DAN FUMANO
The Vancouver Sun
When Trump University rolled through Vancouver in 2010, teaching people the secrets of acquiring wealth through real estate investment, the list of presenters and staff members included the names of a convicted cocaine trafficker, a controversial self-proclaimed “real estate guru” and an Ontario man implicated in a multimillion dollar fraud.
Trump University ran from 2005-11 as a travelling, educational institute promising to teach “students” the strategies of its namesake, celebrity billionaire Donald Trump, now the U.S. Republican Party’s nominee in next week’s presidential election.
But Trump University was sued by former students and scrutinized by U.S. authorities, who claimed it was an elaborate scam.
The instructors, students heard, were all “hand-picked” by Trump himself.
A review of thousands of pages of Trump University customer satisfaction surveys reveals the names of at least 10 of the presenters and staff members who worked, in the first half of 2010, on three-day seminars in Vancouver, where the initiative was called “Trump Education.”
The surveys were released this year by Trump and his attorneys. They were completed by students of seminars between 2007-10 in locations around the U.S., as well as Saskatoon, Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver.
One Trump team member listed in the Vancouver “Profit from Real Estate Investing” session was Damian Pell, who 10 years earlier had pleaded guilty in Florida to a felony charge of trafficking cocaine, The Associated Press reported last week.
Florida court records reviewed by Postmedia News show Pell was arrested in 1999 and pleaded guilty the following year, receiving a three-year jail sentence and a $53,000 fine.
An attendee of Pell’s April 2010 seminar in Vancouver wrote Pell was “helpful, yet little to know (sic) education. 50 minutes on himself, how he conducts business in everything but real estate.”
One week after Pell’s seminar in Vancouver, a man named Dave Ravindra presented a Trump Education “retreat” in Vancouver, the surveys show.
Last year, a man named Dave Ravindra (also known as “Ravindra Dave”) entered a settlement agreement with the Ontario Securities Commission, saying he and his former spouse raised more than $5 million from dozens of investors, engaged in “fraudulent conduct” and “used investor funds for other business purposes, and for personal benefit.”
An OSC spokeswoman could not confirm that the Dave Ravindra who committed fraud in Ontario was the same person who spoke at Trump Education seminar in Vancouver. But according to OSC filings, the man implicated in the Ontario fraud spent 2009-12 presenting “predominantly paid seminars to the public in Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia that purported to provide education and information regarding real estate related investments.”
In August 2015, the OSC ordered Ravindra and his co-respondents to pay a total of $3.6 million in dis-gorgements, costs and penalties. As of this week, the OSC’s delinquent payments list shows Ravindra had not yet paid a dime.
In 2013, New York Attorney General Eric Scnheiderman sued Trump and others involved with Trump University, “for engaging in persistent fraudulent, illegal and deceptive conduct in connection with the operation of Trump University.”
Court filings describe an introductory video at the seminars, in which “Donald Trump himself tells prospective students ‘We’re going to have professors that are absolutely terrific — terrific people, terrific brains, successful, the best. We’re going to have the best of the best … These are all people that are hand-picked by me.’ ”
At the seminars, the attorney general alleged, Trump University staff tried to “upsell” attendees — many of whom were senior citizens — “elite mentorship programs,” which cost US$10,000-$35,000.
In the surveys on the website, many Vancouver attendees expressed excitement about the knowledge and skills they learned.
An attendee of self-proclaimed “real-estate guru” Gerald Martin’s January 2010 Trump seminar in Vancouver wrote on his survey: “I would love to take the Elite Program, is there financing available yes/no. $15,000 down payment the rest in a 3-year term at 7%.”
Trump University is no longer in operation.
Emails sent to the Trump Organization and Trump campaign had not been answered by Thursday.
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