Tag: Fraud

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Business Donald Trump The Trump Organization

Trump’s Financial Lies Just Got Him Booted From The World’s Most Exclusive Club

The same financial lies that have gotten disgraced, multiply-indicted ex-president Donald Trump in big trouble with the state of New York now have him in hot water with the most exclusive club in the world: The Forbes 400 ranking of America’s richest people.

Forbes announced today that as a result of Trump’s “relentless” lying to reporters for decades in a pathetic attempt to boost his ranking on the list, he has now been dumped from it completely.

His net worth is down more than $600 million from a year ago. The biggest reason: Truth Social, his social-media business. Trump once envisioned a significant percentage of the country logging onto the platform. But that never happened. Roughly 6.5 million have signed up so far, about 1% of the total on X (né Twitter). Trump’s 90% stake in Truth Social’s parent company has plummeted in value from an estimated $730 million to less than $100 million.

The failed former president is also failing badly on the real estate front, Forbes reports, with his Trump branded properties down in value by a staggering $170 million. That figure could be increasing by even more as the state of New York has also banned Trump and the Trump Organization from doing business in the state and are seeking at least $250 million in financial damages for the crimes allegedly committed by the company.

Is anything going well in the business world for Trump? Well, his golf clubs are at least making money.

As fewer people spend time in the office, more are goofing off on the golf course. That’s especially good news for Trump National Doral, the former president’s most valuable golf property, purchased for $150 million in 2012. Trump commenced an extensive renovation of the Miami resort, reportedly injecting more than $200 million of additional cash, before politics spoiled his investment.

The Donald has been off the list before, only to slither back onto it years later, Forbes notes.

In the 1990s, Trump took out enormous loans that resulted in well-publicized bankruptcies. He made a comeback from that but fell off once more in the midst of the Covid pandemic which hit the hotel and travel industry hard, leading to gigantic losses that he hoped would be offset by the launching of his Truth Social platform, which has been a total bust, with only 6.5 million users. That’s about 1% of the total who are on Twitter. Overall, Trump’s 90% stake in Truth Social’s parent company has fallen in value from $730 million to less than $100 million.

Can Trump reinvent himself this time and make a financial comeback? Considering that he’s 77 years old and facing decades in prison, it seems beyond impossible, especially for a man who doesn’t have an ounce of truth in his enormous, bloated body.

 

Categories
Crime Donald Trump Donald Trump Jr. Eric Trump Ivanka Trump

Trump’s Kids Dropped From Lawsuit After Saying He Was The ‘Largest Beneficiary’ Of Fraud

Donald Trump’s three oldest children — Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric — have been dropped from a fraud lawsuit in New York after their depositions “made clear” that the failed former president was the “architect, principal actor, and largest beneficiary of the fraudulent scheme.”

The lawsuit, which was filed five years ago, alleges that the ex-president deliberately misled viewers of “Celebrity Apprentice” by hawking investments in a desktop video phone that never materialized, despite Trump swearing it was to be the next big thing in telecommunications, according to Bloomberg.

As part of the agreement, depositions testimony from the three children — who worked closely with their father while his TV show aired — can still be used at trial. The former president and his company, Trump Corp., remain defendants. 

Roberta Kaplan, who serves as attorney for the plaintiffs, remarked, “That is why we proposed this stipulation in the first place: Donald J. Trump and the company he used to carry out the scheme, The Trump Corporation, are the right defendants as we move toward a jury trial,”

Clifford S. Robert, who represents the Trump children, said he was pleased by the news:

“It’s about time. They never should have been in this baseless lawsuit in the first place.”

The video phone was repeatedly pushed by Trump on “Celebrity Apprentice” but smartphones later made it obsolete.

In ads for the video phone, Trump claims, “Trust me — it’s changing everything. The absolute truth is that this technology will be present in every home within the next several years.”

He was paid nearly $9 million over ten years to promote the device, which was made by ACN Opportunity LLC.

The twice-impeached former president and his three oldest kids are still facing fraud charges filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

 

Categories
Crime Donald Trump

Trump’s Latest Legal Headache From Special Counsel Jack Smith: Possible Wire Fraud Charges 

In addition to the criminal charges failed one-term former president Donald Trump could face when Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith completes his investigation of the classified documents Trump had illegally at Mar-a-Lago, a report from The New York Times also suggests that Smith may well indict Trump for wire fraud.

According to The Times, “Led by the special counsel Jack Smith, prosecutors are trying to determine whether Mr. Trump and his aides violated federal wire fraud statutes as they raised as much as $250 million through a political action committee by saying they needed the money to fight to reverse election fraud even though they had been told repeatedly that there was no evidence to back up those fraud claims.”

“In the past several months, prosecutors have issued multiple batches of subpoenas in a wide-ranging effort to understand Save America,” The Times added, “which was set up shortly after the election as Mr. Trump’s main fund-raising entity.”

That led former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner to note during a Saturday appearance on MSNBC, “Wire fraud is the stock and trade of the federal prosecutors. If you use the wires, it’s an old-time term, it used to mean the TV, the radio, the telephone — now it’s the internet — as part of a scheme to defraud others out of their money.”

Kirschner continued, “Those are fairly easy charges to prove. So I have a feeling, you can see a series of wire fraud charges in what I would predict would be the larger charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb8XisoSvWU&t=2s

Trump has been committing fraud for decades by refusing to pay contractors, attorneys, and employees. But defrauding the United States is a much more serious matter, if only because the DOJ has almost unlimited resources to pursue Donald to the doors of the nearest federal prison.

Categories
Crime Donald Trump The Trump Organization

Trump’s Financial Penalty For Inflating His Net Worth Could Reach $1 Billion: Report

In addition to possibly watching as New York Attorney General Letitia James shuts down the Trump Organization, failed, one-term former president Donald Trump is also facing the prospect of having to pay up to $1 billion in financial penalties to the state for inflating the value of his business.

That’s the opinion of Trump’s former attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen, who floated the $1 billion figure during an appearance on MSNBC Thursday.

Speaking with host Ari Melber, Cohen remarked:

“I think Tish James is fantastic. I think she is an incredible attorney general, and an attorney general that I wish every single state in this country had. I actually wish [Manhattan DA] Alvin Bragg had been a little more Tish James. Though I’m going give Alvin a little bit of leeway as we now in October have the case against the Trump Organization … you cannot separate the Trump Organization from Donald.”

The led Melber to ask:

“Knowing him well, where do you think his head and emotions are at today, when he sees the prospect that he could really be booted from New York business, not him or his kids able to run any business here?”

Cohen replied:

“One of the things you talked about at the beginning, she’s seeking $250 million. That’s not accurate. What she said was the baseline of $250 million. Knowing the documents the way I do and knowing exactly the fraud that was going on, I see the number between $750 million and $1 billion.”

Imagine it: Trump is forbidden from ever doing business in the state of New York, the Trump Organization is permanently shuttered, and on top of that, the Donald has to pay $1 billion in penalties to the Empire State. He doesn’t have $1 billion, and no one is going to loan him a sum that large. He’d be forced to declare bankruptcy and liquidate all his assets.

Sounds about right considering all the harm Trump has done to this country.

 

Categories
Crime Donald Trump The Trump Organization

Trump Ordered To Testify Under Oath In New York Fraud Investigation

Failed, one-term, twice-impeached former President Donald Trump has been notified that he will have to sit for a sworn deposition in the civil fraud case against him in New York.

The Washington Post reports:

New York Attorney General Letitia James is seeking a deposition from former president Donald Trump early next year as part of her investigation into potential fraud inside the Trump Organization, according to people familiar with the matter.

James has requested to take his testimony on Jan. 7 at her New York office as part of a civil investigation into whether Trump’s company committed financial fraud in the valuations of properties to different entities, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the inquiry is ongoing.

One of the people familiar with the investigation said James is examining whether widespread fraud “permeated the Trump Organization.”

Notified of the deposition date, a spokesperson for the Trump Organization used one of the ex-president’s favorite invocations whenever he’s being investigated:

“This is another political witch-hunt,” the statement said, noting that James is running for governor next year. “The only focus of the New York AG is to investigate Trump, all for her own political ambitions … This political prosecution is illegal, unethical and is a travesty to our great state and legal system.”

James is clearly turning up the heat on Trump, who is also under criminal investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. Vance suspects Trump and his company inflated the value of real estate assets in order to get larger loans from lenders and later devalued those same properties to avoid paying the required taxes. Bank and tax fraud are just two of the crimes under investigation by Vance.

The former president’s son, Eric, has given a deposition in the fraud investigation being conducted by James. He originally refused to sit for a deposition but later relented. That deposition was given in October of last year, shortly before American voters booted the Donald Trump from the White House and replaced him with President Joe Biden.

The danger of Trump giving a deposition cannot be overstated, according to biographer Tim O’Brien, who has written extensively about the ex-president:

“He can’t be scripted, and he’s injudicious, and he often doesn’t understand that the process is about events and facts, rather than being performance art.”