Trump University is worse than reported

I have long been the number one enemy of the get-rich-quick real estate investment gurus

Because of the presidential race, there is an explosion of interest now in the Trump University case.

The media are not getting the Trump University story right

Furthermore, the media are getting the story wrong because they don’t understand the get-rich quick industry. When these get-rich-quick guys first came on the scene, I was the other side of the story on 60 Minutes, Good Morning America and Larry King Live. It’s not like anyone replaced me. The media just stopped covering the story. Trump University is far worse than the media and even his opponents are saying.

In 2013, I was an expert consultant in a suit against Robert Allen, the author of the book Nothing Down. On Friday, February 5th, 2016, I gave an expert deposition in another case between two other prominent mass-market real estate investment gurus.

So I will be watching the Trump University case with greater than normal interest. If they got another expert, I will be very interested to learn who that is. I am not aware that anyone else in the industry wanted to criticize the bad gurus. See my guru rating web pagehttp://johntreed.com/…/61653315-john-t-reed-s-views-of-vari…

Trump is discussed in Part 5 of my guru-ratings.

98% good report cards from students

I just saw Trump on Meet The Press bragging that his students gave him a 98% approval rating in the evaluations they turned in right after the seminars.

That would be precisely the sort of thing I could testify about. The bad gurus all seek handwritten evaluations at the end of the seminars. In some cases, you get a certificate suitable for framing saying you attended the course and you get that from the speaker who trades it to you for your evaluation of him.

People are nice. They do not like ugly confrontation. They are very unlikely to hand a nasty evaluation to a person who is standing there right in front of them and looking at the evaluation.

Time and again I have had conversations with unhappy customers of the bad gurus. And time and again, they were chagrined to admit they gave the speaker a good evaluation because they just wanted to get out of there.

The solution at trial would be not only to have an expert like me testify about that but to have the actual people who gave those favorable evaluations explain why they said those things when they believed the opposite. Trump’s lawyers would like ask them, “Were you lying when you gave the evaluation or are you lying now in hopes of getting money from Trump?” The answer is, “I was lying then because I did not want an unpleasant confrontation with the speaker. Today is also different in that I am under oath. The course was a fraud and a ripoff. I regret very much what I said on the evaluation.”

‘A’ rating from the Better Business Bureau

Trump also says his University had an A rating from the Better Business Bureau. Really? Whitney Information Network had an F, and these operations are all essentially the same. If you attend A’s seminar, you are very likely to have a speaker who previously worked guru Guru B and C. What is said and who says it at Trump’s or anyone else’s get-rich-quick seminar is the same. So how does Trump get an A from the Better Business Bureau with the same seminars that got Whitney an F?

I would not be surprised to learn that some of Whitney’s instructors were later Trump instructors. Plug and play is the phrase in the industry. A hires B’s speaker and they plug him into A’s seminar and he plays the same script that he did at B. Why is it an F at Whitney and an A at Trump’s essentially identical seminar?

I hope someone fact checks Trump’s claim that Trump University had an A rating from the BBB.

If Trump University was good, why does it not longer exist?

Maybe the most important rating is this one: Trump University is no more. If the students were so happy, and the business was profitable, why is that?