Sunday, March 20, 2016

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said that his office’s case against Trump has nothing to do with the billionaire’s presidential run.

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Susan Watts/New York Daily News

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said that his office’s case against Trump has nothing to do with the billionaire’s presidential run.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on Sunday rejected suggestions that his office’s case against presidential candidate Donald Trump’s defunct “Trump University” was at all political.
“This is a straightforward fraud case. We never had any idea in 2013 the guy was going to run for president,” Schneiderman said on John Catsimatidis’ “Cats Roundtable” program on AM 970. “This is not a political case. This just a case where a lot of New Yorkers were ripped off.”
“There were thousands of folks who thought they were going to learn from real estate experts who were handpicked by Trump and that they would learn his personal secrets,” Schneiderman said. “Thousands of people (who) paid as much as $35,000 to $45,000.”
Schneiderman’s office filed suit against the now shuttered school in August 2013 after getting almost 70 complaints from students who said they were deceived into paying thousands of dollars for investment advising services they never received after getting lured in for “free” seminars.
TRUMP BRAND IS IN TROUBLE, MARKETING EXPERT SAYS

A flyer advertising “Trump University.”

A flyer advertising “Trump University.”

But after years of stalled litigation, a state appeals court last month gave a green light to the civil fraud claim against the GOP front-runner and his former education business.
In a unanimous ruling, a four-judge panel of the state Appellate Division said the state attorney general’s office was “authorized to bring a cause of action for fraud.”
Schneiderman had charged Trump University, which operated between 2004 and 2010, was a scam that ripped off its students. Through “their deceptive and unlawful practices, (Trump and the school) intentionally misled over 5,000 individuals nationwide, including over 600 New Yorkers, into paying as much as $35,000 each to participate in live seminars and mentorship programs with the promise of learning Donald Trump’s real estate investing techniques,” the AG’s office said.
Lawyers for Trump and his now-defunct school had contended that the suit should be tossed, pointing to a statute of limitations they say expired.

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