Nikola founder Trevor Milton sentenced 4 years for misleading investors

Trevor Milton, the founder of electric truckmaker Nikola, has been sentenced Monday to four years in prison after a jury last year found him guilty of misleading investors about his company’s technology, according to reports.

Milton, 41, was convicted in October 2022 on one count of securities fraud and two counts of wire fraud, according to Reuters. 

The news agency reported that federal prosecutors in New York City said Milton duped investors by stating his company built its own truck from the “ground up” and developed its own batteries, despite knowing it was buying them instead, among other claims. 

Milton had made the statements on social media and in television and podcast interviews as the company was joining others in going public through special purpose acquisition vehicles, otherwise known as SPACs.

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He then resigned from Nikola in 2020. 

Prosecutors last week urged U.S. District Judge Edgar Ramos to sentence Milton to around 11 years in prison, according to Reuters, which is about the same sentence disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes received for duping investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars on false promises that she had developed technology that would revolutionize health care. 

Milton’s attorneys told the judge in a filing in November that “[u]nlike Holmes, Trevor never put Nikola’s customers at risk, whereas Holmes touted and used blood-testing technology that she knew to be unreliable, thus putting human beings at medical risk,” according to the Associated Press. 

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“I did not intend to harm anyone and I did not commit those crimes levied against me,” Milton reportedly said Monday during his sentencing hearing. 

After he learned of his sentence, Ramos told Milton, “As difficult as it may be for you or your family to hear, I believe the jury got it right,” according to Reuters. 

In 2021, Nikola also agreed to pay $125 million to settle civil charges brought against the company by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the news agency added. 

FOX Business’ Breck Dumas contributed to this report.