A Manhasset man has alleged he was duped into spending nearly $35,000 on faulty get-rich-quick seminars from Donald Trump’s embattled real estate school, which was sued last week by state Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman for $40 million.
Robert Guillo, 73, said he spent $34,995 on Trump University seminars that promised the business secrets and strategies that made Trump a billionaire.
But each three-day course Guillo attended only led to a barrage of featured guest speakers flaunting their successes, a photo next to a cardboard cutout of Trump and Trump University officials who solicited payments for future seminars, he said.
“I thought it was a legitimate university that was started by Donald Trump to give us little guys like me the benefit of his experiences and make us wealthy like he was,” Guillo said in an interview.
In late 2009, Guillo’s son Alex attended a free Trump University seminar during which he was asked to pay $1,495 for a three-day retreat with the program, to be hosted at a Manhattan hotel.
Guillo and his son attended the seminar, which promised to explain how one can profit from real estate ventures.
Guillo said the seminar’s speakers told their rags-to-riches stories, each attributing their fortune to Trump’s teachings.
“At the time they were all very convincing,” Guillo said. “Basically, I was relying on Donald Trump’s reputation from his real estate and Trump Casinos and how he’s been all over television and the newspapers over the years.”
The only business advice Guillo said he received from the seminar was to “call our credit card companies to raise our credit limits, so that we could enroll in the Trump Gold Elite program and buy real estate.”
Guillo retired in 1997 after a 30-year career helping law firms establish and organize corporations and other businesses, saying he knew enough about the documentation processes to research Trump University on his own. Based on his findings, he said Trump University checked out as a legitimate.
Guillo said he kept attending the seminars as part of the Trump Gold Elite program, each costing upwards of $1,000. Eventually, Guillo said he realized things weren’t what they seemed.
“One woman said she went through the Trump program and bought income properties in California and she basically didn’t have to work anymore,” Guillo said. “I asked her, ‘If you don’t have to work anymore, why are you doing this?’ She said she was doing it to let other people know they could be successful like her.”
By 2011, former Trump University students began filing complaints alleging they had been scammed by the seminars, and education officials criticized the program’s legitimacy as an educational institution.
Former Trump University student Tara Makaeff alleged in a class-action suit against Trump at the time that she lost close to $80,000 to the program.
Guillo said he paid attention to Makaeff’s suit – in addition to Trump’s $100 million countersuit and Trump University’s name change, to Trump Entrepreneurial Initiative – and reached out to Trump University officials demanding a refund of his money. Instead, he said he was offered a $500 credit toward his American Express Card and a 30-day, one-on-one real estate mentorship program.
“We’re going to give you the best person to show you how to buy and sell real estate,” Guillo said Trump officials told him. “I said, ‘No thanks, I’ve met some of your mentors and they’re all phonies. I want my money back.”
Guillo said he then got a call from George Sorial, one of Trump’s attorneys, who told him in late 2011 that Trump University would not refund his money but would still offer him the one-on-one mentorship program.
Guillo then filed a complaint with the attorney general’s office.
Efforts to reach Trump Entrepreneurial Initiative officials were unavailing.
Schneiderman announced the $40 million lawsuit on Monday against Trump, Trump University and former Trump University President Michael Sexton as part of an investigation into for-profit colleges from the attorney general’s Bureau of Consumer Fraud and Protection.
Between 2005 and 2011, Schneiderman alleged Trump University operated as an unlicensed educational institute promising to teach the billionaire’s investing techniques, but instead misled the school’s students into paying for courses that did little to further their entrepreneurship.
According to an Associated Press report, Trump said Schneiderman’s lawsuit is false and that the school had a 98 percent approval rating among students from across the country, calling the attorney general “a hack looking to get publicity.”
Trump has also created a Web site, 98Percent.com, which features recent news articles attacking Schneiderman as well as the testimonials of seemingly satisfied, yet unidentified Trump University students.
Guillo said the testimonials, taken in the form of question-and-answer surveys, were required of Trump University students at the completion of each seminar to earn a certificate of each program’s completion.
“You know how at T.G.I Fridays, you get your check and it says on the receipt that you can get a free entree if you complete a survey online? That’s what these surveys were,” Guillo said. “They’d tell you to give them a favorable rating so you’d get your certificate and keep getting invited back for seminars.”
In an Aug. 26 op-ed piece in the New York Daily News, Schneiderman said Trump has used his celebrity status and showmanship to make “outlandish accusations” in response to the attorney general’s office and its work.
“But I am not in the entertainment business,” Schneiderman wrote. “I am in the justice business.”
Schneiderman goes on to say that his office received complaints from other Trump University students who said they lost their life savings and homes by investing in the school.
“Some 5,000 hardworking people from all over the country fell for Donald Trump’s sales pitch and ended up getting taken,” Schneiderman wrote. “They were victims of a high-pressure bait and switch. That’s consumer fraud.”
Guillo said he does not expect to get his money back, saying he’d expect the case to lag into the future and his estate would be more likely to receive any settlement funds.
“I guess you could say I got trumped by Trump,” Guillo said.
