The following article is the text that I use for the Great Business Stories podcast on this topic. To listen to the podcast, click on this link or alternatively listen to Great Business Stories on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Trevor Milton and his company Nikola the truck manufacturer was supposed to revolutionise the trucking sector with battery-electric, fuel-cell electric vehicles, and it turned out to be a bit of a scam hyped by Milton who as we shall see had a track record of to put it nicely being economical with the truth. This guy seemed to just scam his way through life but in doing so managed to build a company worth over $30 billion, and at it’s height milton himself had a net worth of $8 billion, he built partnerships with some of the biggest companies in the auto motive industry, got orders for thousands of trucks - all achieved based based on Milton’s promises, hype and outright deceit. I was familiar with this story because a few years ago I'd listened to the excellent podcast series on it called bad bets and if you want a deeper dive into this story, then I really recommend that podcast. I decided to go back to the story is because it’s a fantastic story but also because Milton was back in the news over the last few weeks for reasons that we get into near the end- enjoy
The Reinvention of Trevor Milton: A Decade of Startups, Salesmanship, and Smoke (1981–2014)
Trevor Milton was born in 1982, raised in Utah, and supposedly shaped by the values of the Latter-day Saints church—faith, resilience, and community. He was one of five children in a family that rarely stayed still, moving from Layton to Las Vegas, and eventually settling on a rural farm in Utah when Trevor was eight. His mother, Sally, was battling cancer and she died when Trevor was 15.
He tried college at Utah Valley State in 2003, but it didn’t stick. He lasted one semester. As one acquaintance later put it, “he wasn’t much for book learning.”
He went on an LDS mission to Brazil, picked up Portuguese, and polished his door-to-door pitch game—an asset he’d rely on again and again.
In 2004, at just 21, Milton launched his first company: St. George Security & Alarm. He moved to southern Utah, started selling alarm systems door-to-door, and quickly built a team. He loved telling people later that he sold the company “for over $1 million.” That wasn’t true. The real number? Around $300,000. His partner only saw $100,000. According to Glen Pilz, who bought the business, Milton had wildly overstated its value—citing phantom contracts and collecting advance payments from customers that never made it to the new owner. “Things that were baked in as part of the value of the business we had bought weren’t really there,” Pilz said. The employees? Many of them weren’t even licensed to sell security systems. Shoddy, shady, a glimpse of things to come
By 2009, Milton had a bit of cash and was ready to pivot. He launched uPillar.com—a Craigslist-style site focused on cars— He hyped it hard.
In one interview, he claimed the site pulled in “over 80 million online visitors per month.” In reality, a hundred of thousands.
The car site flopped, but that didn’t stop Milton. He pivoted again, this time into clean tech. He launched dHybrid in 2010—a company that retrofitted diesel trucks to run on compressed natural gas. He even drove a prototype from Utah to Phoenix to woo Swift Transportation. The stunt worked. Swift signed a deal worth up to $16 million. They paid $2 million upfront. But by the end of the contract, only five trucks had been retrofitted, and none hit the performance metrics Milton had promised. Swift sued in 2012, accusing dHybrid of misrepresenting its technology and defaulting on a $322,000 loan. Milton countersued, bizarrely claiming Swift had stolen his tech and taken advantage of a “young, unsuspecting entrepreneur.” Both lawsuits were eventually dropped, but we can see a pattern here- lots of hype, very little substance and Milton brazenly fighting his corner.
In 2012, he came close to an exit. Sustainable Power Group (sPower) in Salt Lake City agreed to buy dHybrid for $3 million. But during due diligence, they discovered the same problems Swift had: Milton’s tech didn’t work. The deal collapsed. sPower sued, saying Milton misrepresented emissions data and system performance. That case was also dropped, but by late 2012, dHybrid was toast.
Rather than throw in the towel, Milton rebranded. In October 2012, his father quietly registered dHybrid Systems LLC. Same name, same office, same sign. The old business, now riddled with lawsuits, was technically gone.
By 2014, he landed a buyer: Worthington Industries. They bought 80% of dHybrid Systems. The acquisition price was modest—maybe a few million—but it let Milton cash out He exited with money, and with a narrative that sounded clean on paper: sold a security company, then a tech company.
Inside Worthington, though, the tech didn’t hold up. Within a year, the company wrote down $2.3 million, acknowledging they’d overpaid. The systems didn’t deliver.
Nikola’s Hydrogen Hustle: The Years Trevor Milton Made It All Look Real (2015–2019)
In 2015, borrowing Tesla’s namesake. Milton set up Nikola and planting a flag in the same territory as Elon Musk: clean transportation. Except Milton wasn’t going after sedans. He wanted to upend the $700 billion U.S. trucking industry with hydrogen fuel-cell technology. Zero emissions, zero compromise. That was the pitch. And from 2015 to 2019, Milton spun that vision into a multibillion-dollar promise that, for a while, looked bulletproof.
The Birth of Nikola—and the First Big Claim
Milton launched Nikola from a basement in Salt Lake City with $2 million in seed funding from Worthington, the company who had just bought his old company—no functioning product, just a pitch. He leaned into his roots: this was his pitch: “I grew up driving diesel trucks… I got more and more mad every time I’d go out running and see the gray soot everywhere… Finally, I just did it,” he said, explaining why he started Nikola.
From the start, Nikola was more than a truck—it was an ecosystem. Hydrogen fuel, maintenance, insurance, and the truck itself, all bundled into a fixed lease rate of 90¢ per mile for a million miles. The specs? Absurdly ambitious. A 2,000-horsepower rig with up to 1,200 miles of range, recharged in 15 minutes.
Smoke, Mirrors, and the Nikola One Reveal
In December 2016, Milton unveiled the Nikola One in Salt Lake City. The event had everything: a glowing white semi, rock music, flashing lights, and Milton on stage declaring, “This thing fully functions and works.” The crowd, filled with investors and trucking execs, erupted.
In reality the truck had no fuel cell. No motors. It couldn’t move on its own. It had been pushed into place and rigged with hidden batteries to light up the screens. Milton would later claim certain parts were removed “for safety reasons,” but in 2016, the message was clear: this was a working hydrogen truck. Internally, some engineers were alarmed. But the gamble worked. Hype soared, preorders poured in, and Milton had made Nikola look real.
Selling the Dream and Partnering Up
In 2017, Milton declared over 7,000 pre-orders worth $2.3 billion. He mocked Tesla on Twitter and projected boundless confidence. To outsiders, Nikola looked like it was flying. The key? Partnerships.
First up: Ryder. The trucking logistics and leasing giant agreed to distribute and service Nikola trucks across its 800+ locations. Then came Bosch. In 2017, the German engineering firm signed on to co-develop fuel cell components—vital tech that Nikola didn’t have the internal muscle to build. The goal: deliveries by 2021.
In 2018, Nikola inked a deal with Nel ASA, a Norwegian hydrogen company. They’d build the electrolyzers for Nikola’s future 700 hydrogen stations. Yes, 700. It was massive. It was expensive. It was entirely theoretical.
In November 2018, South Korea’s Hanwha Group invested $100 million into Nikola, pushing its valuation north of $1 billion. Hanwha made solar panels, so the pitch was tight: solar-generated hydrogen to power zero-emission trucks.
Nikola landed its biggest win yet—Anheuser-Busch committed to buying up to 800 trucks. “We are building to order, not speculation,” Milton boasted. He claimed Nikola had nearly $9 billion in bookings. He also promised 28 hydrogen stations to support the Budweiser fleet.
Nikola’s final masterstroke in 2019 came in September, when CNH Industrial, parent of truck maker Iveco, announced a $250 million investment as lead in Nikola’s $1 billion Series D round. The partnership gave Nikola access to Iveco’s production lines and engineering resources. It was a win-win. CNH got a shot at leapfrogging into fuel-cell trucks. Nikola got credibility and scale.
“This is the moment people stop doubting us,” Milton said. “Few will doubt our ability to commercialize a truck now.”
Publicly, the pressure ratcheted up. Now they had to deliver.
Nikola World 2019 and the “Production Truck”
By 2019, Nikola was headquartered in Phoenix, planning a 1-million-square-foot factory in Coolidge, Arizona. Milton brought on Mark Russell—former president of Worthington Industries—as Nikola’s new president. It was a clear shift. Milton remained CEO and chief hype-man; Russell took the reins of operations.
Then came Nikola World.
In April 2019, thousands showed up to a Scottsdale expo where Milton revealed two new trucks: the Nikola Two and the European-style Nikola Tre. This time, the trucks drove. The Nikola Two revved up and rolled out, and the crowd went wild.
By then, Nikola claimed 13,000 orders. Media coverage was glowing. Even skeptics admitted: Milton knew how to put on a show.
From Basement Vision to Wall Street Valuation
The big moment came in early 2020, when Nikola Motors announced it would skip the traditional IPO route and go public via a reverse merger with a SPAC—The deal valued Nikola at $3.3 billion and brought in $525 million in new funding.
Milton, transitioned from CEO to Executive Chairman, pocketing $70 million in the process.
The Hype Hits Overdrive
. Nikola’s stock soared more than 100% in a single day after Milton tweeted that the company would begin taking reservations for its electric pickup truck, the Badger.
The Badger would have a “drinking fountain” built in, powered by water from the hydrogen fuel cell. He bragged that Nikola could make $750,000 per truck by bundling fuel sales. He claimed five Nikola Tre trucks were rolling off the line in Germany. None of it was true
Traders piled in. giving Nikola a market cap close to $30 billion—more than Ford. Milton’s personal stake was suddenly worth over $8 billion.
The GM Deal: Peak Credibility
Then on September 8 2020. Nikola announced a massive partnership with General Motors. GM would receive an 11% stake in Nikola, in exchange for building the Badger pickup and supplying batteries and fuel-cell systems. GM didn’t put up a dime. Nikola would pay GM $700 million to manufacture the Badger. GM also became Nikola’s exclusive fuel-cell supplier for trucks outside Europe.
Milton was ecstatic. “Avoiding the cost of building a pickup plant and developing a chassis was a big deal for us,” he said. For GM, it was all upside. “We’re a very capable team that has done the appropriate diligence,” CEO Mary Barra told reporters. The market loved it. Nikola’s stock jumped more than 40% that day. GM’s rose too.
“The Next Great American Company”—or Something Else?
But not everyone was convinced.
The prototypes worked—but how well? The 2016 reveal was fake, and some insiders knew it. The hydrogen network didn’t exist yet. The timelines were tight. no one—no investor, no reporter—was asking too many questions. Milton projected confidence, an the deals and partnership reinforced the perception. Nikola looked like it was going to change the world.
The House of Cards Starts to Sway
And then, just two days after the GM announcement, it all started to fall apart.
On September 10, Hindenburg Research released a bombshell report: “Nikola: How to Parlay An Ocean of Lies Into a Partnership With the Largest Auto OEM (original equipment manufacturer) in America.” It called Nikola “an intricate fraud built on dozens of lies,” accusing Milton of faking tech claims, exaggerating deals.
Hindenburg’s evidence included texts, emails, and insider accounts. They claimed Nikola didn’t make its own batteries or fuel cells, hadn’t developed its tech in-house, and that Milton was routinely misleading investors. But most damning of all was their claim that a viral 2018 video by Nikola which seemed to show their truck driving on a flat road was actually a manipulated video non-functional truck rolling down a hill in neutral.
Nikola hit back hard, calling it a hit job by short-sellers. But they also admitted that, yes, the Nikola One truck had not been driving under its own power in the video. That one partial admission validated the report’s biggest claim.
The fallout was swift.
From Darling to Disaster
By mid-September, both the SEC and Department of Justice were circling. Nikola’s stock plunged over 25% in days. the GM deal hadn’t closed yet. It was non-binding. And suddenly, GM was rethinking everything.
On September 20, Trevor Milton resigned.
In a statement, he said: “Nikola is truly in my blood and always will be… but the focus should be on the Company and its world-changing mission, not me.” He forfeited $166 million in stock awards and a $20 million consulting deal, but held onto shares that had been worth billions.
At the same time that his resignation was announced, 2 women filed sexual abuse allegations against Milton - the alleged abuse happened years previously- both women were only 15 years old at the time of the abuse and eventually no charges were brought against Milton due to the statute of limitations
The Deal Unravels
Nikola’s stock, which had soared above $70, was now in the teens. Investors who believed in the dream had been burned. The Anheuser-Busch truck order faded into silence. Nikola had to try to rebuild without its founder, with lawsuits looming and credibility in tatters.
The Fall Begins: Federal Charges Land
On July 29, 2021, Milton was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice for securities and wire fraud. Prosecutors said that Milton used TV appearances, podcasts, and social media to claim that Nikola had fully functional prototypes, a vertically integrated hydrogen production system, and billions in “binding” pre-orders. None of it was real.
Prosecutors accused Milton of targeting retail investors caught up in the 2020 market frenzy, many of whom would later testify that they lost their life savings. Meanwhile, Milton’s own paper net worth soared to $8.5 billion. The motive, they said, was simple: ego and greed. Milton, they alleged, built a fantasy to boost his stock price—and his image.
Milton’s legal team pushed back. “Trevor Milton is innocent,” they said, calling the investigation “faulty and incomplete.” He was, they claimed, a passionate founder, not a fraudster.
In the Courtroom: The Trial That Shattered the Myth
In September 2022, Milton’s trial opened in a Manhattan courtroom.
Jurors watched the infamous video of the Nikola One truck—appearing to drive on a desert road. In reality, it had been towed uphill and filmed rolling downhill in neutral. The prototype was a shell: no gears, no motor, no control system.
Testimony from Nikola executives and employees bolstered teh case for the prosecution.
CEO Mark Russell told jurors that Milton “was prone to exaggeration,” and that the board had taken Milton off social media to stop the damage. CFO Kim Brady described how Milton obsessed over the company’s stock price, falsely claimed Nikola was producing cheap hydrogen fuel, and pitched the Nikola Badger pickup truck even as internal projections showed it would lose $3.2 billion.
According to Brady, the company’s executives even warned Milton that everything he said publicly counted as a regulatory filing—he ignored them. Milton, they testified, seemed more interested in fame than accuracy, trying to become “the Elon Musk of trucking” by any means necessary.
Milton’s defense was simple: he believed what he said. Nikola had real products, they argued. Sure, maybe he’d gotten carried away, but that wasn’t fraud. It was optimism.
The jury didn’t buy it.
In October 2022, Trevor Milton was found guilty on three counts—two of wire fraud and one of securities fraud. The verdict was clear: Milton had crossed the line from hype to deception. “Fake it till you make it,” prosecutors said, “is not an excuse for fraud.”
Sentencing: Four Years, a $1M Fine, and a Seized Ranch
He was sentenced to four years in federal prison, a $1 million fine, and the forfeiture of millions in fraud-linked assets—including a massive Utah ranch Milton tried to buy with Nikola stock options at the height of the deception.
It wasn’t the harshest sentence, but it was prison nonetheless. His fall was complete.
Fallout at Nikola: A Company in Freefall
Nikola’s new leadership, desperate to distance itself, settled civil charges with the SEC, paying $125 million “without admitting wrongdoing.”
Nikola tried to recover. New CEO Mark Russell focused on battery-electric trucks and scaling production. The company even began delivering the Nikola Tre. But trust was shattered. In arbitration, Nikola sued Milton, demanding reimbursement for shareholder settlements. The arbitrator agreed: Milton was ordered to pay $165 million. He never did.
By 2025, Nikola filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It was, as one analyst said, “a total loss—just another SPAC implosion.”
And Then: The Pardon
Milton never went to prison.
By early 2025, he was still out on bond, awaiting appeal. But he had a plan B—politics. Milton and his wife had donated $1.8 million to Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign.
On March 28, 2025, President Trump issued a full presidential pardon to Trevor Milton.
“I have been granted a full pardon,” Milton wrote on social media. “The greatest comeback story in America is about to happen.” He thanked Trump “for granting me this sacred pardon of innocence.”
The backlash was immediate.
Investor advocates were furious. Milton’s conviction had been based on overwhelming evidence. Victims had testified. The damage was real. And now, thanks to political donations and connections, he was absolved. The pardon also likely meant Milton would avoid paying any restitution to Nikola or its investors.
Trump defended the decision, calling Milton “highly recommended by many people” and blaming his prosecution on political bias. “They say the thing he did wrong was support Donald Trump,” the President said. “I don’t think he did anything wrong.”
Milton, now fully exonerated, leaned in. He claimed prosecutors were liars, judges were biased, and promised to tell “his side” of the story in a documentary. He called it a victory for free speech and innovation.
Well he’s free but his legacy, at least to those who are fasmilair with the evidence- and aagian, I’d recommend bad Bets for a more in-depth look at this story of his story is that of a hype man, and ultimately a fraudster, a shyster.
I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, but there’s no denying that the whole Nikola saga makes for a great business story- I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have, and remember if you have any comments, any corrections or any story that you’d like us to cover, email us at: info@gbspod.com
All the best folks