News NY AG sues Trump and Trump Org for Financial Fraud (Update: Fraud verdict with $454M judgment)) (2 Viewers)

Figured he has two major legal things going, this should get its own focus.

When i was about 11, i saw a flying insect fly into a hole in the ground. Then a few fly out. So i walked over there and started to stomp on the ground just next to the small hole.

On about the 5th stomp, my foot broke thru the earth and leg/foot into the hole. I was stung over 15 times by hornets.

At some point, with Trumps continued stomping, it was inevitable that he would get stung.

I hope he isnt allergic to sting venom.

efil4 said:

When i was about 11, i saw a flying insect fly into a hole in the ground. Then a few fly out. So i walked over there and started to stomp on the ground just next to the small hole.

On about the 5th stomp, my foot broke thru the earth and leg/foot into the hole. I was stung over 15 times by hornets.

At some point, with Trumps continued stomping, it was inevitable that he would get stung.

I hope he isnt allergic to sting venom.

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He's been stomping his whole life

The lawsuit is good and all, but the criminal referral is the thing that caught my attention. If they have solid evidence, and I don't see why they wouldn't, then oh boy. Get the extra large tub of popcorn instead of the large.

Somebody get him, please.

At times in his prepresidential life, Donald Trump represented himself as a real-estate mogul, a television star, a business visionary, and a salesman par excellence.

But according to a complaint filed today by New York Attorney General Letitia James, the Trump Organization was actually just a massive fraud with incidental sidelines in property development, merchandising, and entertainment.

The basic scheme alleged in the complaint is straightforward. Trump would use different valuations for properties depending on what he needed: When he wanted to lower his taxes, he’d claim a low valuation; if he wanted to obtain loans on more favorable terms, he would inflate the valuation.

His overarching his goal was to inflate his claimed personal net worth year over year, which in turn allowed him to obtain better loans by personally guaranteeing them—all built on bogus claims about his assets.

“Claiming you have money you do not have does not amount to the art of the deal,” James said at a press conference. “It’s the art of the steal.”

The way Trump did this was often brazen, in James’s account. In 2011, for example, he obtained an appraisal for his property at 40 Wall Street, valuing the building at $200 million. But Trump claimed the building was worth nearly $525 million (even while attributing the valuation to information from the appraiser).

In another case, he calculated an astronomical value of his apartment at Trump Tower by claiming that its square footage was roughly triple the true figure.

He also changed values by shifting the methods he used to calculate them from year to year, so that, for example, the claimed value of undeveloped land at a golf course in Westchester County, New York, quadrupled from about $25 million in 2012 to nearly $102 million in 2013.

Sometimes Trump used more complicated methods to achieve the valuations he wanted, according to the complaint. Even though Trump knew that there were numerous restrictions on how he could use land at Mar-a-Lago—including some that he had signed in order to obtain tax benefits—he valued the property as though it bore no restrictions, producing valuations as high as $739 million when, according to the attorney general, the accurate value was about one-tenth of that.

At other times, he didn’t even try that hard, instead just tacking a 30 percent “brand premium” onto figures because the properties had his name on them...........

GrandAdmiral said:

The lawsuit is good and all, but the criminal referral is the thing that caught my attention. If they have solid evidence, and I don't see why they wouldn't, then oh boy. Get the extra large tub of popcorn instead of the large.

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I think the Manhattan District attorney that is responsible for criminal prosecution under New York state law, Alvin Bragg, previously refused to prosecute despite supposedly having plenty of evidence. Supposedly his predecessor, Cyrus Vance, was interested in prosecuting, but he was timid, and resigned before prosecuting. The U.S. Southern District of New York attorney general could prosecute, but they have been very reticent. Since these types of cases are hard to prosecute criminally, I doubt they will pursue it. I think Trump will only get prosecuted civilly for this. He's done so many shady things, but he usually treads the line that makes it hard to prosecute, but he is apt to get his comeuppance criminally for Jan 6th and the files.

Dershowitz is such a tool, lol. So, under this reasoning, if a bank robber hits one of the big banks, he shouldn’t be prosecuted? This also ignores the tax fraud and insurance fraud that was committed.

I just learned that pleading the 5th in a CIVIL matter does not actually help. It makes things worse as it's viewed as a sort of confession.

Will the AG seek the Corporate Death Penalty for Trump?

efil4 said:

I just learned that pleading the 5th in a CIVIL matter does not actually help. It makes things worse as it's viewed as a sort of confession.

Will the AG seek the Corporate Death Penalty for Trump?

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Most analysts say based on everything they've seen in the suit, she will.

superchuck500 said:

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If someone lies to get a loan they otherwise wouldn't have gotten, but that person doesn't default on the loan, in fact it's paid on time with no late payments would that change anything regarding the charges or consequences?

The bank can say they were lied to, they can claim they never would have approved the loan if they weren't lied to, but if the money was paid back when it was supposed to can the bank really claim they were defrauded? Especially if the lie wasn't discovered until years after the loan had been paid off?

Optimus Prime said:

If someone lies to get a loan they otherwise wouldn't have gotten, but that person doesn't default on the loan, in fact it's paid on time with no late payments would that change anything regarding the charges or consequences?

The bank can say they were lied to, they can claim they never would have approved the loan if they weren't lied to, but if the money was paid back when it was supposed to can the bank really claim they were defrauded? Especially if the lie wasn't discovered until years after the loan had been paid off?

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If the company paid better rates, both for its loans and for insurance, which it did, then they defrauded the banks and the insurance companies. No different than theft, IMO, or embezzlement.

Optimus Prime said:

If someone lies to get a loan they otherwise wouldn't have gotten, but that person doesn't default on the loan, in fact it's paid on time with no late payments would that change anything regarding the charges or consequences?

The bank can say they were lied to, they can claim they never would have approved the loan if they weren't lied to, but if the money was paid back when it was supposed to can the bank really claim they were defrauded? Especially if the lie wasn't discovered until years after the loan had been paid off?

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Corporate lending is heavily regulated, especially in New York where the numbers involved are very large. There are all sorts of compliance issues and borrowers have to sign sworn (I.e. under penalty of law) financial statements. The lenders rely on this system to manage loan risk and the greater financial system depends on this regulated loan risk to avoid broader systemic damage. The AG is the enforcement agency.

This is a civil compliance action for fraud - the submission of fraudulent financial statements in order to obtain lending. Actual injury to the lender isn’t required, it’s a systemic protection for the greater financial system. Putting everything on a “no harm no foul” basis effectively permits false financial statements in lending, which injects substantially more risk into the system.

It’s not like he was subtle about it - I saw where he inflated one property’s value by 1200%. That’s not a typo.