Earlier this week, we learned that Trump University encouraged prospective students to pay for its classes by maxing out their credit cards. Now, a seminar script obtained by ABC News has revealed one of the insights those students risked their financial security to access: If you pretend to make more money that you actually do, credit card companies may give you a higher spending limit.
“When asked about your income, take your current income and add $75,000 from your real estate enterprise,” reads the instructor’s script for the seminar Fast Track to Foreclosure Investing. In other words, the presentation advises students to commit fraud by pretending they already possess the wealth they plan to gain through real-estate investments. This was likely an important first step for the many Trump University student-investors who had already taken on massive credit card debt to pay for the seminar.
“If someone is encouraging people to make a false representation about their current income — that might be an appropriate target for prosecution,” John W. Moscow, former head of the Frauds Bureau of the New York County District Attorney’s office, told ABC.
To be fair to Trump University, the school did promise to teach the secrets of its namesake’s success — and drastically inflating one’s income appears to be one of them.
