Nikola Founder Trevor Milton Convicted of Securities Fraud; Co-founder of Trump's media company details Truth Social's bitter infighting; My account on Truth Social; New Terminal C at LaGuardia
1) Every investor should celebrate when a CEO is held accountable for conducting a stock promotion to scam investors – but also be outraged that this happens less than 1% of the time, I would estimate: Nikola Founder Trevor Milton Convicted of Securities Fraud. Excerpt:
A federal jury in New York convicted Nikola (NKLA) founder Trevor Milton of securities fraud for what prosecutors said were his repeated lies about the development of the company's zero-emissions trucks and technology.
Friday's guilty verdict caps the downfall of Mr. Milton, who founded Nikola in his basement in 2015 and took it public in 2020 at a valuation of $3.3 billion, when the company hadn't sold a single truck. The company's market valuation briefly exceeded that of industry giants such as Ford Motor (F)...
During the trial, which began last month in Manhattan, prosecutors told the jury that Mr. Milton was a con man who duped ordinary investors into buying Nikola stock, making himself a billionaire in the process. They said he fueled the company's rise on a campaign of lies on social media, podcasts and in television interviews, falsely claiming an inoperable prototype was fully-functioning and that Nikola had a long roster of truck orders when in reality most potential customers had registered only nonbinding expressions of interest.
Prosecution witnesses included ordinary investors and current and former Nikola employees. Company executives testified that they had concerns about Mr. Milton's public statements and interviews. Nikola Chief Executive Mark Russell testified that at one point executives staged an intervention and changed corporate social-media account passwords in an attempt to deny Mr. Milton use of them.
All of the credit for this wonderful outcome goes to activist short seller Nate Anderson of Hindenburg Research, who had recently tweeted this:
2) Speaking of total, obvious scams, there was never any doubt in my mind that Trump Media and Technology ("TMTG"), the parent company of Twitter (TWTR) clone Truth Social, was a gigantic turd, but even I'm shocked by the revelations in this recently revealed whistleblower suit that one of TMTG's co-founders just filed with the SEC: Co-founder of Trump's media company details Truth Social's bitter infighting. Excerpt:
Will Wilkerson, one of Trump Media and Technology Group's first employees, alleges the company violated securities laws and that Trump pressured executives to hand over their shares to his wife. He shared a cache of internal documents with The Post and federal investigators that he says support his claims...
But inside the company, Wilkerson said, those plans gave way to bitter infighting, technical failures and a chaotic jockeying for power among Trump allies that undermined its potential and left some employees crying at their desks.
Wilkerson, who was fired from his job Thursday as a senior vice president of operations at the company after he spoke to The Post, filed the whistleblower complaint with the SEC in August. The complaint, drafted by Wilkerson's attorneys, alleges that the company's bid to raise money via an investment vehicle known as a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, relied on "fraudulent misrepresentations... in violation of federal securities laws"...
Wilkerson is cooperating with investigations into Trump Media by the SEC and federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York, said his attorneys, Phil Brewster, Patrick Mincey and Stephen Bell. Among the materials he filed with the SEC's whistleblower office is a detailed, day-to-day computer log compiled by company co-founder Wes Moss, Litinsky and Wilkerson about their daily company-related activities.
The odds that the SEC approves Digital World Acquisition's (DWAC) deal with TMTG have gone from 10% to 5% in my opinion, so continue to avoid this $17 stock that will soon be at $10.
3) DWAC spiked last week when Truth Social was added to Google's Play Store, finally making it available to those (like me) with Android phones. Over the weekend, it was the most downloaded free app:
I wanted to try out the app, so I downloaded it and set up an account. Everything went smoothly, and I soon received this welcome e-mail:
This is what my home screen looks like:
So at least the app appears to now work well, but it's still not getting much traction. Former President Donald Trump has only 4.3 million followers, a tiny fraction of the nearly 90 million he had on Twitter.
And once Elon Musk owns Twitter, which is likely to happen by the end of the month, he has said he'll re-instate President Trump's account. (He also heaped scorn on Truth Social, saying, "It is essentially a rightwing echo chamber. It might as well be called Trumpet.") When this happens, I think it's almost certain that the former president will move back to the much bigger platform, which would be a huge blow to Truth Social.
4) New York's LaGuardia Airport has long been among the nation's worst, but that's no longer the case as it's nearing completion of an $8 billion redevelopment...
A key part of that, replacing the old Terminals C and D with a consolidated Terminal C that's 85% larger, opened on June 4 (see press release and photos). I flew out of it for the first time on Friday and have to say it was beautiful, inside and out. Here are three pictures I took of the Delta Air Lines (DAL) check-in area, the nicest Starbucks (SBUX) I've ever seen, and views of the water, with Citi Field (home of the Mets) and Arthur Ashe Stadium (at the National Tennis Center, home of the U.S. Open) in the background:
Best regards,
Whitney
P.S. I welcome your feedback at WTDfeedback@empirefinancialresearch.com.