I actually consider this a very big win for Trump.
Literal decades of fraud that netted him billions in profits and he only has to pay back $300 million.
Little decades of fraud, and he’s only banned from being an officer or director for 3 years. He gets to keep everything else.
Once again a very rich person got away with decades of crimes and only had to give back a portion of the profits. $355 million is only a small portion of the money he has made in the past four decades.
Guy should have been forced to cough up the full 375, and then permanently banned from doing any more businesses in the state. Anything else is a gift.
I’m no expert by any means but I think once he’s kicked out of NY, it’s going to be pretty difficult for him to get back in.
He also has the court appointed monitor for the next 3 years which he already complained is costing him money (by stopping him from committing more fraud).
On top of that, banks will think twice before doing business with him in the future making it very difficult for him to make money without risking what he already has
While I agree that it should have been much more, I think (well more of a hope) that the long term damage this will do will cost him and his family far more than if he never committed fraud in the first place… Then again, he’s shown an amazing ability to avoid consequences this far
He hasn’t really been kicked out, though. Has he? He’s banned from “serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity in New York for a period of three years” but the business certificates were not cancelled. The judge modified his original order from September to vacate the directive to cancel them. That means that when the monitor, who Trump is paying about $186,000/month, is done in three years, he’ll be back in control of it all.
He’s not allowed to control or direct the company for those 3 years, and the sum of the judgment might be enough to force the company to be sold off
I know Trump has done a lot of illegal stuff to make money over the years, but this trial is specifically about the over valuing of his properties in New York state. $300 million and loss of owning and operating businesses in the state, even temporarily, is a huge punishment for what he was on trial for.
If only his many other trials end the same way then maybe he will have faced justice. We’ll have to see.
