After it began trading in 2020, Nikola was a hot stock—and Trevor Milton was a newly minted billionaire. But in the background, people from Trevor’s past were finding each other and sharing their experiences. In this episode, we talk to the unlikely group of whistleblowers and short sellers who teamed up to find the cracks in Nikola’s facade and expose them to the world.
Ben Foldy is the host of this season of Bad Bets. Bad Bets is a production of The Wall Street Journal. This season is produced with Jigsaw Productions, in collaboration with Story Force Entertainment.
This transcript was prepared by a transcription service. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated.
Ben Foldy: From the Wall Street Journal, this is Bad Bets. I'm Ben Foldy. Over the last three episodes, we told you about how Trevor Milton went from dropping out of college to becoming a startup founder whose net worth briefly put him among the richest people in America. We told you how Trevor used Twitter and Instagram during his remarkable rise, how it helped him promote Nikola as it was going public and drive it to evaluation that despite it not having brought a single truck to market was at one point worth more than Ford. But there were some doubters in the crowd. They'd often criticized Trevor online where he spent a lot of time quoting retail investors and sometimes Trevor took the bait. Here he is in a video he posted on Instagram.
Trevor Milton: What's up everyone?...
Welcome to Reality Check, NewsGuard’s nonpartisan newsletter that tracks the false claims and conspiracy theories that shape our world — and who’s behind them. A note to readers: We just scored a b...