Tag: Fraud

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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

NY Says Trump Inflated Value Of Mar-a-Lago By 10x – That Could Mean Seizure Of The Resort

When New York Attorney General Letitia James announced that she was filing a civil lawsuit against Donald Trump, his three eldest children, and the Trump Organization for fraud, one of the things she mentioned as an example of the alleged fraud committed involved the ex-president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

The Washington Post reports:

The lawsuit, filed in New York Supreme Court, is the result of a more than two-year investigation by James and names 23 properties in the Trump Organization portfolio, including his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, his Seven Springs estate in Westchester County, N.Y., and the D.C. hotel he leased from the federal government until he sold it in May.

“The inflated asset valuations in the Statements cannot be brushed aside or excused as merely the result of exaggeration or good faith estimation about which reasonable real estate professionals may differ,” it says.

Here’s how James explained the way Trump overvalued Mar-a-Lago:

And the suit says Trump valued his Mar-a-Lago club property in Palm Beach, Florida, on the false premise that it sat on unrestricted property and could be developed for residential use, even though he allegedly knew that asset was subject to a slew of tight restrictions.

Mar-a-Lago “generated less than $25 million in annual revenue,” James said. “It should have been valued at about $75 million, but it was valued at $739 million.”

But the real danger for Trump, his family, and his company is that James has a weapon at her disposal that would allow her to impose what’s know as the “corporate death penalty” in the Empire State, as was first reported by Business Insider last month:

Fines and back taxes, however, may be the least of what Trump’s facing. James has signaled she will also seek the dissolution of the business itself under New York’s so-called corporate death penalty — a law that allows the AG to seek to dissolve businesses that operate ‘in a persistently fraudulent or illegal manner.’

In the coming months, James will be turning up the heat on the Trumps. And by the time she’s finished, the Trump Organization could be nothing but a bad memory.

 

Categories
Crime Ivanka Trump

Prosecutors Focusing On Ivanka For Committing Massive Fraud At The Trump Organization

While it’s long been known that Ivanka Trump is her father’s favorite child, it’s beginning to look like she’s almost as big of a liar and crook as her old man, too.

According to the Washington Post, New York Attorney General Letitia James suspects that Ivanka, acting on behalf of the Trump Organization, inflated the valuations of properties and other assets in order to bolster the company’s bid to lease the old Washington, D.C. Post Office and convert it to a Trump branded hotel:

As part of his bid for the GSA lease, Trump submitted statements of financial condition, according to a recent filing from James’s office and documents released by the House Oversight Committee. James alleged that in doing so, Trump and his daughter Ivanka — at the time an executive at his company who oversaw the project — won the hotel lease in part by providing the government with false financial information.

Ivanka Trump submitted the Trump Organization’s proposal and presented it on behalf of the company. James’s office noted in its filing that that “presentation and the associated bid explicitly incorporated the Statement of Financial Condition of Donald J. Trump.”

Rachel Maddow has now taken the Post’s reporting further, revealing that one of the properties under investigation as part of the fraud is a luxury apartment owned by Ivanka, as she explained on her show:

“Under her rental agreement, she apparently had the option to buy that apartment if she wanted to, for the cost of $8.5 million. But in the forms that were submitted to get the loans for the DC hotel, that very same apartment was listed as being worth more than $20 million. Then a few years later, they listed it as being worth $25 million — even though they knew there was an option to buy it for just $8.5 million. Attorney General James is looking into exactly that type of potentially illegally inflation of the Trump family and Trump Organization’s financial situation for a whole bunch of Trump properties.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=s1ZG6kj6rcc&feature=emb_logo

Since we know that the Trump Organization is already being investigated for such valuation lies (raising values to get bigger loans and then devaluing those same properties when it came time to pay taxes), it would seem that Ivanka was one of the masterminds behind the entire shell game the ex-president’s company was playing in order to gain a financial advantage, even though such actions are illegal.

If James has the evidence to support such a charge (and she has volumes of financial records and tax returns from the Trump Organization), then the best attorneys in the world won’t be able to save Ivanka or her old man from the legal hammer that’s about to come down on them.

 

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.”

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

Federal Appeals Court Says Multimillion Dollar Fraud Suit Against The Trumps Will Proceed

An enormous class action lawsuit filed against former President Donald Trump and his three oldest children — Don Jr., Eric, and Ivanka — will move forward despite pleas from the Trumps that the case be allowed to go to arbitration.

According to Courthouse News, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that the lawsuit, accuses the Trumps of running a pyramid scheme to hawk the services of American Communications Network, which allegedly ran a multilevel marketing scheme that bilked investors and never produced the financial returns it promised:

“Trump and three of his children — Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump — appeared from 2005 to 2015 in promotional television ads, at events and in magazines touting American Communications Network, a telecommunications company that offers business seminars and encourages enrollees to bring in new recruits.

“In a 2018 federal class action, four investors who said they lost hundreds or thousands of dollars investing with ACN sought damages from the then-first family and their corporate entity, the Trump Organization, saying they concealed that ACN paid them handsomely for their endorsements.”

Here’s how the scheme worked: ACN made investors pay $499 up front so they could register with the promise that they could then earn commissions by selling products at “motivational rallies.” At those rallies, family and friends were shown a DVD to encourage them to pony up money for their share of a massive payday promised in ACN’s promotional materials, many of which featured the Trumps encouraging people to pay money so the could reap the rewards, which never materialized.

In the lawsuit, investors reported they made back “less than 10%” of their initial investment.

Much like another illegal scheme, Trump University, the only people who made money in the ACN/Trump deal were the principals: ACN and the Trump family.

A class action judgement against the Trumps could put a massive dent in their bottom line at a time when the Trump Organization is reportedly hemorrhaging money and the former president is unable to lure investors to his struggling real estate business.

The Trump Organization is also under criminal indictment for engaging in tax fraud over the course of decades. Those indictments were handed down earlier this month.