Just as Trump has buildings where he’s actually involved with construction or management and those he only loaned his gaudy gold-plated initial, it turns out there were two different Trump "educational" scams.
There was his Trump University with it’s boiler-room tactics to extract maximum dollars out of people, even when—especially when—they didn’t have enough for everyday expenses. But for all the lies about hand-selecting instructors and inside information, Trump U was actually the upscale version of Trump’s "soak the suckers” plan.
... Mr. Trump also lent his name, and his credibility, to a seminar business he did not own, which was branded the Trump Institute. Its operators rented out hotel ballrooms across the country and invited people to pay up to $2,000 to come hear Mr. Trump’s “wealth-creating secrets and strategies.” …
As with Trump University, the Trump Institute promised falsely that its teachers would be handpicked by Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump did little, interviews show, besides appear in an infomercial — one that promised customers access to his vast accumulated knowledge. “I put all of my concepts that have worked so well for me, new and old, into our seminar,” he said in the 2005 video, adding, “I’m teaching what I’ve learned.”
Only what Trump had to teach was nothing more than how to scam desperate people looking for a way to get ahead.
What the people who ponied up for the Trump Institute got was simple: A classic con.
… the institute was run by a couple who had run afoul of regulators in dozens of states and been dogged by accusations of deceptive business practices and fraud for decades. Similar complaints soon emerged about the Trump Institute.
What did people get for their money? Not any special knowledge from Trump. Not even any ordinary knowledge from Trump. They got nothing from Trump.
Instead they were given a short presentation and poorly assembled manuals consisting of material plagiarized from a decade-old paperback on real estate from anonymous authors at Success magazine. Everything that people who paid $2,000 to Trump Institute to learn can be purchased at a bookstore for $18. And you get four more volumes on the side.
The Trump Institute was run by a pair of traveling con artists, Irene and Mike Milin. The Milins were tangled in legal action in several states after running a series of scam seminars—some using the same materials as Trump Institute—for a decade. But either Trump didn’t bother to check the credentials of the people he was loaning his valuable name, or he didn’t care.
A Trump executive, Michael Sexton, told The Sacramento Bee in 2006 that there was a simple reason for going into business with the Milins: Their company was “the best in the business.”
The best … if you ignored the ‘F’ rating from the Better Business Bureau, and attorney generals after them from Texas to Vermont. Before getting together with Trump, the Milins peddled their fake seminar as the $400 “Milin method,” but adding the Trump name allowed them to pull in suckers for five times as much.
The regulatory woes continued after the Milins rebranded their seminar business with the name of the country’s best-known real estate developer: In 2007, 33 state attorneys general signed a letter to the Federal Trade Commission accusing the Milins of deceptive trade practices. A year later, their company sought bankruptcy protection, owing $2.1 million to creditors. The venture continued for a few years.
Not surprisingly, much of the material handed out to people who attended the overpriced seminars was out of date, inaccurate, or just plain made-up. And attendees who called in with questions where told flat out that the information they’d been given was “useless” and should be ignored.
Asked about the plagiarism, which was discovered by the Democratic “super PAC” American Bridge, the editor of the Trump Institute publication, Susan G. Parker, denied responsibility and suggested that a lawyer for the Milins, who provided her with background material for the book, might have been to blame. The lawyer, Peter Hoppenfeld, who no longer represents the Milins, said Ms. Parker was likely at fault but acknowledged forwarding her information from the Milins’ office. Reached at her home in Boca Raton, Fla., Irene Milin told a reporter, “I’m very busy,” and hung up. She did not answer subsequent calls or respond to a voice mail message.
And Trump’s lawyer, Alan Garten, says that both he and Trump were “unaware” of any plagiarism, or the complaints, or the legal actions. But hecdid have something to say about the materials.
… even while playing down Mr. Trump’s link to the Trump Institute, calling it a “short-term licensing deal,” Mr. Garten expressed pride in the venture. “I stand by the curriculum that was taught at both Trump University and Trump Institute,” he said.
They didn’t know what it was. Didn’t know it was stolen. Didn’t bother to vet the company, material, or instructors. But they stand by it.
Mr. Trump’s infomercial performance suggested he was closely overseeing the Trump Institute. “People are loving it,” he said in the program, titled “The Donald Trump Way to Wealth” and staged like a talk show in front of a wildly enthusiastic audience. “People are really doing well with it, and they’re loving it.” His name, picture and aphorisms like “I am the American Dream, supersized version” were all over the course materials.
Donald Trump is a scam. It’s not the campaign that’s a fake. It’s him. He’s nothing but the Milins writ large: A con man always on the run to the next thing before the last thing catches up.
