Hertz Agrees to Pay $168 Million in False-Arrest Settlement

Hertz has decided to pay $168 million to settle 364 individual claims that the company falsely reported its own rental cars as stolen. Criticisms date back to 2015 but the issue became national news right around the time the company was also filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2020. Hertz has since maintained that any erroneous claims made against customers were the result of a faulty inventory system that’s since been fixed. However, the people that were wrongfully accused of the crime – some of which were held at gunpoint by police and even temporarily imprisoned for a felony offense they didn’t commit – have been seeking restitution in class-action suits.

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Judge Rules Against Elon Musk in Tweet Case

When Tesla boss Elon Musk expressed a desire to buy Twitter last week, citing an absolutist vision of free speech as at least one reason behind his motivations, one had to wonder if his running afoul of the Securities and Exchange Commission over one of his tweets played a part.

To be sure, even if Twitter had no regulations moderating speech on the platform, Musk (or anyone in a similar position) could violate SEC regulations via tweet — a platform’s rules don’t protect someone from the Feds’ regs.

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SEC Subpoenas Faraday Future Executives

Several executives from perpetual automotive startup Faraday Future have reportedly been subpoenaed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as part of an investigation into inaccurate statements made to investors. Though, considering the nameplate’s history, it would be impossible to assume which item the SEC will be focusing on thanks to FF’s exceptionally long history of industrial misgivings.

We’ve covered Faraday Future’s long and bizarre story from the early days of delivering half-baked, though otherwise impressive, concepts to its more recent status as an automaker in the ethereal sense. It’s promised the moon and only managed to deliver a handful of production husks that never surpassed the body-in-white phase and some “production-intent” prototypes of the FF91. Though the larger story is the SEC’s sudden interest in electric vehicle startups that went public via mergers with blank check firms, better known as special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), over the last two years.

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Report: Elon Musk and Brother Face Insider Trading Probe

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is reportedly investigating whether stock sales by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his brother, Kimbal Musk, violated insider-trading rules.

Launched in 2021, the probe is looking into shares sold by Kimbal valued at $108 million one day before Elon polled Twitter to see whether or not he should offload 10 percent of his stake in the company, suggesting he would run with the results. Though the tweet itself was a snide way of discussing proposals from Democrat legislators that would have imposed new taxes on unrealized capital gains, effectively money that doesn’t yet (and may never) exist.

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Nikola to Pay $125 Million to Settle Fraud Charges, Founder in Dutch

Nikola Corp. has agreed to pay $125 million to settle charges levied by The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that the company actively defrauded investors by providing misleading information about its technical prowess, production capabilities, and general prospects.

The settlement comes after a salvo of civil and criminal charges were launched against Nikola’s founder Trevor Milton, who got in trouble for convincing investors that the prospective automaker had fully functional prototypes boasting technologies other companies would have envied when that wasn’t actually the case. Milton was chided for using social media to promote false claims about the business, with his pleading not guilty to fraud charges brought up by the Department of Justice in July.

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Securities and Exchange Commission Checking in on Lucid Motors

Lucid Group Inc. has been subpoenaed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) which is on the prowl for any documentation relating to its merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). Known colloquially as “blank-check firms,” these organizations literally exist to be combined with existing companies as a way to pump the stock and spur investments.

But they’ve gotten a lot of negative attention following a glut of EV startups garnering impressively high valuations based on little more than a business proposal. Those seeking an example need look no further than Nikola Corp, which was outed as having grossly overpromised on its technological capabilities and production acumen after raking it in on the stock market. As a result, financial regulators have become increasingly skeptical of SPACs and want to make sure everything going on with Lucid is above board.

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Nikola Founder Continues Dumping Stock Following Criminal Indictment

Nikola Corp. founder, Trevor Milton, has been offloading stock ever since he was indicted for making misleading and/or blatantly false statements about the company. The formal charges were issued in July, piggybacking off a critically damning report from 2020 that alleged Nikola had grotesquely misrepresented its production capabilities and falsified a video where it showed an inoperable prototype vehicle working as if it was fully functional. The paper caught the attention of both the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as well as the Department of Justice (DOJ) — resulting in Milton stepping down as CEO and twelve months of investigative probes.

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Nikola Deathwatch: DOJ Indicts Founder for Lying to Investors

The U.S. Department of Justice has indicted Nikola founder Trevor Milton over claims made to investors that could have been intentionally misleading. Though anybody tracking the story from the beginning already knows the corporate plot surrounding the company’s trucks has more holes than a deli platter comprised entirely of baby swiss.

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SEC Actually Will Investigate Volkswagen Over April Fools' Prank

We began April talking about Volkswagen’s April Fool’s Day prank that went awry, and we end the month back on the same topic. Circle of life!

We’re back on that topic because the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating what happened.

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Nikola Embarrassed After Internal Review, Now Downsizing

The outside firm Nikola hired to conduct the internal investigation looking into the validity of claims made by ousted founder Trevor Milton has reached a conclusion. Milton does appear to have been fabricating the status of the company’s technology and how far along its prototypes were. But Nikola wasn’t helping and ended up being implicated in a few falsehoods of its own.

Some wealthy individual lying to a sea of people for the sake of making money is hardly news, however. The entire world runs on politicians and business people going back on promises made months earlier and clarifying statements that never seem to illuminate anything. What makes Milton’s offense so bad is that he seems to have used the power of lying to mislead investors who might have otherwise made money. Nikola shares never truly recovered from the exposé published by Hindenburg Research as part of its plan to short the company, and those who never bothered to question the legitimacy of its technical claims before investing are suddenly very interested in knowing everything about the business.

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Rare Rides: A 1991 Mercedes-Benz 560 SEC, End of an Era

Today’s Rare Ride was the ultimate display of Germanic automotive wealth in the early Nineties. Always rarer than its sedan brother, the SEC was the S-Class with two doors and no pillars.

Let’s check out a hardtop from the arguable height of modern Mercedes-Benz engineering.

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Nikola Responds to Criticisms of Fraud

Following a scathing report from Hindenburg Research that called Nikola a fraudulent company largely dependent upon the blind excitement surrounding electric vehicles, the accused has finally issued a response. On Monday, Nikola released a bulleted letter suggesting the report was the act of an opportunistic short seller that was attempting to take advantage of the period immediately proceeding the announced partnership with General Motors. While Hindenburg didn’t exactly hide that aspect of itself in its own report, it frames the business as only profiting off companies that weren’t above board to begin with. It also received support from Citron Research, which said it likewise thought Nikola needed to be scoped out by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and promised to help pay for half of any legal fees incurred as a result of Hindenburg’s reporting.

Meanwhile, Nikola was crafting its rebuttal after founder Trevor Milton explained he had to wait on a comprehensive response because he was already in contact with the SEC. As his constant Twitter updates started to become counterproductive, this was likely a wise decision. The response dropped on Monday, clearing a handful of items up while making a bunch of other aspects seem even more suspect.

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Hertz Stalls Stock Sale Amid Market Madness

The Securities and Exchange Commission has urged the recently bankrupted Hertz to halt the sale of stock. The rental agency had hoped to raise half a billion on the sale but repeatedly warned that would-be buyers were gambling, as the stock may soon be worthless.

Bizarrely, this hasn’t discouraged investors from glomming onto shares of bankrupt and near-bankrupt companies. Despite the global economy supposedly hurdling into a recession and mass unemployment, Wall Street hasn’t signaled that anything is amiss.

Still, the SEC has grown concerned with the trend and decided to address them with Hertz, according to a recent filing. Trading of Hertz Global Holdings Inc. was halted on Thursday, placing investors in a holding pattern as everyone speculates whether the bankrupt car renter will have to revise its plan to raise cash by selling new shares.

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Securities and Exchange Commission Interested in BMW

BMW Group revealed this week that it is under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission following a report of a probe related to the company’s sales practices. A spokesperson for the automaker confirmed the situation on Thursday, saying BMW was in full cooperation with authorities and their investigation.

The probe was reported on earlier in the week by The Wall Street Journal, which had insider sources alleging the company had manipulated sales figures. The SEC is specifically worried that BMW had been engaging in “sales punching” by allowing dealers to register cars moved onto lots as sold to artificially boost sales figures.

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Ghosts From the Past Continue to Haunt Fiat Chrysler

Hauntings normally don’t cost the homeowner $40 million, but that’s what Fiat Chrysler faces after over-reporting monthly vehicle sales for a period of several years. Late last week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission hit FCA with a fine for its now-corrected sales reporting practices, claiming the automaker misled investors.

FCA’s sales reporting trickery is also behind a lawsuit filed against the company by one of its top executives.

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