Two class action lawsuits being considered in San Diego have accused Trump University of using deceptive practices as it brought in millions of dollars from customers who were told they would learn Trump’s techniques to become successful in the world of real estate.
Trump and his attorneys have vigorously denied the fraud claims, pointing to high ratings that students gave their courses at the time.
Some of the firm’s internal documents previously became public. A 2010 “playbook”, for instance, directed sales people to rank students based on their liquid assets to determine who to target for buying courses.
In addition to the class action cases, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed a $40 million lawsuit alleging that Trump had defrauded more than 5,000 individuals through Trump University, which was never licensed as an educational institution.
Trump personally earned millions from the enterprise, in which sales personnel were assigned to get people to pay $1,495 for a three-day seminar in real estate techniques.
In selling the courses, Trump released a marketing video that said, “We are going to have professors and adjunct professors that are absolutely terrific, and these are all people who are going to be handpicked by me.”
One of the university’s top executives, Michael Sexton, testified in one of the class action suits that “none of the professors at the live events” were handpicked by Trump.
Depositions quote Trump acknowledging a lack of close involvement with mentors and students.
Campaign and legal representatives for Trump could not be reached for comment Saturday.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/judge-orders-release-of-internal-trump-university-documents/2016/05/28/2e960e5e-24f9-11e6-8690-f14ca9de2972_story.html
