The former chief executive of Lordstown Motors, Steve Burns, has settled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for statements he made about demand for the electric Endurance pickup truck. Burns had been sued by the SEC in a federal court in Washington for mispresenting preorders for the EV when he claimed the company had received 100,000 preorders from commercial fleets. Last week, he settled this lawsuit and agreed to pay a $175,000 penalty.
Read: Bankrupt Lordstown Faces $45 Million SEC Fine For Securities Violations However, things started to fall apart in March 2021 when analysts from short-selling research firm Hindenburg Research revealed that the carmaker had misled investors and exaggerated the number of orders it had received. It said that thousands of the firm’s claimed orders were non-binding and required no deposit.