[2] During 2006, its first full year of operation, the company put on 120 seminars in 30 cities across the United States, with The Trump Organization receiving a cut for every seat filled.
Although the Institute and Trump University were separately owned, their operations overlapped, and they often used promotional materials bearing both names.
[1] Many students complained that the Institute made false promises of prosperity and provided little actual teaching, and that requests for refunds were refused or stonewalled.
Hundreds of letters of complaint were filed with the state attorneys general of New York, Florida, and Texas and with local Better Business Bureaus.
But the Milins had a record of previous get-rich-quick schemes and fraud investigations in multiple states dating back to the 1980s.