“as seen last week when New York’s Democrat AG Letitia James filed suit against Trump and his children, Don Jr., Eric, and Ivanka, alleging in a sprawling 200-plus-page complaint that “the Trump Organization committed all kinds of fraud in inflating real estate assets to get more favorable loans”
One thing I don’t really comprehend is how this is fraud and how its the responsibility of the state to deal with.
Example: Refinance my mortgage to get equity out of the house. I tell the bank that the house is worth 500k. Bank does an appraisal and says its worth 330k. Am I now defrauding the bank by making an unprofessional statement of value? If the value declines below the appraisal am I now at risk of doing something illegal?
The answer is that it not illegal in any circumstance. How would the Trump’s valuation be relevant to any loan? Are not the banks completely responsible for determining this valuation and lending accordingly? Even if I were to lean on the bank in some manner by saying I would take my business elsewhere, the bank has a duty to its shareholders to do the correct thing as far as actuarial risk determination is concerned. That is to say, if the bank makes a bad loan then its the bank’s fault insofar as their risk assessment was not correct.
Here is another question- Has the Trump organization defaulted on any of these loans? Has some entity complained to the state about the trump organization defrauding them?
She’s claiming the government was the victim by being given lower tax assessment values. Although I don’t understand why the NY state people could not have done more due dilligence, if they were supposedly concerned about Trump understating value. But the bar is a lot lower in civil cases so Trump will likely settle this since he has a bigger chance of losing or wasting huge amounts of time and money.