The founder of Nikola, an American electric truck company, was jailed and sentenced to four years in prison for fraud

CTOnews.com, Dec. 19 (Xinhua)-- Trevor Milton, founder of the once-glamorous electric truck company Nikola, finally paid the price for his lies today. He was sentenced to four years in prison, confiscated property and fined $1 million. In addition, after serving his sentence, he will receive three years of supervised release.

Milton was convicted by a jury last year of three counts of securities fraud and wire fraud, but was not sentenced until today. His fraud mainly involves exaggerating the development of the company's electric truck technology, especially the video fraud of a hydrogen-fueled truck called "One". In the video, the truck appears to be driving, but it is actually just taxiing down the slope.

Milton's lies are not limited to this video, he misled the public into thinking that Nikolai's technology had made a major breakthrough through a series of false statements, which attracted many retail investors to buy shares after Nikolai went public through SPAC in 2020, driving the share price to soar and once propelling Milton to the throne of paper billionaires.

However, the lie empire was eventually exposed by a report by short seller Heinderburg Research (Hindenburg Research), which exposed Nikolai's problems, led to Milton's disappointment, and the company was fined $125 million by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Prosecutors had asked for Milton to be sentenced to 11 years in prison, with a maximum sentence of 60 years. They say retail investors lost $660 million as Nikolai's share price plummeted from a peak of $80 a share to below $1 a share (CTOnews.com Note: currently about 4.706 billion yuan).