From the article: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/losses-regrets-questions-companies-trump-endorsed-195127665--finance.html TRUMP THE TEACHER ___ Trump University, a school offering his insights into getting rich in real estate at three-day seminars, was different from the vitamin company. Trump was a founder and an owner, and he portrayed himself as taking an active role, shaping the curriculum and vetting the instructors. "My father did it, I did it," went one ad, referring to the fortunes they made in real estate, "and now I'm ready to teach you how to do it." The closest most students got to the mogul was a life-sized cardboard cutout. A 2013 lawsuit from the New York attorney general and two class actions in California claim the three days of instructions were largely useless, and that students paying $1,495 to attend were misled. Worse, students at the seminars were told to max out their credit cards to pay tens of thousands dollars more for additional "Elite" training that, the lawsuits claim, were also largely unhelpful. "I wasted my entire life savings on Trump," said former Trump University student Nelly Cunningham in an affidavit for the New York case. She added, "I feel like such a fool." In 2010, Mark Sokol said he paid for the three-day seminars at a hotel in Woburn, Massachusetts, after attending one of the school's free introductory classes to get people to sign up. "I was thinking, he's into real estate, maybe there's some merit," he recalled. He quickly regretted it. Sokol, now 51, said the main speaker was ill prepared, offering dated information. Sokol also didn't like being pressed to hand over more money for the "Elite" package, which cost $35,000. He refused. We were "preyed upon," he told the AP. "It was high pressure." Garten, Trump's lawyer, said students loved the school, now called the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative. Trump has said that the 2013 lawsuit, which accuses him of fraud, is without merit and that nearly all student surveys rated the program excellent. Garten sent the AP sworn statements from some of these students — "great learning experience," led by "fantastic" teachers, wrote one — and described the dissatisfied ones as an insignificant minority, given the 80,000 who attended the free or paid classes. "I am sure you could find in any business or business venture a handful of people who weren't satisfied," he said. He said they had "10,000 surveys online from 10,000 students, all of whom gave it the highest marks." The New York lawsuit is pending. Under pressure from regulators, the school had to drop "university" from its name in 2010 because it had never been licensed as one. It stopped taking new students later the same year. ___
