Donald Trump Now Faces Charges Over Trump University

Donald Trump Now Faces Charges Over Trump University

Lucas Ryan, Staff Writer

Before Trump can continue his campaign to “make America great again” he has some lawsuits to straighten out beforehand.

Trump is looking at three suits in total, two by former students and one by the New York Attorney General, over allegations that Trump University was nothing but a scam. Trump is to be put under oath and questioned in November in a class action lawsuit by Art Cohen who claims that Trump University failed to provide the education that he was promised after paying 36,000 dollars.

The basis for Trump University when it was founded in 2005 was to instruct its students on how to make large amounts of money in the real estate business like Trump has. A big part of the problem was that while Trump claimed the professors were hand-picked by Trump himself, in reality they were independent contractors paid more for the sales of products and seminars than actually teaching anything. The suit also claims that the University would try to convince students in its initial free seminar to buy a $1,495 “one year apprenticeship” which was effectively a three-day seminar. The teachers would then upsell them again to buy “mentorships” at a cost of $10,000 and up.

“Even then, after investing nearly $36,500, students still do not receive defendant Trump’s ‘secrets’ they were promised, but are constantly subjected to upsell of additional live events, products and books,” according to the Cohen suit. Trump’s lawyers rejected this. “Mr. Cohen’s claims are completely baseless,” Alan Garten, the executive vice president and general counsel of The Trump Organization said. An attorney representing Cohen said, “We’d rather try this case in court.”

Cohen’s lawsuit isn’t the only case filed against Trump University. There were other suits that came in from New York, California, and Florida with similar complaints as well. In a suit filed by the State of New York, a trial court found Trump liable for owning and operating an unlicensed school and must pay restitution to 800 consumers across America who took courses after May 31, 2010 from the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative (previously known as Trump University). In addition, the court gave Trump’s attorneys permission take the deposition of well over 5,000 consumers who took courses in Trump University before that date and for whom New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is seeking repayment under claims of fraud.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/24/news/donald-trump-university-lawsuit/