Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 533 posts

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#491

Post by xkjkls »

slownews45 wrote: post #386
xkjkls wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His twitter post was clear, he was "considering" taking TSLA private. $420 funding secure indicates he already had financing ready. Why has this mystery funder never materialized. > Anyone who bought in at this news would have been buying in for This is hugely problematic as a response. Elon Musk's behavior is unethical whether Tesla stock went up or down. The stock price should not be used as justification for pre…

No one has been confused I don't think. I saw the considering the $420 buyout, I took it to mean just that. The short sellers around tesla have been pathetic. Note I don't own any tesla stock, but the short seller hype train is just ridiculous around tesla. How there has been no action there is mind boggling. He's a crazy guy willing to take crazy risks - look at SpaceX -> they are operating COMPLETELY outside all no…

> No one has been confused I don't think. I saw the considering the $420 buyout, I took it to mean just that.

Clearly options traders didn't, since all options above $420 went to zero.

> The short sellers around tesla have been pathetic. Note I don't own any tesla stock, but the short seller hype train is just ridiculous around tesla. How there has been no action there is mind boggling.

I disagree. I think the behavior of the stock holders have been pathetic. The short sellers demands for greater transparency and a company not entirely based on smoke and mirrors are easily met. The company itself has refused to meet those minimal standards.

> He's a crazy guy willing to take crazy risks - look at SpaceX -> they are operating COMPLETELY outside all norms.

So? This shouldn't be an excuse for fraudulent behavior. Everytime I bring up a specific problematic behavior of Elon Musk, someone wants to reframe the conversation around the totality of his behavior, rather than the single criticism. I don't know about rockets, but from what I hear, Elon has done a great deal for him. Good for him. That doesn't make any of his behaviors faking a buyout ok, his behavior in the SolarCity merger, or his behavior with the Boring Company.

If we want better businessmen, we have to hold the ones we have accountable. Continuing to refuse to do that for Elon is spawning generations of people like Trevor Milton who assume laws don't apply if you're charming enough.

> The conflicts with solar city were crazy - they were also public. I thought it was a terrible deal - but that was public too. If you think Elon is bad for tesla and you own stock vote him out by running your own board slate. But he has a vision for a fully integrated solar and powerwall type product no barriers. You get an app, the sun charges the battery. They had and have ideas around charging cars mixed into that. Not sure if it's a good idea - plenty of competitors coming for Tesla, but they may be able to deliver something here with their solar / energy AND car companies. And the trend is towards this type of integration - so he gets to take a crack at it.

He lied to shareholders about both SolarCity's financial state and faked a product in order to secure the merger. You can say, "these are public companies" all you want, but the public companies voted for the merger purely on Elon's word, which apparently isn't worth much.

> Importantly, you are Elon, you own 22% of two companies - Tesla and SolarCity with highly overlapping missions. You want to integrate solar / energy / cars. I mean, what would YOU do. Go do a deal with some company in China the way others have tried? These folks saying it's such a bad idea / deal - what was their much better proposal? Elon already knew the Solarcity board and management etc etc. I really am curious what was the amazingly better option to get where Elon wanted to go. Easy to criticize, harder (much) to do.

Not fake a product and lie about the financial status of my company. You know, the bare minimum.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#492

Post by xkjkls »

onethought wrote: post #421
xkjkls wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, similarly to my certainty Donald Trump was lying that his taxes are under audit, and thats why he can't release them. Do I have exact knowledge of Elon's head state, no, but I can make inferences from all his actions since. If a buyer truly existed to facilitate that transaction, that would be public knowledge at this point.

If you muck in the private equity world at all you'd know that this isn't true at all. Lots of deals and nearly deals happen everyday and they only reach the public sphere if the parties want it too.

This was an $100 billion deal at the time. It would have been the largest LBO of all time. If there hasn't been any institution revealed to have been financing it at this point then there wasn't one.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#493

Post by Sebguer »

vlunkr wrote: post #199
Sebguer wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Musk had literally nothing to do with the name, just a continuation of his myth as anything more than a guy with a lot of money.

Is it really a significant part of his myth that he named the company?

I didn't say it was significant! Though, being considered a 'co-founder' of Tesla was important enough to him to sue the actual founders.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#494

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd »

kjksf wrote: post #464
palcu wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are forbidden to trade derivatives of GOOG as an employee of Alphabet. Source is that I am one and I have read my insider trading policy.

Granted the internal policy might be more detailed but I've read https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/ It talks about not allowing "hedging Google stock". To me it means "you can't short Google stock", which is reasonable. It would be really fishy for an employee to bet on failure of the company he works for. It doesn't mean "you can't buy call options on Google stock", which would be unreasonable.

Here’s the quote from the document you linked:

> You should familiarize yourself with Google’s Insider Trading Policy. It describes company-wide policies that address the risks of insider trading, such as a prohibition on any Google employee hedging Google stock; and periodic blackout windows when no Google employee may trade Google stock.

The quotes gives hedging as an example of prohibited conduct and recommends reading the internal policy. The parent comment is from someone who read the internal policy. What more do you want, the internal policy to be leaked in full?

Employees of tech companies with a somewhat open culture can often make inferences about the company’s performance before financials are released. The SEC investigates when people make suspicious gains from options trades. Companies don’t want that kind of attention. Rather than try to define the exact parameters of what kind of trade is risky, it’s easier to just ban them as a rule. This may seem unreasonable to some, but it appears to be a common practice.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#495

Post by simondotau »

dangrossman wrote: post #481
simondotau wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's verbatim from Elon Musk on Autonomy Day 2019 No, that was NOT a verbatim quote. Here is the exact quote with me adding emphasis on the critical (but oft omitted) qualifier: "All Teslas being produced right now have this computer. We switched over from the Nvidia solution for S and X about a month ago, and we switched over the Model 3 about ten days ago. All cars being produced have the all the hardware necessa…

The additional context around the same quote doesn't change anything as far as I can tell. They said the exact same thing about their previous computer systems, then just 1-2 years later would replace those computer systems because they were in fact not capable enough for self-driving. There's still no self-driving robotaxis on HW3 over two years later, when they promised it would exist in 2020. Same thing with the r…

That’s a whole bunch of stuff I don’t necessarily disagree with, I was only responding to specific points. I am not here to defend Elon’s entire verbal history.

Not included in your response, I should note, was any acknowledgement that you misrepresented a quote as being verbatim was in fact not verbatim. This makes me entirely disinterested in further interaction.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#496

Post by nickik »

heavyset_go wrote: post #489
cycrutchfield wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My goodness, the regulatory credits meme once again. How are those short shorts feeling by the way?

Ah, yes, the meme that is Tesla's own quarterly financial report.

Funny how people like you are so desperate, at this point you literally can't even use the current quarterly report anymore and must talk about the last one. And then string together a bunch of revenue that you can then somehow argue 'doesn't count' for #reasons.

Who cares about unit margin or operational margin, as long as you can pick a bunch of revenue items and by removing them they didn't make any profit.

And even if your argument was true and they didn't make #realprofit, who would even care as long as they keep having their current growth trend at the unit margin they have.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#497

Post by [deleted] »

simondotau wrote: post #495
dangrossman wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The additional context around the same quote doesn't change anything as far as I can tell. They said the exact same thing about their previous computer systems, then just 1-2 years later would replace those computer systems because they were in fact not capable enough for self-driving. There's still no self-driving robotaxis on HW3 over two years later, when they promised it would exist in 2020. Same thing with the r…

That’s a whole bunch of stuff I don’t necessarily disagree with, I was only responding to specific points. I am not here to defend Elon’s entire verbal history. Not included in your response, I should note, was any acknowledgement that you misrepresented a quote as being verbatim was in fact not verbatim. This makes me entirely disinterested in further interaction.

[deleted]

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#498

Post by [deleted] »

simondotau wrote: post #495
dangrossman wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The additional context around the same quote doesn't change anything as far as I can tell. They said the exact same thing about their previous computer systems, then just 1-2 years later would replace those computer systems because they were in fact not capable enough for self-driving. There's still no self-driving robotaxis on HW3 over two years later, when they promised it would exist in 2020. Same thing with the r…

That’s a whole bunch of stuff I don’t necessarily disagree with, I was only responding to specific points. I am not here to defend Elon’s entire verbal history. Not included in your response, I should note, was any acknowledgement that you misrepresented a quote as being verbatim was in fact not verbatim. This makes me entirely disinterested in further interaction.

[deleted]

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#499

Post by [deleted] »

simondotau wrote: post #495
dangrossman wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The additional context around the same quote doesn't change anything as far as I can tell. They said the exact same thing about their previous computer systems, then just 1-2 years later would replace those computer systems because they were in fact not capable enough for self-driving. There's still no self-driving robotaxis on HW3 over two years later, when they promised it would exist in 2020. Same thing with the r…

That’s a whole bunch of stuff I don’t necessarily disagree with, I was only responding to specific points. I am not here to defend Elon’s entire verbal history. Not included in your response, I should note, was any acknowledgement that you misrepresented a quote as being verbatim was in fact not verbatim. This makes me entirely disinterested in further interaction.

[deleted]

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#500

Post by [deleted] »

simondotau wrote: post #495
dangrossman wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The additional context around the same quote doesn't change anything as far as I can tell. They said the exact same thing about their previous computer systems, then just 1-2 years later would replace those computer systems because they were in fact not capable enough for self-driving. There's still no self-driving robotaxis on HW3 over two years later, when they promised it would exist in 2020. Same thing with the r…

That’s a whole bunch of stuff I don’t necessarily disagree with, I was only responding to specific points. I am not here to defend Elon’s entire verbal history. Not included in your response, I should note, was any acknowledgement that you misrepresented a quote as being verbatim was in fact not verbatim. This makes me entirely disinterested in further interaction.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN