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　　Just two years ago, he was regarded as the hottest upstart in the United States, and was hailed by the media as "Musk's second." The new energy vehicle company he founded is regarded as a future competitor of Tesla. Its market value once surpassed that of the century-old car company Ford Motor, and his personal assets exceeded 8 billion US dollars. Now, two years later, his public image has turned into a notorious liar. Not only was he kicked out of the company he founded, but he also faced a lengthy jail term for fraud.

　　Convicted of Fraud Can't Escape Jail

　　After five hours of court arguments, a federal jury in New York reached unanimous verdict on Friday: Treveor Milton, founder of new energy vehicle Nikola, has three counts of four charges Convicted, including one count of securities fraud and two counts of wire fraud. Another charge of securities fraud was not convicted.

　　According to the American judicial system, the jury is responsible for the conviction and the judge is responsible for the sentencing. Milton's specific sentence will be officially announced on January 27 next year, and each charge he was convicted of is a maximum sentence of 20 years. Although Milton will not necessarily be sentenced to the top, but there is no escape from prison.

　　As the jury verdict was read out in court, Milton, 40, shook his head and looked at his family in the gallery. The once-prosperous, billionaire "Second Musk" is now as infamous as Elizabeth Holmes. What awaits them in the future is a long prison time.

　　Holmes is the founder of Theranos, a blood testing company in Silicon Valley. He is reputed as "Jobs No. 2" because of the magical technology of "blood testing for all diseases", and the company's valuation once reached 9 billion US dollars. But with the scam being exposed, Theranos is now bankrupt, and Holmes has been convicted of multiple fraud charges and will be sentenced next month. Journalist John Carreyou, who debunked her deception, wrote the scandal into a book called Bad Blood.

　　Similar to Holmes, Milton also used lies one by one to falsely promote his products and technologies, blowing up a "hydrogen energy car Tesla" bubble, defrauding investors' trust, and ultimately costing them all No return. The mature products and technologies he showed to the outside world were just half-finished products in the research and development process.

　　The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Manhattan, Damian Williams, accused Milton in court of many of Milton's false statements on social media and in public. "Milton lied time and time again to Nikola's investors. This is fraud," prosecutors said.

　　Even Nikola, the company he founded, is eager to break away from Milton. Following Milton's conviction, a Nikola spokesman said the company was pleased to see this page finally come to an end and would focus on executing its current business strategy in the future. Nikola’s current market value is only $1 billion. They are still cooperating with the U.S. government’s related investigations and have agreed to pay $125 million to settle securities fraud allegations with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

　　Witnesses who came forward to testify against Milton's fraud also included Nikola's mid-level and high-level employees and investors. Several Nikola executives testified that they had been concerned about Milton's public remarks because of the many inaccuracies. Nikola CEO Mark Russell told the court that executives even changed his Twitter account password at one point to silence Milton on social media.

Milton walks into court awaiting sentencing

　　Follow Musk to be Tesla's second

　　Before the hoax and lies were exposed, Milton had been carefully crafting his public image as "Musk's second." He never hides his imitation of Musk. His life trajectory, entrepreneurial direction, product positioning, and marketing style can clearly see the shadow of Musk and Tesla. Even his name is imitating Tesla.

　　Like Musk, he likes to bask in social media, brazenly promoting his hydrogen-powered dreams and products, in a confident (or arrogant) style. Also similar to Musk, Nikola executives even forcibly changed his Twitter password at one point in order to prevent his irresponsible public remarks.

　　Milton also dropped out of college to start his own business. He has successively founded a number of companies, sold alarms, and started a car-selling website. At the age of 28, he turned his attention to new energy vehicles and started a natural gas truck company, which he sold for $100 million a few years later. Wealth freedom has been achieved just after the thirties.

　　In 2014, the 32-year-old Milton officially founded Nikola Motor Company with the ambition to be the "Tesla of the truck world". As we all know, Tesla's name comes from the surname of scientist Nikola Tesla, and Milton used Tesla's name Nikola to name his new energy car company.

　　The entrepreneurial trajectory he chose also bears the shadow of Tesla. Tesla's products are from sports cars to sedans, while Nikola cuts in from the truck field. Milton wants to be the "Tesla of trucks." But compared with Tesla, Nikola has chosen a different entry into the market, doing electric and hydrogen-fueled trucks. Tesla also released an electric semi truck in 2017, but deliveries only started recently.

　　In fact, Milton wanted to do electric heavy trucks when he started his business, but then turned his focus to hydrogen fuel vehicles. While his idol Musk publicly ridiculed the idea of a hydrogen-fueled car as silly, Milton sees it as the car of the future. The biggest advantage of hydrogen fuel vehicles is that they can fill up the "cylinder" as quickly as refueling, instead of waiting slowly for charging.

　　Hydrogen energy ecological market value exceeds Ford

　　Milton presented the market, investors and the public with an almost perfect hydrogen mobility dream. Nikola is buying land in Arizona while building a car assembly plant and a hydrogen production plant, with plans to bring the price of hydrogen energy down to near gasoline levels in a few years.

　　In April 2019, Nikola officially released the 9-ton Class 8 (cargo over 15 tons) hydrogen-fueled semi-trailer Nicola One (which debuted in 2016), with a power of 1,000 horsepower, 18-wheel heavy-duty trucks, and a battery life of up to 750 miles, with deliveries scheduled to begin in 2021. Compared with Tesla's electric heavy-duty truck Semi, Nikola's hydrogen-fueled heavy-duty truck has many technical advantages, at least in terms of 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 give up diesel heavy trucks, Milton also designed a subversive business model for Nikola, which will be the first in the industry to introduce "all-inclusive" leasing, including vehicle, service, maintenance and fuel costs, making long-term The full life cycle cost is the same as or even lower than that of diesel models.

　　This means that customers only need to pay for use, rather than buying the entire heavy truck, which greatly reduces companies' doubts about the prospect of new energy vehicles. According to Milton before the listing, Nicola One's service order value has exceeded 10 billion US dollars. American beer giant Anherser-Busch alone has 800 pre-orders for the big truck, and they only pre-ordered 40 Tesla Semis. Nikola expects sales to reach $3.2 billion in 2024.

　　Nikola's major technology partners announced include the Netherlands (CHN Industrial, a subsidiary of Iveco), Germany's Bosch (Bosch), the United States' Meritor (Meritor), the United States' precision steel company Worthington, South Korea's solar solutions Supplier Hanwha, Norwegian water electrolysis hydrogen production solution supplier Nel, etc. Some of these companies were also investors in Nikola’s $500 million Series D round in 2019, with Case New Industries investing $250 million.

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

　　On June 9, 2020, the intraday market value of Nikola’s shares reached $34 billion, surpassing the century-old car companies Ford Motor and Fiat Chrysler (now renamed Stellantis). Milton, who owns a quarter of Nikola's shares, is worth more than $8 billion. "We're going to crush the Ford F-150," Milton said proudly.

　　In September 2020, Nikola announced a pickup truck partnership agreement with General Motors. Milton said that GM will cooperate with Nikola to produce electric pickup trucks, Nikola will provide 70% of the technology, and GM will obtain an 11% stake in Nikola. The news sent Nikola shares soaring 40% again.

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　　Many lies have been exposed in one place

　　Whereas Musk’s richest man’s arrogance was built on Tesla’s solid technology, Milton built a bubble with bragging and lies. Nikola's hydrogen-powered dream bubble was quickly burst, and the stock price plummeted, leaving a trail of chicken feathers.

　　On September 10, 2020, the short-selling company Hindenburg Research released a 67-page research report, accusing Milton of falsely promoting Nikola for several years and continuing to falsify core technical parameters and product development progress. Hindenburg Research is based on anonymous revelations from an insider at Nikola. The short report debunks Milton's fraud scandal.

　　Milton was quick to dismiss the short-selling report at first, promising to confront the allegations and announcing that he would sue Hinderburg for defamation. He wrote confidently on Twitter, "Cowards run away, leaders will continue to fight." But in the following trading days, seeing Nikola's stock price falling sharply in a row, more than half of its market value evaporated, Mir However, there was no more text, and he did not dare to respond publicly.

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

　　So, what lies did Milton tell? Nikola previously released a commercial advertisement of a hydrogen-powered heavy truck galloping on desert roads, showing that its semi-trailer products have outstanding performance and mature technology. But in fact, this truck is just a prototype shell car, which cannot be driven at all. It is just dragged up the hill by the truck. This completely fake product advertisement was "created" by Milton himself and published at his request.

　　Milton's lies go far beyond that. Nikola's so-called tens of billions of dollars in orders for heavy-duty trucks are just the ordering intentions of corporate customers, not real order contracts. Nikola's partnership with GM is really just about GM supplying hydrogen batteries to Nikola, and Nikola releasing so-called hydrogen-powered pickups and even facelifted GM trucks. In late November 2020, GM announced it was abandoning its partnership agreement with Nikola after the fraud scandal came to light.

　　There is plenty of evidence that Milton's false propaganda has been reckless. He claims that Nikola can produce hydrogen fuel itself, and the cost can be reduced to $4 per kilogram, only one-third of other hydrogen fuel producers. But Nikola insiders confirmed that the new car company simply does not have the technical capacity to produce hydrogen fuel.

The so-called new pickup is just a facelifted GM product

　　One place chicken feathers faces sexual assault charges

　　After many lies were exposed, on September 20, 2020, Milton resigned as executive chairman of Nikola. According to his departure agreement with Nikola, Milton is not allowed to comment on Nikola on social media or any other online platform without Nikola's permission. On September 22, news on Twitter that Milton was arrested by the FBI at the Arizona airport also triggered follow-up reports from the media. While the news was not true, it once again triggered a collapse in the confidence of Nikola investors. Milton has since shut down his social media accounts.

　　September 2020 was a nightmare month for Milton. In addition to the fraud scandal, he faces allegations of sexual assault by several women, including his own cousin. Although Milton has denied these sexual assault scandals, his public image has been completely destroyed, and he will face lawsuits in the future.

　　First, Milton's cousin accused him of sexually assaulting him in 1999. After the sexual assault in 1999, Milton's cousin, who was only 15 years old, reported the incident to the local police station and informed family members, but Milton was not charged. That same month, another woman accused Milton of sexually assaulting her 15-year-old in 2004, accusing him of being obsessed with teenage girls. The allegation is still under investigation.

　　Come forward to testify against Milton's fraud and even the property seller who sold him. In 2019, Milton spent $32.5 million to purchase a huge estate of more than 2,000 hectares in Utah, fulfilling his Westworld dream and setting a Utah housing transaction record.

　　However, the estate's seller testified that Milton described Nikola's future hydrogen energy vision to him and induced him to accept the sale of the estate with Nikola's unlisted stock. As the Nikola scam was exposed, the stock price fell sharply, and the seller suffered heavy losses.

　　As the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Williams said in court, Milton has publicly stated that his goal is to become the top 100 richest person on the Forbes wealth list, and he is driven by greed and profit to deceive investors again and again .

　　"Milton is a con man (Con Man). He lied to investors and defrauded them of their money. Let Milton's case be a warning to anyone who is trying to defraud investors for their money. A con man will not (It won't end well)"