SPECIMEN #008: Sapiens academicus fraudulentus (The Education President: Or How to Sell Someone a Secret for $35,000)
- Classification: Education Grifter / Dream Merchant / Selective Autodidact
- Habitat: Holiday Inn conference rooms, free investor workshops, the space between aspiration and desperation where people make decisions they cannot afford
- Diet: Financial anxiety, the American dream, and the specific vulnerability of people who believe that the right knowledge, from the right person, can change everything
- Threat Level: To your savings, your faith in education, and your understanding of what the word "university" is supposed to mean
Before he created a cult.
Before he became president.
Before the bibles and the sneakers and the trading cards and the coins and the phone that doesn't exist.
There was a university.
It was not a university.
The Institution
Trump University opened in 2005.
It was not accredited. It could not award degrees. It was not, in any legally recognised sense, a university.
The State of New York told Trump as much in 2005, informing him that operating an unaccredited institution using the word "university" violated state law, and requesting that he change the name.
He did not change the name.
He kept the name for five more years.
The Promise
The pitch was elegantly simple.
Donald Trump had secrets.
Real estate secrets. Investment secrets. The insider knowledge that had made him a billionaire, distilled into a curriculum, taught by instructors he had personally handpicked, available to anyone willing to pay.
A one-year apprenticeship: $1,495.
A membership: over $10,000.
Gold Elite classes: $35,000.
The instructors were not handpicked by Trump.
Trump's own deposition confirmed he was, in the precise language of the court record, relatively unengaged with what went on at Trump University.
The secrets, such as they were, included information available on the IRS website and real estate techniques that were illegal in some of the states where the seminars were held.
The Funnel
The operation followed a familiar architecture.
It began with a free workshop. An investor seminar, held in a Holiday Inn conference room, open to anyone who wanted to learn Trump's methods.
At the free workshop, attendees were encouraged to purchase the three-day seminar.
At the three-day seminar, attendees were encouraged to purchase the Gold Elite package.
At each stage, the promise was the same: the real secrets were in the next tier. Pay more, learn more, get closer to the knowledge that would change everything.
The knowledge that would change everything cost $35,000.
It did not change everything.
The Students
More than 6,000 people paid for Trump University programmes.
They were not, in the main, wealthy people looking for a diversion. They were people who wanted to better themselves. People who believed that education, even unconventional education, could open doors that had previously been closed.
Bob Guillo paid $35,000.
"The more and more I got involved in Trump University," he said, "the more and more I found out that I had truly been scammed. At first it was embarrassing. Then I became very, very angry that the man that scammed me out of all that money had the audacity to run for president."
He was 76 years old.
He had paid $35,000 for secrets that were not secrets, taught by instructors who were not handpicked, at a university that was not a university.
The Judge
When the lawsuits came, Trump attacked the judge.
Judge Gonzalo Curiel, he said, was biased. Could not be trusted to rule fairly. Had an inherent conflict of interest that disqualified him from the case.
The conflict of interest was that Judge Curiel's parents had emigrated from Mexico.
Judge Curiel was born in Indiana.
He had never lived in Mexico.
He was, by every legal and factual measure, an American judge presiding over an American case.
Trump suggested, during his presidential campaign, that a man born in Indiana to Mexican parents could not fairly judge an American defendant.
He was, at the time, running to become president of a country built by people whose parents came from somewhere else.
The irony was not acknowledged.
The Settlement
Trump said he would never settle.
He said this repeatedly, forcefully, and with the confidence of a man who believed he had done nothing wrong.
He settled.
Two weeks after winning the 2016 presidential election, with the trial scheduled to begin and the prospect of sitting before a jury as president-elect, he settled.
$25 million.
He did not admit wrongdoing.
He did not pay the $25 million himself.
His Las Vegas hotel business partner, billionaire Phil Ruffin, paid it.
The exact arrangement between Trump and Ruffin regarding this payment has never been fully explained.
Ruffin described it as back-fees related to their hotel.
The timing, two weeks after the settlement, has not been elaborated upon.
The 6,000 students received between 80 and 90 cents for every dollar they had paid.
Trump received the presidency.
The Language
A brief glossary:
"University" - an institution of higher learning, accredited, degree-granting, and legally permitted to use the word. Used here as a brand.
"Handpicked instructors" - instructors. The handpicking is not documented.
"Insider secrets" - information available on government websites and, in some cases, illegal in the states where it was taught.
"I would never settle" - I will settle.
"No admission of wrongdoing" - a standard legal settlement condition, applied here to conduct described by the New York Attorney General as swindling thousands of Americans out of millions of dollars.
"Back-fees" - $25 million, paid by a business partner, two weeks after a settlement, for reasons that have not been fully explained.
Field Notes
Trump University is not the largest fraud in American history.
It is not even the largest fraud associated with its founder.
What it is, in the context of this taxonomy, is the prototype.
The free workshop that leads to the paid seminar that leads to the Gold Elite package is the same funnel used by every affiliate marketer, every passive income prophet, every AI productivity guru in these pages.
The promise of insider knowledge, available only to those willing to pay, is the same promise made by every wellness grifter selling protocols and morning routines.
The gap between what was advertised and what was delivered is the same gap exploited by every specimen in this collection.
Trump University was not the beginning of internet grifting.
But it was, for its founder, the beginning of something.
A proof of concept.
A demonstration that the promise of secrets, delivered with sufficient confidence, to people desperate enough to believe, could generate millions of dollars and no criminal liability.
The next products would be bigger.
The audience would be larger.
The secrets would be more expensive.
And the word university, it turned out, was just the first word he would use in ways it was not meant to be used.
Advisory
If you encounter Sapiens academicus fraudulentus in the wild, do not be alarmed.
The Holiday Inn conference room is real. The aspiration of the people who filled it is real. The desire to learn, to improve, to find the knowledge that might change things, that is as real as anything in these pages and considerably more honourable than what was sold to them.
The secrets were not secrets.
The instructors were not handpicked.
The university was not a university.
The settlement was $25 million, paid by someone else, with no admission of wrongdoing.
Bob Guillo paid $35,000.
He was 76 years old.
He deserved better.
They all did.