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Trevor Milton biography: 13 things about Nikola Corporation founder

by Erica Diaz Mendoza Lao

Trevor R. Milton is an American businessman, billionaire and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). He was born in Layton, Utah, United States to Bill Milton and Sally Milton.

Trevor has one brother named Travis N. Milton and three sisters. Their father was a Union Pacific Railroad manager while their mother was a realtor.

Aside from English, Trevor also speaks Portuguese and Spanish. Here are 13 more things about him:

When Trevor was a toddler, he and his family moved from Utah to Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. In 1990, they moved back to Utah.
On September 12, 1999, he allegedly groped the bare breasts of his cousin Aubrey Ferrin Smith, then 15, at their grandfather's funeral in Holladay, Salt Lake County, Utah. On September 21, 2020, she took to Twitter to publicly make this accusation.
In 1997, his mother passed away from cancer.
After high school, he spent 18 months in Brazil to do a church mission. He became fluent in Portuguese.
After one semester at Utah Valley State College, he dropped out and started an alarm sales company called St. George Security and Alarm in St. George, Washington County, Utah. In 2004, he allegedly hired a girl, then 15, as an office assistant for the company and sexually assaulted her, according to Craig Johnson, a former prosecutor who was representing her and Ferrin Smith.
After exiting St. George Security and Alarm, he launched an online classified ads website selling used cars, which was unsuccessful. In 2010, he founded an alternative energy vehicle company called dHybrid. Inc, which was bought by Worthington Industries in 2014.
In 2014, he founded Nikola Motor Company with the initial investment of $2 million from Worthington Industries. The primary goals were to manufacture semitrucks that run on alternative fuels with low or zero emissions and build an alternative fuel station infrastructure to support those vehicles. His brother Travis was the director of operations. The company later became a subsidiary of Nikola Corporation.
In 2015, he founded Bluegentech LLC. In July 2017, the company changed its name to Nikola Corporation, which was incorporated in Delaware, USA and headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, USA.
In 2018, he and Chelsey Virginia Bergmann got married.
In 2019, he bought a 2,000-acre ranch with a 16,800 square foot riverside mansion in Utah for $32.5 million.
Between November 2019 and September 2020, he defrauded investors by using false and misleading statements to convince them to buy shares in Nikola Corporation, according to the US attorney's office in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. On June 3, 2020, he became the company's executive chairman.
On September 8, 2020, a partnership between General Motors and Nikola Corporation was announced. On September 20, 2020, he resigned from his position as Nikola Corporation executive chairman. On September 26, 2020, Ferrin Smith filed a formal complaint with the Unified Police Department of Greater Salt Lake in Salt Lake County, accusing him of sexually assaulting her on September 12, 1999. According to his spokesman Brandon Messina, the allegations of Ferrin Smith and the girl he hired in 2004 were false.
He was 39 years old and a resident of Oakley, Summit County, Utah when he was arrested on July 29, 2021 in New York, charged with two counts of securities fraud and one count of wire fraud and released on $100 million bail after entering a plea of not guilty.