After being investigated by U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Nikola Motors has faced lots of scrutiny by the public. Trevor Milton the former CEO literally admitted that the Nikola One prototype could not run on its own propulsion. Even though, this the automaker still trades at a valuation of over seven billion dollars. Today, Nikola's lives are being spearheaded by not Trevor Milton, which as many of you know left Nikola, but Mark Russell who is the current CEO. This billion dollar fraud is now strategically playing its moves to scam investors while not breaking the rules set by the SEC. Mark Russell, the CEO, Kim Brady, the Chief Financial Officer, and Britton Worthen, the Chief Legal Officer, are putting ridiculous but calculated statements to keep the evaluation at a high level so that they can all exit at once. Lets expose Nikola's last deceptive move and how Nikola's team will successfully exit this pump and dump within the next few weeks.
Because of the SEC investigation, Nikola's team is scrambling to cover up any signs of fraud this includes showing full transparency which has failed miserably for their team. When showcasing the Nikola II prototype to CNBC, the truck failed to start up. The transparency comes only after Nikola team received subpoenas from the department of justice and the SEC, first on September 14th.
Five of Nikola officers received SEC subpoenas and a week later three more subpoenas were given out on September 30th, Nikola directors then received SEC subpoenas. In short, legal trouble is about to come and because of this Nikola team has to scramble to run their operations normally.
Back on July 24, 2020, Mark Russell and Trevor Milton unveiled their "groundbreaking" factory. Milton claims that Nikola would be the first company to release an electric semi truck with over 300 miles of range before Tesla. Despite starting over three months ago, Nikola factory is still non-existent yet with the SEC scrutinizing the automaker, Mark Russell had no choice but to begin constructing the factory. After over 110 days Nikola still only has tractors steaming the dirt. Keep in mind that Trevor Milton stated that this factory would begin production in 12 months from construction.
It's been quite a long time and Nikola is still "prepping" all the field. The current tractors seem to just be show cars to make it seem like Nikola operations are running normally, and that this is a legit company. Tractors are like the least important thing when it comes to factory prepping. Moving everything, digging for utilities, all that good stuff are the least important things, but a lot of people were wondering where they were. Of course, with all of these ongoing investigations Nikola has been spending quite a large sum on legal matters.
During Nikola's Q3 conference call, full disclosure was required for the current SEC investigation. One of these disclosures included the facts that Nikola spent 5.2 million dollars in regulatory and legal expenses following the Hindenburg's report, which represents legal advisory and other professional service fees incurred in connection with the short sale.
Throughout this investigation, we are seeing many victims of Trevor Milton step up with the most notable one being Glen Pilz, Nevada businessman. Pilz was the man who was scammed by Milton back in 2006 when Milton created a company named St. George Security and Alarm after dropping out of Utah state valley university. Glen Pilz took out every single dollar out of his 401k savings account to purchase St. George Security and Alarm. He finalized his sale with Milton, who told Pilz to call him if he needed anything. The insulation equipment included in the contracts did not even exist. Additionally customers of the business were refunding their orders, leading to ten thousand dollars in chargebacks. Expenses were also not revealed, such as the fact that the company had to pay one employee's rent. When Pilz later called Milton, Milton would not respond and eventually in 2008 Pilz gave Milton the business back because of how much a disaster it was.
In addition to Glen Pilz, five other investors also fell in the Trevor Milton scams which includes four different companies. In total, over 455 thousand dollars were scammed just out of those six investors. Nikola scam is much larger than those scams combined, but keep in mind that these were the people who took out their 401k savings to purchase Milton's businesses.
Now, Nikola is focusing on a side project that Milton created: the Nikola Tre. Mark Russell has been making ambitious timelines that are extremely questionable as he claimed that the nuclear trade would start production in 2021. While these claims may be false, Nikola now has a lawyer to back up any possible fraud allegations.
In response to Trevor Milton's breakthrough battery technology, Mark Russell has come up with new groundbreaking technology that isn't actually revolutionary. Nikola's "proprietary" technology, now comes from how they place the batteries in their chamber truck. In other words, Nikola's proprietary tech could literally be made by a five-year-old kid stacking batteries on top of one another. Essentially they admitted that Nikola's only proprietary technology is their design which they bought from a third-party.
To top it off, Nikola's off-road NZT vehicle and watercraft have been proven to be non-existent when Nikola removed them from their website. Removing these vehicles is essentially admitting that they never even existed. The removal of these vehicles makes it clear that the mission of Mark Russell is not for retail investors like you and me anymore.
As Trevor Milton admitted before, The badger, Off-road vehicle, and Watercraft were unveiled to attract all the Robinhood investors. The dissipation of these makes it clear that Nikola's team is about to get away with billions of dollars.