“Coordinated, deliberate and knowing effort to deceive buyers”
President Donald Trump’s two eldest children knowingly took part in a fraud scheme to sell luxury condominiums, according to a new book about the family’s business.
The family’s dealings around the Trump SoHo project fell under criminal investigation, which was dropped in 2011, but the new book American Oligarchs: The Kushners, The Trumps And The Marriage Of Money And Power reveals email correspondence that appears to show Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump engaged in fraud, reported The Guardian.
“(Email evidence) showed a coordinated, deliberate and knowing effort to deceive buyers,” wrote journalist and author Andrea Bernstein. “In one email, the Trumps discussed how to coordinate false information they had given to prospective buyers. Because the sales levels had been overstated at the beginning of the sales process, any statement showing a lower level could reveal the untruths.”
Trump previewed the 46-story tower in lower Manhattan during a 2006 episode of NBC’s “The Apprentice,” but sales proved disappointing — especially after business partner Felix Sater’s criminal past was revealed.
Only about 15 percent to 30 percent of the units had been sold by the start of 2009, according to figures filed with state and federal agencies, but the future president’s children presented a rosier picture in public.
Ivanka Trump told Reuters in June 2008 that 60 percent of them had been sold, and Trump Jr. told Real Deal magazine in April 2009 that 55 percent of units had sold, according to Bernstein.
Buyers later sued Trump, complaining that they had been defrauded by inflated sales claims, and the Manhattan district attorney’s office then began a criminal investigation of the case.