Trevor Milton, the disgraced founder and former CEO of electric truck startup Nikola, was sentenced Monday to four years in prison for securities fraud.
The sentencing hearing comes after four separate delays, during which Milton has remained free under a $100 million bond.
Milton sobbed as he pled with Judge Ramos for leniency in a long and often confusing statement ahead of the sentencing.
At one point, Milton said he stepped down from the CEO post at Nikola not because of fraud allegations, but to support his wife.
That video sparked investigations from third parties, and after a report by Hindenburg Research called the company a fraud, Milton stepped down in September 2020.
VF Corporation, the U.S.-based owner of apparel brands including Vans, Supreme, and The North Face, has confirmed a cyberattack has impacted the company’s ability to fulfill orders ahead of Christmas, one of the biggest retail events of the year.
When reached by email, VF Corp. spokesperson Colin Wheeler provided TechCrunch with a statement that echoed the company’s filing with regulators.
In its regulatory filing, VF Corp. warned that the cyberattack would have a “material impact” on its business until its systems are recovered.
VF Corp disclosed the incident on the same day that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s new data breach disclosure rules came into force.
This regulation means that organizations must report cybersecurity incidents, including data breaches, to the federal government’s securities regulator within four business days.
Hackers stole the sensitive personal information of more than 14.6 million Mr. Cooper customers, the mortgage and loan giant has confirmed.
In a filing with Maine’s attorney general’s office, Mr. Cooper said the hackers stole customer names, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, as well as customer Social Security numbers and bank account numbers.
Mr. Cooper previously said that customer banking information was stored by a third-party company and believed to be unaffected.
Mr. Cooper said in its data breach notification letter to affected victims that the stolen data includes personal information on those whose mortgage was previously acquired or serviced by the company when it was known as Nationstar Mortgage, prior to its rebranding as Mr. Cooper.
Do you work at Mr. Cooper and know more about the cyberattack?
Database management giant MongoDB says it’s investigating a security incident that has resulted in the exposure of some information about customers.
In an update published on Sunday, MongoDB said does not believe hackers accessed any customer data stored in MongoDB Atlas, the company’s hosted database offering.
For one customer, this included system logs, MongoDB said.
System logs can include information about the running of a database or its underlying system.
MongoDB declined to say how many customers may be affected by the compromise of its corporate systems.
ServiceNow announced this morning that it was acquiring Czech Republic task mining company UltimateSuite, giving the company a new way to capture and understand how work flows through a business.
Task mining is a part of process mining, a growing worldwide market that helps companies understand how work flows through an organization, looking for bottlenecks in order to increase efficiency.
UltimateSuite is substantially smaller, having raised less than $1 million, but it gives ServiceNow another tool in its task mining arsenal, says Eduardo Chiocconi, VP and GM for process mining at ServiceNow.
Prior to acquisition of UltimateSuite, the company had the ability to drill down into a workflow, but lacked the ability to get down to the user task level.
And that’s exactly what UltimateSuite task mining is coming in to help us with,” Chiocconi told TechCrunch.
Apple has started experimenting a feature on the App Store that allows developers to offer “contingent pricing” for subscriptions.
That means developers can club subscriptions for two apps at a discounted price.
While the feature is in the test phase, Apple said developers can promote this discount on off-platform marketing channels, according to 9to5Mac.
DMA asks app distribution platforms such as Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store to allow users to install apps through alternative ways.
Apple’s marketing language on this feature indicates that the App Store can handle complex processing of payments and subscriptions even when multiple apps and developers are involved.
The investment is coming by way of Verdane taking a substantial stake Fountain Venture, the investment vehicle controlled by the founder and current chairman of Meltwater, Jørn Lyseggen.
Joakim Kjemperud, a principal at Verdane, said the deal also gives his firm a stake in an HR firm, Jobylon, although Meltwater is by far the bigger asset.
In that context, it’s notable that Verdane opted to invest in Fountain Venture rather than directly in Meltwater.
That will give Verdane not only the stake in Meltwater, but also a stake in Jobylon and whatever else Fountain and Lyseggen find interesting.
Meltwater built AI in-house and has acquired a stream of businesses in an analytics consolidation play.
Autonomous vehicle company May Mobility has launched its first driverless on-demand microtransit service on public roads in Sun City, Arizona in partnership with transit tech company Via.
May’s strategy of integrating its autonomous microtransit service into existing public transit, in partnership with cities, has also laid the groundwork for future, more challenging deployments.
More recently, May launched an on-demand service in Grand Rapids, Michigan in partnership with Via.
Beep operates autonomous shuttles for resident transportation in the Lake Nona community in Florida and for public transportation in Peachtree Corners, Georgia.
Riders can book the on-demand ride-hail service through May Mobility’s app, available in Google Play and the Apple App Store.
Tamara, a buy now pay later platform for consumers in Saudi Arabia and the wider GCC region, has raised $340 million in a financing C round that values the fintech at $1 billion.
Both startups, albeit competitors, highlight the surging growth in BNPL usage, particularly in Saudi Arabia, the market that makes up more than 80% of Tamara and Tabby’s customer base.
“Saudi Arabia and the GCC deserves its place on the world stage for financial technology.
Before launching Tamara, Alsukhan co-founded Nana, a digital grocery shopping platform where he was the chief financial officer for three years.
Tamara is also allocating part of the investment to introduce new products and services beyond BNPL and capitalizing on opportunities in shopping and financial services across Saudi Arabia and the GCC.
What a yearThis is the last edition of The Interchange for 2023 — it’s hard to believe that the year is almost over.
In May 2022, Mary Ann reported at least 185 employees, or one-third of its workforce, were let go.
Mary Ann reported on a couple of high-profile executive departures this week.
Mustard’s decision to step down marks the third known high-profile executive departure at Credit Karma in 2023.
Then she wrote about how Opendoor co-founder Eric Wu is leaving the real estate fintech company after 9 years to get back to his startup roots.
