindenburg, Nikola in 2018 posted a YouTube video of a battery-powered Nikola cab and trailer, “Nikola One Electric Semi Truck in Motion,” in 2016 moving rapidly along a desert highway.
Hindenburg said the truck wasn’t moving under its own power. Nikola had towed the engineless truck to the top of a hill, and it was rolling because of gravity.
In a lengthy and convoluted press release, Nikola admitted that the truck was not powered in 2016, nor 13 months later when it posted the video. Bloomberg commented, “The story of Milton’s stage-prop truck is, by this point, legendary in certain corners of the retail investing internet.”
UPDATE: Read more about the Trevor Milton verdict here. Judge Ramos stated: “The law does not grant a pass for good intentions. It is decidedly the obligation of business executives who are seeking to have the public purchase their stock to speak the truth.”
Here in the UK we await investigation into the creation and collapse of companies which cashed on on the craze for social distancing, plastic screens, masks and vaccines during a recent epidemic. Structurally, there seems to be a similarity between the epidemic fraud and the climate fraud. Both involves collusion between governments and corporations to effect a fraud based on menacing the populace with fear of some existential threat, whether it be CO₂ or DNA, then offering salvation, be it through lithium or mRNA.
Possibly in contrast to US inquiries, UK inquiries are set up with a predetermined outcome and managed by avoiding asking the right questions. The outcome is invariably to exonerate the politicians and blame the populace or some overseas scapegoat.
…as well as damning the rational alternatives, i.e. ICE vehicles and Ivermectin.
And Hydroxychloroquine.
You’re correct. Millions of dollars spent on PPE products are going up in smoke in the aftermath of the US Covid response. Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder that took prominent investors to the cleaners, was convicted of fraud and incarcerated because there was no money for restitution. When established financially solvent companies are found guilty of criminal behavior, immense fines are imposed. The funds for those fines come from the corporate coffers ergo the stockholders are being punished while management that did the illegal deeds suffer only reputational losses.
The invisible and undetectable threat of CO2 climate disaster is, up until now, the greatest fraud of recorded history. Sadly, none of us will be around to witness the outcome.
Well, I’ll offer you the following regarding the ineffectiveness of masks vs. COVID:
“Approximately Zero
“Masks make no difference in reducing the spread of Covid, according to an extensive new review by Cochrane—the gold standard for evaluating health interventions.”
source: https://www.city-journal.org/article/approximately-zero
Here, across the pond, there is yet to be a roundup—let alone criminal prosecution—of the various parties who profiteered while knowing fully the false claims being fronted for their products, including vaccines, being sold to a panicked, gullible public.
—let alone criminal prosecution—
It won’t happen. In the USA, Covid vaccines were purchased by the government and provided free. Who can be prosecuted for such a well-meaning gesture?
Other issues now occupy the attention of authorities. I think a list is unnecessary.
Perhaps.
During WWII, various Nazi “doctors” gave POWs experimental “medicines”, provided free by the Third Reich.
Admittedly, it took a while to prosecute those “doctors”, but some were eventually found guilty of war crimes for such medical experimentation.
—ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation
Those who have closely examined the COVID-19 emergency vaccine response, at least within the US, have questioned if the US properly followed the Nuremberg Code of Medical Ethics regarding experimenting on persons without first fully disclosing the risks and obtaining informed consent prior to receive mRNA-based vaccines.
Remember, mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines were authorized by the FDA, but never approved by them using existing protocols for such during the height of the pandemic.
When it comes to Nuremberg Code violations the CIA’s 20 year MK Ultra program is in a class by itself.
The CDC already knew surgical and N95 masks were ineffective VS respiratory viruses after their long term RESPECT study on the masks and influenza showed there was minimal difference between healthcare workers who did or did not wear masks and the presence of influenza (and other viruses) in nasal swabs.
Exactly so! . . . CDC/NIH/NIAID recommendations and mandates for facial masking during the COVID-19 pandemic were just so much useless “window dressing”.
Remember this the next time you hear: I’m from the Government and I’m here to help you.
It’s all in the ‘terms of reference’……
You should watch “Yes Prime Minister”. First you decide what the inquiry will find. Then you select someone that wants a gong to run it.
Given the field, outright fraud is weirdly refreshing.
Outright provable fraud.
How many more have just scraped over the bar when they should’ve been investigated as well?
An engineless vehicle rolling downhill is quite the analogy of the Green New Deal!
In Al Gore’s book — the one he wants burned — this fraud situation would be known as “an inconvenient truth.”
It’s almost a victimless crime. Rent-seekers hoping to cash in on another rent-seeker’s scam end up getting scammed.
Anyone willing to try to make money investing in a fraud against society deserves bankruptcy.
I have zero sympathy.
Crikey, did that Candid Camera sketch, featuring Jonathan Routh, achieve worldwide recognition? Who’d’ve thought, in 59, that it would still be remembered, over 60 years later.
I remember it well. 😊
The Candid Camera folks did a remake of it in the 1970s or early ’80s with – if I remember right – an engineless MG somewhere in the southern U.S. or maybe in the Boston area where one of the victims was a garage mechanic with a noticeable accent. His reply became a repeated line with my brother and me concerning junked cars we saw: “It’s got no motah.” Maybe somebody here will find that redone later video.
Here is the link to that Candid Camera episode
https://www.google.com/search?q=Candid+Camera+enginless+car&rlz=1C1SQJL_enUS813US813&oq=Candid+Camera+enginless+car&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIJCAEQIRgKGKABMgkIAhAhGAoYoAEyCQgDECEYChigATIHCAQQIRirAtIBCjE2MTU4ajFqMTWoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:c4273be3,vid:yGkMhGqbJhY,st:0
I hadn’t realised that Bob Monkhouse had presented a British version as well.
This scam reminds me of the scam with Theranos.
The suckers always fall for a noble cause. Elizabeth Holmes was a FEMALE wunderkind that would show male-dominated Wall Street how a smart woman would change the world!
The noble causes may change, but the grift remains the same.
From the above article:
“Nikola was temporarily worth $13 billion, making it more valuable than Ford Motor Co. The company’s shares, which opened at $65.90/share not long after it went public, closed at 87 cents on Monday.
“On September 8, 2020, the company announced a deal where General Motors would acquire 11% of Nikola and a seat on the board, a deal worth about $2 billion at the time.”
Uhhhh . . . anybody other than me—especially any GM stockholders—think that some heads should roll for containing the “brains” at GM who decided that investing in Nikola was a good deal???
You know, such things as “caveat emptor” and “performing due diligence” . . .
N.B: It’s not clear exactly how much money GM has lost to date on their involvement with Nikola, as the original $2B deal was quickly restructured in November 2020 as Nikola stock was tanking. See
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/30/gm-nikola-announce-reworked-smaller-deal-focused-on-fuel-cell-supply-deal.html
The apparent lack of performing due diligence should be a criminal offense for the GM Board based on their fiduciary duty to the shareholders.
“I need one of my engineers to examine and drive one of your trucks before I give a dime.”
You’d think *someone* would have said this. You would be wrong.
You would think that the Securities and Exchange Commission or the DOJ would investigate this.
Instead the DOJ is investigating/persecuting SpaceX for not hiring illegal aliens with work permits in sufficient numbers. Currently that number is ZERO as it should be.
This is only part of the “whole government” investigation of everything Musk since he bought Twitter/X. It almost seems that they want to force Space X to hire Chinese “immigrants/infiltrators” so that it will be easier for China to obtain the specifications and software for all that Space X does.
Correlation or causation, millions to the Big Guy and his appointees work in the interest of China? Who’d a thunk it?
Investors gave $3B to this joker? Clearly there’s a sucker born every day.
I would guess that the $$millions that Nikola got from the government helped convince investors that the business was legit. Has anyone added up all the grants and loans thrown away on these ‘climate friendly’ scams? Has to be in the billions.
It is, at final analysis, likely every dime. All of it. Including support for the “climate research.” Besides taking an axe to legitimate and vital power generation.
An electric truck has less attractive numbers than an electric car. That so called “cyber truck” is a Muskmobile clown car in my opinion……and it’s bullet poof….everybody wants bullet proof, no?
Speaking of Elon Musk and Tesla, which just started selling its Cybertruck, I’m wondering if they didn’t pick up some tricks from Nikola and their coast-it-down-a-hill stunt, so as to improve their advertised range on a single charge.
“DOJ investigating Tesla’s EV range exaggerations
“Over the summer, a report from Reuters alleged that Tesla was purposefully inflating the EV range numbers and the company was doing so based on direct orders from its CEO Elon Musk.
“Car & Driver has put these range claims to the test and found that EV cars by manufacturers like BMW and Mercedes often met or went beyond the state [sic] range estimates. When testing Tesla vehicles, the outlet found that the company’s stated EV range was ‘on average two times as far off the label value as most EVs.’ “
— https://mashable.com/article/doj-investigating-tesla-ev-range-exaggerations
We have not yet heard the full story on this!
Not sure about “everybody”, but the Babylon Bee (*) had an eye-catching headline about a month ago.
URL : https://babylonbee.com/news/musk-puts-cybertrucks-bulletproof-armor-to-the-test-with-trip-through-downtown-chicago
From that “news” article :
_ _ _ _ _
(*) The BB is a satirical website, motto “Fake news you can trust”.
People without a … [ checks notes, oh yes ] … “sense of humour” should not click on the above link.
The Fire Festival of companies!
Another demonstration that activism and reason are pretty much incompatible.
This EV truck is one of the hottest.
When I go on You Tube I am bombarded by ads for investment BS and training videos as well worthless products purported to be a break through. In the mean time I am pretty sure we are going to watch many US companies that are “ real” go belly up .soon( GM, Ford) We need to be making stuff ( like IC -the moneys there but no one seems to be getting their act together ) And the fact that people fell for that rediculous truck scam – my god we are in trouble.
How long can our nations continue throwing Billions away in both the public and private sector before something really bad happens? I know we have some investors/ stock pickers here. What do you guys think- what companies are the “ real deal” not fantasy energy net zero BS?
I believe something bad is already happening and has been. It is just in slow motion and covered in so much self-promoting B.S. that the general public can’t quite point to it. But they can feel it in their bones, which is why politics as usual is getting thrown over the side.
The US has been throwing billions away for the Department of Education and public school “indoctrination” ever since the department was created and the test results have gone down precipitously ever since.
So there you have one current example.
The US constitution has NOTHING that would justify funding a state/local responsibility, that being the education of our children.
“A classic Candid Camera episode is where a car without a motor makes a downhill stop at a service station for a checkup.”
Heh – I saw that when it first aired. I had long since forgotten what the car looked like, but when I saw the apparently off-topic photo, that Candid Camera hack came to mind.
Yeah, I’m that old….
Then you like many of us remember the golden age of TV advertising: Pontiac “ wide track” Fords “I” beam P/u on the railroad tracks. Ford “ quality is job one” oh no or was that Chrysler !Ford had the light bulb! I loved that era especially 63-67 although I was very young.
Petula Clark and “The Beat goes on” – circa ’68 and the Plymouth Fury series …
My dad had a 67 or 68 Dodge Coronet 500. Fast car.
I think that the picture at the top is a still from the U.S. version hosted by Alan Funt. I think the U.K. / Monkhouse Candid Camera put out one at near the same time. I think I remember seeing one on Canadian TV reruns, vacationing there with grandparents in the 60s, but the one I remember doesn’t match either the U.K. or U.S. version. I gather that there may have been an Aussie version of the same show name with a similar gag.
Not the first nor the last to take advantage of naive people looking to make an easy buck.
Kind of a shame. I’ve driven for miles in traffic near to one of these Nikola tractor-trailer rigs going uphill, in 100ºF heat, at > 2500 ft altitude. It had no problems pulling what I assumed was a test load uphill, where loaded normally aspirated vehicles were struggling.
An (almost) compact, inexpensive fuel cell, that would run on methane and propane, would be a useful generating device. Limiting it to hydrogen fuel ruins that bit of usefulness. Putting one in a vehicle smaller than a locomotive is wasteful. Fuel cells cheap and available enough to put in a neighborhood, or to run (like a Bloom cell) on the methane from sewage treatment or a garbage dump, would be a very good thing (as they know at Google headquarters, where backup power is supplied that way).
I don’t think a full size Nikola tractor will ever be economic to run, and a haulage vehicle much smaller than a semi tractor won’t make sense without high fuel compression to a practical volume. Electrolyzed hydrogen costs more in energy and effort than can be converted back into electricity – even with a fuel cell.
From this article, it seems that Milton might be taking a fall so that GM (a Federally sanctioned non-government agency since 2008) can continue the fraud. Our inflation reduction axe dollars at work!
“Hindenburg said the truck wasn’t moving under its own power. Nikola had towed the engineless truck to the top of a hill, and it was rolling because of gravity.”
A gravity powered truck? Just like a wind-powered sailboat only better … it doesn’t need all that wet stuff.
“A gravity powered truck?”
Pure genius!
“Just make all of the roads go downhill, and we could much more easily achieve Net Zero!”
— Endorsed by renowned physics experts John Kerry, Al Gore, and Greta Thunberg
Make sure they all run downhill to California. Maybe they’ll get the bloody place to finally fall off into the ocean.
I had to walk to school, it was two miles uphill both ways.
I am sure it was also a walk in deep snow.
Good thing we have Global Warming so your kids don’t have to walk uphill both ways in deep snow!
Years ago I read a bit in Reader’s Digest, sent in by a woman who wrote that her father worked at a dam. Their house was downstream a ways at a height about half as high as the dam. He rode his bicycle to and from work, downhill both ways. He’d ride from home down to the base of the dam then when he came home he’d take his bike in an elevator to the top of the dam then ride downhill back home.
Whodathunk that something calling itself Hindenburg would be going after something named Nikola that runs on Hydrogen. And no one has posted the “Oh the Humanity” picture.
““Hindenburg said the truck wasn’t moving under its own power.”
I don’t understand this. Why go to the trouble of towing an engine-less truck to the top of a hill? If this guy is perpetrating a fraud, he should just get a truck with an ICE engine in it and drive it to the top of the hill. Hide the exhaust pipes, and who is to know?
If he wants to then roll the truck down the hill, it will go faster with the weight of an ICE included in the total.
A hybrid electric is well proven now and can be viable and of course a diesel electric locomotive is an obvious example. But a lot of what we see advertised as a new break through technology are just old recycled ideas. I am not even entirely convinced that all this AI hype is as unique as they are advertising it. ( but just better software will eliminate many jobs regardless) crazy uncertain world we live in now.
It seems to me that most of the AI accomplishments I hear about have nothing to do with AI. It’s sort of like blockchain a few years ago.
Look guys, we can make this work if we make everywhere downhill from everywhere else. Just as we made everywhere warm twice as quickly as everywhere else.
Like – when *we* walked to school as kids, and it was uphill both ways …
Altogether, now. Clap hands and shout, “I believe in Fairies! I believe in Fairies!”
So…. It’s downhill all the way….
As of this morning the stock hasn’t been delisted, and is trading at $0.88 / share.
The current CEO “shares positive outlook for the company as it gains stability” (Dec 27th).
There are other positive-sounding news stories. It appears the need to be “green” is so great it forces everyone to embrace and obvious fraud.
Towing an engine-less truck to top of a hill using fossil fuels and then letting it descend under gravity is a brilliant metaphor for the entire E-vehicle mirage, if not the entire net zero religion.
P.T. Barnum was right (“There’s a sucker born every minute”), he just underestimated the frequency by several orders of magnitude…
Are people getting dumber instead of smarter? Rhetorical question, the answer is YES.
“”Are people getting dumber””
Have you seen the state of, er, educashun?
Reminds me of Musk’s promise of swappable batteries.
In 2013, Elon Musk showed off Tesla’s battery-swapping technology, which can remove and replace the drained battery pack of a Model S with a fully charged one in just 90 seconds.
Is there one near you? 🙂
What is one more expensive scam on the way to a green future?
Musk proposes things and tries them out and if they cannot be engineered to work AND make money, he drops the idea. That idea probably messed up production schedules. In 2013 Tesla was not yet profitable and was just developing their production facility and attempting to improve efficiency.
Musk is building an underground transportation system in Las Vegas, with his own money, not government subsidized. The Boring Company. He has engineered better horizontal boring machines. He is still expanding the network, so must be making money. They intend to get to the point where a boring machine can bore “up to” 7 miles A DAY. The intention is to make it cheep enough to bore underground transportation systems anywhere.
Musk has cut the cost to send stuff to space by and order of magnitude and is producing the heaviest lift launch vehicle with 2 reusable stages. SpaceX is worth the read.
Musk has created a network of satellites that provides FAST internet service anywhere in the world. He has upgraded the system for cell phone service. Brandon’s administration has attempted to stop cell service from happening. I don’t think they will succeed.
I use Starlink at my cabin property and is way faster then DSL was. I have yet to have an outage. The antennae is heated for cold climates. We had a big snow year last year and we had no problems.
I wonder what he will come up with next.
Finally, in the beginning, almost ALL of his wealth could be accounted for through federal subsidies but now his companies are actually making a lot of money, which he is mostly plowing back into the companies. I admire what has has achieved.
The EVs and Powerwalls are a total Waste and all due to government manipulation of the automotive market and electrical grid systems, niches that Musk exploited. The other ventures are actually a benefit to “mankind” in my opinion.
I read where Musk has given up on the boring machine.
As a self-respecting sceptic, I cringe to think how many episodes of “Magic for Humans” I enjoyed before I began to think, “Hmmm. Maybe not.” Perhaps the skit where he pulled a blender and coffee maker (replete with a pot of hot coffee) out of his daypack to the “surprise” of a pair of “passersby.”
Global warming scams are rife with their paid actors and green screens, camera cut-aways and elaborate set-ups. They are a con, meant to deceive viewers and score a profit. I would not call the show a hoax. A con makes money.
The problem is that we want to believe… in a sure-handed government fighting a deadly virus (tens of trillions of dollars scammed); in a one-drop blood test capable of diagnosing dozens of diseases (billions); in health care for all (trillions); in energy, health care and telecom companies with no debt and sky-is-the-limit profit potentials.
Thanks to Anthony for continuing the discourse. And to Steve McIntyre for his recent flurry of articles on Jacoby, Mann. And D’Arrigo, who claimed, “You have to pick some cherries to make a cherry pie.”
“UPDATE: Read more about the Trevor Milton verdict here. Judge Ramos stated: “The law does not grant a pass for good intentions. It is decidedly the obligation of business executives who are seeking to have the public purchase their stock to speak the truth.”
I’m glad to see Milton got what he deserved. My question is when are wind and solar going to be held to account for their wild claims?
Did Milton have good intentions?
Do Flim-Flam men have good intentions when they scam people?
It’s a characteristic of the arts /social ‘science’ left never to run a pilot scheme before spending other people’s money