Yes, Trump University Was a Massive Scam

Many people believe that higher education is a de facto scam. Trump University, Donald Trump's real-estate institution, was a de jure one.

First thing first, Trump University was never a university. When the "school" was established in 2005, the New York State Education Department warned that it was in violation of state law for operating without a NYSED license. Trump ignored the warnings. (The institution is now called, ahem, "Trump Entrepreneur Initiative.") Cue lawsuits.

Trump University is currently the defendant in three lawsuits - two class-action lawsuits filed in California, and one filed in New York by then-attorney general Eric Schneiderman, who told CNN's New Day in 2013: "We started looking at Trump University and discovered that it was a classic bait-and-switch scheme. It was a scam, starting with the fact that it was not a university."

Trump U "students" say the same. In his affidavit, Richard Hewson reported that he and his wife "concluded that we had paid over $20,000 for nothing, based on our belief in Donald Trump and the promises made at the [organization’s] free seminar and three-day workshop." But "the whole thing was a scam."

In fact, $20,000 is only a mid-range loss. The lead plaintiff in one of the California suits, yoga instructor Tarla Makaeff, says she was "scammed" out of $60,000 over the course of her time in Trump U.

The free seminars were the first step in a bait and switch to induce prospective students to enroll in increasingly expensive seminars starting with the three-day $1495 seminar and ultimately one of respondents’ advanced seminars such as the "Gold Elite" program costing $35,000.

At the "free" 90-minute introductory seminars to which Trump University advertisements and solicitations invited prospective students, Trump University instructors engaged in a methodical, systematic series of misrepresentations designed to convince students to sign up for the Trump University three-day seminar at a cost of $1495.

The Atlantic, which got hold of a 41-page "Private & Confidential" playbook from Trump U, has attested to the same:

The playbook says almost nothing about the guest speaker presentations, the ostensible reason why people showed up to the seminar in the first place. Instead, the playbook focuses on the seminars' real purpose: to browbeat attendees into purchasing expensive Trump University course packages.

To do that, instructors touted Trump's own promises: that students would be "mentored" by "handpicked" real-estate experts, who would use Trump's own real-estate strategies. Here’s Trump making the pitch himself:

But according to the New York complaint, none of the instructors was "handpicked" by Trump, many of them came from fields having nothing to do with real-estate, and Trump "'never' reviewed any of Trump University's curricula or programming materials." The materials were "in large part developed by a third-party company that creates and develops materials for an array of motivational speakers and seminar and timeshare rental companies."

Furthermore, Trump's promises that the three-day seminar ($1,495) would include "access to 'private' or 'hard money' lenders and financing," that it would include a "year-long 'apprenticeship support' program," and that it would 'improve the credit scores' of students were empty.

Those empty promises are the subject of a new series of anti-Trump ads by superPAC American Future Fund:

According to Bob, "I never heard from anybody about giving me a list of hard-money lenders":

Kevin, another Trump U "student," says Trump University "ruined" his credit score:

And according to Sherri, a single mother who participated in Trump U: "It was all supposedly supervised by Donald Trump, run by Donald Trump. All of it was just a fake."

In fact, Sherri isn't alone. No student ever met the Donald. Despite hints from Trump University instructors that Trump was "going to be in town," "often drops by," or "might show up," he never did. As Matt Labash recounted in The Weekly Standard: "At one seminar, attendees were told they’d get to have their picture taken with Trump. Instead, they ended up getting snapped with his cardboard cutout." Bob.., had such an "opportunity":

There could be many more ads to come. The New York lawsuit alone represents some 5,000 victims.

Meanwhile, Trump - who maintains that Trump University was "a terrific school that did a fantastic job" - has tried to bully his opponents out of the suit. Lawyers for Tarla Makaeff have requested a protective order from the court "to protect her from further retaliation." According to court documents, Trump has threatened to sue Makaeff personally, as well as her attorneys. He's already brought a $100 million counterclaim against the New York attorney general's office.

But it's not working. Trump himself will have to take the witness stand in San Diego federal court sometime during the election season - and because of the timeline of the cases, a "President Trump" would be embroiled in these suits long after November.

Meanwhile, if there is any doubt that Trump U was designed to be a scam, The Atlantic puts that to rest with a few other choice tidbits from that "Private & Confidential" playbook used by Trump presenters:

Every university has admission standards and Trump University was no exception. The playbook spells out the one essential qualification in caps: "ALL PAYMENTS MUST BE RECEIVED IN FULL." Basically, anyone with a valid credit card was “admitted” to Trump University....

If a member of the media happened to approach the registration table, Trump staffers were instructed not to talk to him or her under any circumstance. "Reporters are rarely on your side and they are not sympathetic," the playbook advises.

At one point, the playbook advises Trump staffers: "If a district attorney arrives on the scene, contact the appropriate media spokesperson immediately."

Those sales pitches have been around forever. They're still acceptable practice. Most people after going through one or two ordeals decide it's not worth the freebie.

They still exist. It's especially bad from annuity and investment companies trying to get their claws on seniors life savings. I went to one of those dinners last summer because it was at the high-end restaurant that hosts things like Clinton fund raisers when they're begging to the Cleveland elite.

The guy got up and gave his spiel, how people couldn't trust their children to spend their inheritance wisely so give it to the investment company and they'll spread it out over the generations. (you can't make that stuff up). I raised my hand and asked if the speaker seriously thought we should trust a stranger more than we should trust children who've been raised to be responsible with their heritage. He seemed upset with me....don't know why, he said we should ask any questions we had. <^..^>

Oh, and the meal? They got the cheapest group buffet on the menu. It was so-so. Beautiful restaurant, though.

You ain’t getting away with this BullSh$t smear today. Here we go for anyone here that wants to see how sloppy you and NR are.

Trump real estate seminars were offered as Trump University between 2004 and 2009. In 2010 they were offered as Trump Entrepreneur Institute. The business stopped in June of 2010. The effort had 5,000 students over 7 calendar years. New York court papers say the effort grossed $40 million over the seven years.

I’m not going to deal with the deep details of the cases in California - they are sour grapes or buyers remorse cases for money damages. When they call them Class Actions lets be sure everyone knows what that means. Attorneys who specialize in class actions create a group of defendants whose damages are too small to be worth it, try to enlist a group of defendants, none of whom manage the litigation, to try and create a big legal bill for profit by addressing the supposed harms suffered by the group. Two such efforts were started in California. There can not be that many of the 5,000 from California when you take out all the NY FL TX IL MA seminar takers.

Personal note: one time a San Diego atty with no nexus to me whatsoever did this to me. He filed one case, assumed there must be other parties similarly situated and asked a judge to create the opportunity for him to go establish there were others and have me pay for it. We stopped that but that’s how it works.

The Trump seminars had questionaires filled out by the attendees presumably so they could improve the program. Good thing they did as now those are evidence of what they did and what the attendees thought of it. Go here:
http://www.98percentapproval.com/
There you can read the questionnaire results. 4900 of the folks absolutely agreed they got what they expected. So we have 100 people, that needed to be herded up by class action lawyers. Two percent of $40mm is $800k. Decremented by those of the 100 people that are from California. Thats what we are talking about. Surely Trump will spend far in excess of that just to clear his name in California. If you get a letter in the mail form a Class Action lawyer saying you should join our class as we try to extract money damages from Donald J. Trump without having to do anything or spend a cent, many would say I’m in. On to New York.

Our protagonist there is the loathesome atty. gen. Eric Schneiderman - he’s the dolt thats trying to wreck Fan Duel and Draft Kings. Go here to find out about this modern Elliott Spitzer http://observer.com/2014/02/the-politics-and-power-of-a-g-schneiderman/ and his publicity hound cases.

Newly elected Shneiderman brought an action against Trump Entrepreneur in May of 2011, a year after it closed only four months after he was elected.
read about him shaking down the Trumps nad Trump employees for political contributions behind the scenes of his case here http://observer.com/2014/10/time-runs-out-on-attorney-generals-fraud-suit/

As the case is poised today, the only New York matters not already dismissed by the court is the use of the name Trump University. There are 121 seminar takers left that paid an aggregate $105,000 - $867.77 each - not all form New York. The harm to these people ? That they were mislead into believing that Trump University, a three day real estate seminar might have been an actual University. No one could sit on 60 Minutes and claim they thought they wee attending Harvard or Columbia. It’s ridiculous. Which leaves the California cases.

On to the politics of the matter: Many of these seminar attendees were smart enough to understand the opportunity that distressed real estate presented @ 2007 and afterwards. The overwhelming majority did three days and stopped. Those that went deeper into the training paid for it of their own volition. A few, many years later at the behest of a publicity hound Atty. Gen. that said over and over again it is a ‘weak case’ or upon receiving a letter in the mail from a class action lawyer are now crying foul. The truth of the matter is they paid for the deeper seminars and ended up for whatever reason not being able to utilize the knowledge and at least six years later (if not much longer) are crying foul. If they took a free seminar, then a paid one, then another paid one and then another at what point do they move from guileless consumers to prospective wannabe business people that paid for a service and didn’t capitalize on it?

CW and NR and the Cruznadians and the Rubiots and the WSJ tell us what great Conservatives and Free Market people they are. Now they are propagating this smear. If Trump had done something wrong, had something to hide, wouldn’t he have settled this for far less than the legal bills to fight it out? Keep in mind Trump bought Doral out of the bankruptcy court for $150mm. The DC post office renovations alone are $200mm. Wouldn’t great conservatives applaud an American that fought the NY atty gen and the class action lawyers? Wouldn’t real free market people put an ear to the ground and learn how hard business is now in the country?

...Nothing you compose on your own has any balance. You are known as a misleading shill. I'm not the only one accusing you of that. Of course you have to claim being balanced, that's the nature of things. I think you underestimate the size of your audience who views you as a clown.

I don't consider myself anything but someone who wants a strong country and freedom. That's been my purpose and focus for all the years I've been on FR.

I have no care about the "size of my audience" - if one person reads something of value to them, that's good.

That's it. Not the dark assessment you've designed to discredit me.

I don't attack and insult other FReepers.

And I and many others remember that the purpose of this site is as a conservative, family forum (because we were here from - or near to - the beginning, we traveled to DC for the March of Justice to protest the criminal Clintons in the White House).

Much of what I'm reading here now is not "conservative" or "principled."

Neither Trump University nor its students had ever received any form of federal funding, subsidies or other government aid and offered all of its students a 3 day money back guarantee if they were not completely satisfied. Despite learning these facts, for the last two years, Schneiderman’s office has spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars conducting a no holds barred, scorched earth investigation, assigning as many as ten of his staff members to interview former Trump University employees and review literally hundreds of thousands of pages of documents. Making matters worse, Schneiderman chose to devote such valuable taxpayer dollars to looking into Trump University even though there was already a class action lawsuit pending in California brought by the firm of disgraced former lawyers and convicted felons Bill Lerach and Mel Weiss.

And what did Schneiderman’s office find after wasting so much of the taxpayers’ hard earned money? Exactly what Trump University told the Attorney General on day one - that as much as 98% of those students who participated in Trump University programs were not only satisfied with their Trump University experience, but would recommend the program to a friend.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3402515/posts?page=2#2

Hello DB, hello Cincinatus’ Wife,

Haven’t been around FR in quite some time, goodo to see you’re still keepping the flame lit here,

It’s the debates that pulled me back in.

in regards to Trump University, the scam was so foul in NJ/NYC (where the Trump organizations and the Kushner organizations operate), that any rube who put “Trump University” on their resume for any real estate sector job would have said resume instantly tossed into the circular file. It’s quite literally a Scarlet Letter indicating total stupidity in the CRE sector.

Due to the high density of rubes and hotel convention rooms in NJ, the Trump Uni had simultaneously three overlapping conferences, to suck in as many idiots as possible. Know several of those idiots, was not surprised that got conned by this scam.

They literally provided nothing in return for the money. You actually walk out of those sessions not only financially poorer, you end up in worse shape career wise than before you walk in due to the utter and total BS forced into your face for a few days straight in a dang near cult environment, ‘training’ people to make inappropriate financial risks for their position in life.

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