Rubio Campaign Press Release - This Donald Trump Con Scammed Working Americans Out of MILLIONS

A lot of people are talking about "Trump University," one of Donald Trump's rip-off business schemes that Marco mentioned at the debate the other night.

+500% spike in searches for "Trump University" #GOPDebate https://t.co/0I2QNqjWOW

— GoogleTrends (@GoogleTrends) February 26, 2016

America's higher-ed system may be overpriced, but Donald Trump's "university" took things to a whole new level:

It was a scam that delivered almost nothing to ordinary Americans who ponied up tens of thousands of dollars to high-pressure salesmen.

Here's what happened to one ordinary American couple who enrolled in one of the "Trump University" programs:

In June 2009, Richard and Shelly Hewson paid the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative, an educational venture owned by businessman and now—presidential candidate Donald Trump, $21,490 for classes that promised to teach them how to flip homes for profit.

They ponied up the high price "because we had faith in Donald Trump," Richard wrote in a January 2015 affidavit. "We thought that if this was his program, we would be learning to do real estate deals from his people who knew his techniques."

What did the New Jersey couple get for shelling out more than $20,000 to a business bearing the famous Trump name? An instructor took them on a field trip to see dilapidated homes in rough Philadelphia neighborhoods, never bothering to explain how to reliably find properties to sell for a profit. "We realized that Trump was not teaching us how to find these needles in a haystack," Richard Hewson's affidavit says.

"We concluded that we had paid over $20,000 for nothing, based on our belief in Donald Trump and the promises made at the [organization's] free seminar and three-day workshop."

Trump's "university" is now the subject of multiple lawsuits over misrepresentation and fraud. More than 100 victims have come forward and told their stories:

"Trump is facing three separate lawsuits — two class action suits filed in California and one filed by New York's attorney general — which argue the program that took in an estimated $40 million, but was mired in fraud and deception. … "We started looking at Trump University and discovered that it was a classic bait-and-switch scheme. It was a scam, starting with the fact that it was not a university," New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman told CNN's New Day after filing suit in 2013." (CNN, 9/30/15)

It was a "nationwide scam" according to this 2013 report:

More than 100 new people have come forward to complain that Donald Trump's now-defunct "university" was a ripoff, the Daily News has learned.

They come from New York and 25 other states and say they were wrongly promised they could get rich quick if they enrolled in an expensive mentoring program that investigators say was a sham, a source familiar with Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's investigation said.

Donald himself? He personally made $5 million off of the "university" according to documents and testimony, as Time reported last year.

This spring and summer — as the Republican and Democratic nominees face off for the White House — Trump will have to answer questions under oath about the scam:

This spring, just as the GOP nomination battle enters its final phase, frontrunner Donald Trump could be forced to take time out for some unwanted personal business: He's due to take the witness stand in a federal courtroom in San Diego, where he is being accused of running a financial fraud.

In court filings last Friday, lawyers for both sides in a long-running civil lawsuit over the now defunct Trump University named Trump on their witness lists. That makes it all but certain that the reality-show star and international businessman will be forced to be grilled under oath over allegations in the lawsuit that he engaged in deceptive trade practices and scammed thousands of students who enrolled in his "university" courses in response to promises he would make them rich in the real estate market.

Donald Trump has repeatedly said he's not a con artist.

But to those who lost thousands of dollars through his phony "university," that's exactly what he is.