Nikola motors was supposed to be the company that would revolutionize transportation. The founder trevor milton raised billions of dollars from top tier banks and landed a 2 billion partnership with general motors milton even caught the eyes of basketball player. Shaquille o'neal, as one of the top 100 richest people in the world trevor milton had more money than you can imagine. However, after years of promises and deceitful lies, nikola motors became a scam that was too big to survive.

What was originally supposed to be a simple pump and dump ended up becoming one of the largest scams in u.s history. Trevor milton wasn't just part of the hydrogen and electric vehicle revolution. He represented the future of the world with breakthrough claims of record low hydrogen prices in the battery. That would surpass tesla.

So how did trevor milton seemingly deceive the entire financial world? This is the story of how milton went from a college dropout to the founder of a 34 billion dollar fraud. Look at that looks like a fighter pilot. Yet look at that thing right. There billionaire tycoon, who promised to revolutionize the trucking industry with electric vehicles now indicted for fraud, federal charges will be filed today against trevor milton the founder of the electric truck company nicola is being charged in an alleged scheme to defraud his investors in 2008.

Trevor milton was an average college student at utah valley university little did he know that he would become one of the biggest fraudsters in modern history milton never read any books and frequently went to parties all of a sudden. After just one semester of college, he dropped out in order to start his own company, st george security and alarm. It didn't take long for milton's, first business to grow after over promising on several metrics. He sold the alarm company for almost two million dollars.

Several months later, the buyer of milton's alarm company found out that the company was practically worthless, uh within a few within a few uh within about a year or two. I had sold it for almost two million dollars and i thought i was like on top of the world. You know i was like. Oh i'm like expert at this thing.

This was the first time that milton felt the exhilarating thrill of scamming people often say that when it comes to scamming once you start, you can't stop several lies and exaggerations already made milton millions, and he recognized the potential. The next decade would mark the start of a roller coaster, from milton from almost landing in jail multiple times to becoming an overnight billionaire. After selling the alarm business milton proceeded to create upillar.com a website that allowed users to check out from multiple websites at once. According to an interview from forbes milton claims that u-pillar was a next amazon milton even claims that the website had too much traffic to handle in that it had over 80 million users per month.

However, as quickly as u-pillar rose, the company also fell. Potential investors quickly saw through milton's scam and did not want to be involved. As a result, the house of cards fell and milton ran out of money. So how did this next amazon with massive traffic seemingly go bankrupt in short, u-pillar, never had much traffic in the first place.

According to a former u-pillar employee traffic on the site was incredibly low. This was a major fail for milton, but he remains confident in his abilities with u-pillar. It was easy for people to see through his vaporware claims, but other sectors had some promising potential for scammers in november of 2009, milton founded, d-hybrid, a natural gas trucking company with disruptive potential, the hybrid allowed diesel trucks to run on natural gas through compressed natural gas Conversion technology from a trucking company's perspective, the transition to natural gas was a no-brainer. Diesel fuel usually costs four dollars per gallon, whereas natural gas only costs roughly a dollar and twenty seven to two dollars per gallon.

By replacing seventy percent of the diesel engine with natural gas, the hybrid promised to be able to cut fuel costs by 38. Swift's transportation saw the potential and invested 2 million dollars for 9 of the hybrid. In addition, swift entered an agreement with d hybrid to convert up to 10 trucks to run on natural gas. Despite being initially impressed, it didn't take long for swift to realize that d hybrid was a fraud.

D, hybrid failed to meet swift's agreement to convert 10 diesel fuel trucks to natural gas furious about milton's deceptive lies: swift filed a lawsuit against the hybrid. It was at this moment that milton knew he had to exit the business, so he decided to sell d hybrid. Just like how he did with saint jordan's security and alarm, by exaggerating on several metrics milton, went into negotiations to sell dehydrate to sustainable power group once again, trevor milton miserably failed. After just one month, sustainable power group backed out of negotiations and sued, the hybrid for significant misinterpretations milton hit rock bottom.

He had no future prospects and also had two major lawsuits filed against him. A typical scammer would give up, but milton was resilient with two lawsuits under his belt milton created a new shell company named d hybrid systems. By doing this milton, was able to conceal any potential fraudulent issues by not having to disclose many of the problems with dehybrid. Finally, after months of hard work milton managed to sell dehybride to worthington industries for 15.9 million dollars, the sale of d hybrid was a narrow escape from two treacherous lawsuits, and although 15.9 million dollars was a lot, it wasn't enough for milton.

He wanted to be filthy. Rich to do this, he started the ultimate transportation company in 2014. Tesla motors was a driving business that showed the world that electric vehicles were the future two years prior tesla released the model s a major success that even beat the technology of the largest car manufacturers. The founders of tesla named the company after nikola tesla, seeing this trevor milton obviously wanted to hop on the bandwagon, so he created a company using mr tesla's first name nicola in may of 2016 milton unveiled the future of the trucking industry, a natural gas-powered, semi-truck names.

The nikola one, the pitch for the products seemed incredible. The first five thousand pre-orders for the nikola 1 would receive 5, 000 gallons of natural gas for free. However, the problem was that there wasn't enough hype for the truck in august of 2016 milton decided to change things up. The nikola one was now going to be a hydrogen truck that would be revealed in just four months in milton's own words nicola engineered the holy grail of the trucking industry.

We are not aware of any zero missing truck in the world that can haul eighty thousand pounds more than one thousand miles and do it without stopping. Obviously such breakthrough technology would take years to be developed instead of just four months milton repaired, a non-working truck with the word hydrogen written on the side and in order to power the interior screen, he used a wire that extended below the stage in the trucking world. This is called a pusher because the truck literally has to be pushed in order to move, of course, milton couldn't let anyone know he was revealing. A pusher you're gon na see that this is a real truck.

This is not a pusher you'll, see it up on the screens, are fully functioning screens, so we're gon na try to keep people from driving off, but this thing fully functions and works, which is really incredible. Um. This isn't just a pusher like a lot of vehicles that they unveil or just vehicles that don't actually function. There's a fully functioning uh.

You know vehicle, which is really incredible. You can go through you. Can you know we can change out a pretty much everything we want all the temperatures. I mean this is a fully functioning vehicle.

It's not just a it's, not just a pusher, that's what they call the in the automotive world, the vehicle that they just push and it doesn't move the nikla one was great for boosting nikola's valuation, but it wasn't quite enough milton needed to make it appear as If nikola represented the future in 2017, he released a nikola all-electric utility vehicle named nzt. No, not that nzt. That's right! The nikola nzt the vehicle was quickly topped by milton's biggest threat. Elon musk in december of 2017 elon had an exciting announcement to make he officially unveiled a tesla semi, a groundbreaking products that would change the landscape of trucking forever.

The only problem was that the tesla semi made the nikola one, look like a joke and the nikola one wasn't even real, but it didn't end. There milton thought that tesla's semi-truck design was extremely similar to nikola one's design. In fact, tesla was using one of nikola's quote-unquote proprietary patents in his truck design. So why not try to capitalize on that patent after milton contacted tesla about this elon musk was furious and and what we did is we reached out to tesla? So this is where a lot of tesla people does not do you know, investors, don't know this or fans because of the reporting we actually reached out to, and we said, hey guys we want to meet with you please meet with us.

I i want to work with you. I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to i'm we're in this together. You know, you know you know, but the most important thing is we just don't want to use our patents or, if you do, we want to work with you, so you can do it the right way and essentially their response was piss off, and that was the That was a really hard thing for us, because their response was, it was at first, they wouldn't even respond.

Then. Finally, we had to get aggressive with them and then they just said we don't give. You know screw you like, we don't care. What are you going to do? You know? What are you going to do in may of 2018 milton sued tesla for using six of nikola's patents? Tesla replied by saying it's patently obvious.

There is no merit to this lawsuit. We are not commenting because it is in the courts. The lawsuits speak for itself. During this time, investors became skeptical on the progress on the nikola 1 and wanted to see the truck running milton was frustrated.

The nikola one was a disaster and the truck couldn't even move to solve this issue. He had an idea: why not roll the truck down a hill and that's exactly what trevor milton did by shifting the camera angle on a rolling truck milton made. It seem like the nikola 1 was actually going uphill. At certain times.

A former nikola employee stated, i asked nicholas chief engineer kevin how it was going to work, and he said they would tow it to the top of a super low grade hill and let it roll in march of 2019 milton decided that it was time to cash Out and sold 70 million dollars worth of nikola stock with this money in hand milton was ready to be filthy rich seven months later, he purchased the most expensive mansion in utah for 32.5 million dollars. The mansion included many thrilling activities, including a private trail for atvs, horseback riding fishing, private movie screening and over 1900 acres for exploring not only that, but the mansion had 16 800 square feet of property, eight bedrooms and nine bathrooms. This luxurious spending was already a stretch for a pre-revenue company, but milton still wanted more in order to initiate more investor hype milton released, several new vehicles in 2019 nikola unveiled an electric jet ski named, the wav, a military vehicle named rekkles, a non-existent hydrogen fueling station. A hydrogen electric truck named the nikola ii and an electric truck named the nikola tray.

This new portfolio of vehicles was touted as the future of transportation, but it didn't have any legitimacy yet as a result, milton locked in a contract for 800 trucks with bud light beer. At this point, you might think that milton had enough of making false breakthrough claims, but like every scammer, he still craved for more in november of 2019 trevor milton unveiled nikola's ultimate secret sauce. An in-house battery milton claims that their battery had an energy density two times greater than tesla's in trevor's own words, you're talking 600 plus mile range in a model 3 tesla you're, talking 50 less cost than lithium ion you're talking mass adoption of zero emission vehicles could Be worth hundreds of billions, if owned by one company, that we decided to share with the competition for the greater good a twitter user asked milton. Is it actually real, though, or is it another joi scientific style breakthrough milton responded? It's real i've seen it with my own eyes and watched them cycle with such incredible batteries.

Nikola was set to revolutionize the electric vehicle landscape. The only problem was that the company wasn't public on the stock exchange, welcome to nikola in phoenix arizona. Let's get you guys inside and i'll show you around in march of 2020, nikola motors reported that it was going public on a stock exchange via spac or a special purpose acquisition company. Essentially an spac uses a shell company to acquire a stake in another private company.

This allows the private company to get away with meeting the typical requirements for going public. An acquisition company named vecto iq, acquired a stake in nikola motors, which essentially took nikola public. The valuation of nikola stock quickly took off and everyone that was initially a nikola was now filthy. Rich milton began buying everything that money could buy surfing at a vacation home with his friends, buying five private jets donating to political candidates and much more top executives at banks bought into the scam that trevor milton created and loaded into nikola stock.

Retail investors were hyped about the company. Even the country's largest pension fund bought into nicola trevor's ego was through the roof and, as a result, he even went on to claim that he was beating elon musk there's a lot of good about what you know. What tesla's done in the past to teach people that that electric vehicles can work, but nikola is the pioneer in heavy duty, trucking and tesla's just really just following in our footsteps and a lot of them. You know a lot of them are uh, really believe that elon is like this, this great person that can do anything and it's when they see someone else being able to actually beat him at what he's doing they hate that we only focus on markets that actually Create revenue in in any economy - and so i it is a huge picture - there's no doubt there's very few people that can out elon in this world and that and i'm one of them.

There were major celebrations following niklas stock's exponential rise trevor milton hosted parties with his friends, while the stock soared to a peak valuation of 34 billion dollars, their suspicious activity caused several retail investors to become skeptical with myself included in june of 2020. I was the first youtuber to call out the company. I published a detailed video on why i thought nikola motors was a fraud back when i published the video. My opinion was definitely a contrarian stance and a bold move to make many viewers thought.

I was completely crazy and others thought i was going to be sued for defamation. Despite most people thinking, i was wrong. It was blatantly obvious to me that nikola was a scam. However, who could blame them at the same time that i published the video nikola share price shot through the roof? Everybody's eyes were on the exponential stock price and not on the business itself.

Many top influencers, such as nba player, shaquille o'neal, fell for the scam as well and shamelessly promoted the company. On september, 8, 2020 general motors announced that it would be partnering with nicola to manufacture a hydrogen electric pickup truck the nikola badger. Everyone thought that the badger was going to be revolutionary. On the day of the announcement.

Nikola stock rose over 45 percent and gm stock also rose 9. Gm ceo, mary barra went on to cmbc to say that gm had a lot of chemistry with nikola. As we started to talk, we realized we shared a common uh vision of the world of creating an all-electric feature. The teams have already begun discussions and i there's there's really good chemistry between the technical teams, so we couldn't be more excited about working with nicola it all looked great, but a closer look showed that the partnership marked the end of nicola instead of using nicola's breakthrough.

Hydrogen and electric technology gm was using its own fuel cells and batteries. You know, in addition to all the technology that we're bringing in the value from both an ultim and a hydrotech technology perspective. There also, then, is uh we'll be doing the manufacturing and validation and engineering. So all of that comes together and again it's for the badger, but it's also for the fieldset fuel cell technology for the nikolai products in the class 7 and 8 truck business.

This confirms that nikola had no proprietary technology. If nikla had the batteries and fuel cells that milton promised, then why would nikola ever use gm's horrible technology? Two days following the announcement, a research firm named hindenburg research unveiled all of milton's darkest secrets. The report included recorded phone calls text messages, private emails and photographs all confirming that nikola was a fraud. Just four days later, the sec announced that it would investigate hindenburg's claims.

The scam was too big to continue one week after the sec's investigation trevor milton officially resigned from nikola motors, the remaining nikola employees worked hard to save the sinking ship. Copyright strikes were given to several influencers on youtube and i personally received a privacy complaint from nikola motors. Initially nikola was successful and several channels were on the way to be taken down. However, with more attention on nikola, the influencers prevailed and youtube took down nikola's complaints, the prospects of nikola motors and trevor milton have both fizzled out into nothing shortly after milton's resignation, general motors canceled, its 2 billion investment in nikola motors.

In addition, milton's 2 billion lawsuit against tesla was completely exposed by tesla milton claims that he invented the design for the nikola one in his basement. But further research from tesla revealed that he actually just purchased it from someone else. On july 29th 2021, the u.s charged trevor milton with two counts of securities fraud and one count of wire fraud. Each criminal count carries a maximum of 20 to 25 years of prison.

My name is audrey strauss. I am the united states attorney for the southern district of new york. Today we announced charges against trevor milton former ceo and executive chair of nikola corporation. We charge that milton engaged in a scheme to enrich himself by making false and misleading statements to retail investors about the development of products and technology at nikola corporation it sounds like justice is being served.

However, we can't call it a victory, yet hey mark russell kim brady. I have some very important guests for you guys today, exciting day. You might not believe this, but trevor milton may not go to jail, milton pleaded, not guilty to all counts of fraud, and he is already out of jail after paying a 100 million dollar bail, even with the hefty fine of 100 million dollars. Milton still has plenty of money to spare, as he currently has a net worth of 1.1 billion dollars.

Not surprisingly, milton has a superstar legal team that will help him avoid all charges against him. One of milton's lawyers is mark mccassie, a defense lawyer who represented donald trump and many top political leaders and corporate executives. Mukassi was appointed as a judge by ronald reagan where he worked for 19 years. So he knows everything about the law.

Mccassia is literally the lebron james of law, and, if you don't believe me, his track record speaks for itself in his last three federal trials, whose charges range from causing someone else to leave the world to securities fraud. Not only that, but over the past four years not a single one of makassi's clients has been sentenced to a single day of prison in an email. Mccassie stated trevor is innocent. There was no fraud, we're ready to fight this case at trial.

In my opinion, because of his defense team, there is a decent chance. Trevor won't go to jail for long and he might not go at all. Trevor milton has the best lawyers in the world and he wouldn't plead not guilty unless if he thought that he could win the case at trial, not only that, but with 1.1 billion dollars to spare milton is far from being done in the end, those with enough Money can escape the law by having the best lawyers in town. The story of trevor milton is not just a story of deception and lies.

His life story has served as an example of how the filthy rich can get away with plenty of sketchy activities. No matter what you think of milton, he is likely still having fun in his private jet horse riding at his mansion, watching movies in a private theater and spending recklessly welcome to the life of a billionaire scammer. I got a couple comments today and i'm addressed just for fun: uh. First, one trevor you're a fraud.

Okay sounds good man, i guess all of our filings and the biggest investors in the world. Uh must agree with you because they invested uh in nicola and they've. Seen our book and we've got 900 almost 900 million dollars in cash in our account right now. That's a lot of money come on.