Trump Persuaded Struggling People to Invest in Scams, Lawsuit Says

[GMDino]

Sometimes I do wonder if Trump is just a straight up conman or if he's too dense to even know what's going on and he just signs on to anything that when someone says they will pay him to do it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/29/nyregion/trump-acn-lawsuit.html

Quote:A new lawsuit accuses President Trump, his company and three of his children of using the Trump name to entice vulnerable people to invest in sham business opportunities.

Filed in federal court in Manhattan on Monday, the lawsuit comes just days before the midterm elections, raising questions about whether its timing is politically motivated. It is being underwritten by a nonprofit whose chairman has been a donor to Democratic candidates.

The allegations take aim at the heart of Mr. Trump’s personal narrative that he is a successful deal-maker who built a durable business, charging he and his family lent their name to a series of scams.

The 160-page complaint alleges that Mr. Trump and his family received secret payments from three business entities in exchange for promoting them as legitimate opportunities, when in reality they were get-rich-quick schemes that harmed investors, many of whom were unsophisticated and struggling financially.

Those business entities were ACN, a telecommunications marketing company that paid Mr. Trump millions of dollars to endorse its products; the Trump Network, a vitamin marketing enterprise; and the Trump Institute, which the suit said offered “extravagantly priced multiday training seminars” on Mr. Trump’s real estate “secrets.”

The four plaintiffs, who were identified only with pseudonyms like Jane Doe, depict the Trump Organization as a racketeering enterprise that defrauded thousands of people for years as the president turned from construction to licensing his name for profit. The suit also names Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump as defendants.


A lawyer for the Trump Organization, Alan Garten, said the allegations were completely meritless and relate to events that happened a decade ago. “This is clearly just another effort by opponents of the president to use the court system to advance a political agenda,” the spokesman said. He noted the plaintiffs’ lawyers have longstanding and deep ties to the Democratic Party and waited to file until just before the election. “Their motivations are as plain as day.”

A White House spokeswoman for Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The suit is not the first to accuse Mr. Trump of fraud. Shortly after his election in November 2016, he agreed to pay $25 million to settle a series of lawsuits, including one by New York State’s attorney general, that alleged unscrupulous practices by Trump University, another venture that claimed to sell access to his real estate secrets. Mr. Trump settled without acknowledging fault or liability, his lawyer said at the time.

And in June, the New York attorney general’s office filed a lawsuit seeking to dissolve the Donald J. Trump Foundation, claiming the charity had engaged in self-dealing and other violations. The foundation’s lawyers called the suit a political attack.

But the new suit alleges “a pattern of racketeering activity” involving three other organizations. Roberta A. Kaplan and Andrew G. Celli Jr., two lawyers for the plaintiffs, said in a statement that they were not aware of “any prior case against the Trumps alleging consumer fraud on this scale.”

“This case connects the dots at the Trump Organization and involves systematic fraud that spanned more than a decade, involved multiple Trump businesses and caused tremendous harm to thousands of hardworking Americans,” the statement said.

Asked about the suit’s timing, Ms. Kaplan and Mr. Celli said their firms — Kaplan, Hecker & Fink and Emery, Celli, Brinckerhoff & Abady — had conducted a lengthy investigation and the plaintiffs were eager to file. “The case is being brought now because it is ready now,” the lawyers said.

The lawyers said a nonprofit organization, the Tesseract Research Center, was funding the lawsuit by paying attorney’s fees and costs.


Morris Pearl, the Democratic donor who is the nonprofit’s chairman, said in a statement that his organization hoped to draw attention to the challenges faced by people who sustain losses but cannot seek redress through the courts “ because of the extreme wealth and power on the other side.”


The lawyers said they were asking the court to allow the plaintiffs to proceed using pseudonyms because of “serious and legitimate security concerns given the heated political environment.” The lawyers also declined to make their clients available for interviews.

The four plaintiffs each invested in ACN after watching promotional videos featuring Mr. Trump.

According to the lawsuit, ACN required investors to pay $499 to sign up to sell its products, like a videophone and other services, with the promise of additional profits if they recruited others to join.

Mr. Trump described the phone in an ACN news release as “amazing” but failed to disclose he was being “paid lavishly for his endorsement,” the suit says.

One plaintiff, a hospice worker from California identified as “Jane Doe,” decided to join ACN in 2014 after attending a recruitment meeting at a Los Angeles hotel where she listened to speakers and watched Mr. Trump on video extol the investment opportunity.

For her, the video was the “turning point,” the lawsuit said.

“Doe believed that Trump had her best interests at heart,” the suit said.

Jane Doe then signed up for a larger ACN meeting in Palm Springs, Calif., which cost almost $1,500, and she later spent thousands more traveling to conventions in Cleveland and Detroit, according to the suit.

In the end, she earned $38 — the only income she would ever receive from the company, the suit said.

[Au165]

What is interesting to me is that, if one could prove that he received far more than the 1 million he claimed he was given to start his business does him selling that lie amount to fraud? He used a false narrative to dupe investors into believing in his "system" and in his general business acumen and therefor trusting him. If he lied about the results of said system in the advertising one would think it would fall under false advertising at the least. Would be interesting if this suit would be able to subpoena more of his financial records using this angle. My guess is he would settle before allowing that information to get out though.

[Dill]

(10-31-2018, 10:17 AM)GMDino Wrote: Sometimes I do wonder if Trump is just a straight up conman or if he's too dense to even know what's going on and he just signs on to anything that when someone says they will pay him to do it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/29/nyregion/trump-acn-lawsuit.html

The MSM fake news is always trying to bring Trump down by publicizing what he actually does.

Just one more example of Trump hate.

Go home MSM fake news. Telling the truth doesn't fool anyone anymore!   

[*Nately120*]

(10-31-2018, 11:02 AM)Au165 Wrote: What is interesting to me is that, if one could prove that he received far more than the 1 million he claimed he was given to start his business does him selling that lie amount to fraud? He used a false narrative to dupe investors into believing in his "system" and in his general business acumen and therefor trusting him. If he lied about the results of said system in the advertising one would think it would fall under false advertising at the least. Would be interesting if this suit would be able to subpoena more of his financial records using this angle. My guess is he would settle before allowing that information to get out though.

It is a little cynical to think there isn't much difference between a guy like Trump pretending to be a self-made gazillionaire in order to get people to make lousy investments that don't pay off and a Nigerian on a 20 year old PC pretending to be a prince in order to get people to make lousy investments that don't pay off.

In both cases, it's buyer beware and god help us Americans who are just a little too greedy and a little too naive to stop falling for this stuff. Trump is the infomercial president and we the people were sitting up at 2am flipping through channels just waiting to be given an offer that was too good to be true. So it goes.

[*Nately120*]

(10-31-2018, 04:46 PM)Au165 Wrote: Not really, the Nigerian guy is committing outright fraud but jurisdictional issues prevent us in many cases from going after them. It is similar to people who claim to get big on muscle gaining supplements or those who claim they lost a bunch of weight. The FTC cracked down on them which is why now they actually have to have done it then disclaimer that the results are not typical. What they do now is get fitness people to gain a bunch of weight take a picture then take it off again to make them look like it was the supplement not in fact that they are fitness professionals who can do it without the items.

In any case, I think it would open up a lot of his financials to discovery because of their relevance in proving such a point. Like I said, I think he'd settle if the case doesn't get tossed.

I should point out that I believe my cynicism to be logical and reasonable.  I'd go so far as to say the people who fall for the Nigerian prince scam and a decent portion of Trump's voter-base share similar demographics.  This can go along with my post in the televangelist thread, too.  Though, Peter Popoff's targets have gotten a lot more um...urban since his days in the 80s.

[*Nately120*]

(10-31-2018, 04:50 PM)Au165 Wrote: The Nigerian is a money transfer scam, both con artists but a lot different in their procedures and what they are targeting. The Nigerians want people who want to make money for doing nothing but cashing a check for them. Trump was banking on the people who wanted to make money but didn't know how. What better advice than a guy who took a small investment and made it "yuge". If the starting amount was fraudulently portrayed then one could argue the whole thing from the start was a con...which it probably was anyways.

I'm more interested in what access this would grant to a lawyer in the discovery phase though. His financials would be relevant to the "system" and it's effectiveness as he inserted his own experience as proof it works. I think this is why he'd settle it similar to Trump U before it ever got anywhere. 

That sounds more like those infomercials where people who have the secret to making obscene amounts of money on the housing market will (for some reason) sell you their secret for a small up-front fee.  Or Jim Bakker using people's fear of social and economic collapse to convince people that money will soon be worthless...so give him your soon-to-be-worthless money and he will "love gift" not sell you some life-sustaining survival buckets of food.

It's the advance-fee scam, and they are based on the idea that people can convince themselves that a little investment now can pay off big later.  The person letting you in on this ticket to the good life is always someone of noble birth, or wild riches, or even divine favor.  You lucky stiff!

[GMDino]

(10-31-2018, 04:56 PM)Nately120 Wrote: That sounds more like those infomercials where people who have the secret to making obscene amounts of money on the housing market will (for some reason) sell you their secret for a small up-front fee.  Or Jim Bakker using people's fear of social and economic collapse to convince people that money will soon be worthless...so give him your soon-to-be-worthless money and he will "love gift" not sell you some life-sustaining survival buckets of food.

It's the advance-fee scam, and they are based on the idea that people can convince themselves that a little investment now can pay off big later.  The person letting you in on this ticket to the good life is always someone of noble birth, or wild riches, or even divine favor.  You lucky stiff!

Isn't that religion?

[ballsofsteel]

(10-31-2018, 11:02 AM)Au165 Wrote: What is interesting to me is that, if one could prove that he received far more than the 1 million he claimed he was given to start his business does him selling that lie amount to fraud? He used a false narrative to dupe investors into believing in his "system" and in his general business acumen and therefor trusting him. If he lied about the results of said system in the advertising one would think it would fall under false advertising at the least. Would be interesting if this suit would be able to subpoena more of his financial records using this angle. My guess is he would settle before allowing that information to get out though.

That is another fallacy.  Born on third base? He was born  five feet from home plate (starting out with over 400 mill not one mill like he claims). He should win an Oscar for one of the greatest acting jobs of all time (acting like he is smart and a srewd business man).