Steve Burns, the former chief executive of Lordstown Motors, has settled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over statements he made regarding demand for the electric Endurance pickup truck.
The SEC had sued Burns for misrepresenting preorders for the EV, claiming the company had received 100,000 preorders from commercial fleets. Burns settled the lawsuit last week and agreed to pay a $175,000 penalty. He has also been banned from serving as an officer or director of a public company for two years.
Lordstown Motors, founded in 2018, acquired GM’s former factory in Lordstown, Ohio, in late 2019. The company went public through a reverse merger in 2020 and received support from then-President Donald Trump. However, trouble began in March 2021 when short-selling research firm Hindenburg Research revealed that Lordstown had misled investors and exaggerated its number of orders.
Hindenburg Research claimed that thousands of the firm’s orders were non-binding and required no deposit. A subsequent internal investigation by Lordstown found that most preorders were from intermediaries that had agreed to find buyers.
Lordstown settled with the SEC last month for misleading investors about Endurance demand. Burns resigned from his position at Lordstown in 2021, but in October 2023, he agreed to purchase the remaining assets of the company after it filed for bankruptcy in June. The purchase included all Lordstown machinery, assembly lines, inventory, and other assets.
