Donald Trump arrives for the premiere of the film "Tower Heist" in New York October 24, 2011.   REUTERS/Lucas Jackson (UNITED STATES - Tags: ENTERTAINMENT BUSINESS)
In most cases, for-profit education is a big enough scam to begin with. Add Donald Trump to the equation and have the "education" in question be a series of seminars on how to get rich in real estate and you get the kind of scam that has now led New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to sue Trump for $40 million over his "Trump University":
State Education Department officials had told Trump to change the name of his enterprise years ago, saying it lacked a license and didn't meet the legal definitions of a university. In 2011 it was renamed the Trump Entrepreneur Institute, but it has been dogged since by complaints from consumers and a few isolated civil lawsuits claiming it didn't fulfill its advertised claims. [...]
Scheiderman said the three-day seminars didn't, as promised, teach consumers everything they needed to know about real estate. The Trump University manual tells instructors not to let consumers "think three days will be enough to make them successful," Schneiderman said.
At the seminars, consumers were told about "Trump Elite" mentorships that cost $10,000 to $35,000. Students were promised individual instruction until they made their first deal. Schneiderman said participants were urged to extend the limit on their credit cards forreal estate deals, but then used the credit to pay for the Trump Elite programs. The attorney general said the program also failed to promptly cancel memberships as promised.
But hey, those thousands of dollars did buy students the opportunity to have their pictures taken with a life-size picture of Trump. Seriously, the guy couldn't even be bothered to come have his picture taken in real life with the people he was scamming out of thousands, or even tens of thousands, of dollars they surely couldn't afford, and doesn't that just convey the depth of contempt he felt for his marks.
If these poor people thought Donald Trump had anything to teach them about starting at the bottom and getting rich, they needed to start off with a critical thinking class. What Donald Trump has to teach is how, if you happen to inherit from a real estate developer father with hundreds of millions of dollars, you can, through relentless self-promotion (and a series of corporate bankruptcies), increase your inheritance by an amount that remains unknown because no one can seriously believe your own claims about your wealth.
Here's hoping Schneiderman nails him to the wall.