So, I think I told the story a while back but well before Trump ran for president he was pulling all sorts of other scams on people. I don't recall the exact year but probably sometime in the late 2000s to 2014 or so he was part of a weird pyramid type scam involving video phones. Sadly, a guy I knew got involved with it. He and two high pressure sales guys began contacting me to try to pull me in. It was both funny and annoying. At first they would not tell you what the deal was all about. Just that it was some new "mind blowing technology that would change the world and now was the time to get in" which I read right away as nonsense.
They identified the fact that Donald Trump was the guy behind this as a major selling point. Obviously, not knowing that I thought Trump was a joke and that this only told me something was likely very wrong with whatever they were doing. Realize that Trump was pulling this stunt during his days as a TV reality show star and this was one of the ways he was trying to profit off that fame. He literally was selling buy-ins to whatever this was for amounts as low as $250.00 if I recall correctly and then part of what you would do once you bought in was you would host a "party" at your house and these guys, high pressure sales buffoons, would come and sell whomever you invited on this new wonder technology to get all of them to buy in at that $250 price, I believe. In turn the host of the party would get a small piece of what they made and then their pyramid would begin and anybody that bought in would go into their pyramid and your pyramid would expand as these people hosted parties to get buy-ins at their parties.
Just the typical pyramid nonsense. Nothing new. With me they knew I was a business owner so they were not looking for me to do the $250 buy-in, they wanted me to do some $10,000 buy which would put me in charge of, and supposedly profiting from, a specific region. This they claimed was only for "special" people that came highly recommended for their business acumen. In other words the guy I knew that got into this threw me under the bus as a mark and the con was on.
Here the fun really began because first the sent the guy I knew at me. I liked the guy, he was a good guy, he had at one point achieved some fame of his own as a comedian but that career had fallen off. He was doing other jobs to make ends meet and sadly, turned out to be a fan of Trump's idiotic TV show and fell for the idea that Trump was a genius, hook, line, and sinker. His pitch was very vague at first, new amazing technology and he could not tell me who the big money guy was behind it but that I was going to be really impressed when I found out. He invited me to a meeting. I passed. More calls came from him. More meetings were happening. I asked him for more details and just chatted about how he and his family were doing.
Finally, after several failed attempts to get me to attend a meeting, he calls me one night and says he has been authorized to give me the name of the guy behind this deal. He reveals that Donald Trump himself is behind this. My heart sank because when that name came up I knew this guy was roped into something that was a scam. He was a nice guy, with a wife and daughter, and he wanted to build something for his family.
I did not know Trump personally but what I knew from friends and family and through business people I knew that had dealt with him was he was an epic scam artist. I tried to talk to the guy and get him to think about what he was into and pushed him to describe to me what it was all about and what the technology was...because Trump and technology were not words that belonged together.
I could not get through to him, I believe I just upset him, and he was locked in to thinking this was his ticket into big money and some sort of association with Donald Trump. So, the next call I get is a conference call with my friend and a high pressure sales clown. The call began with my friend saying I have someone else on the line I really want to introduce you to and then this...
"Hi Reg, this is (whatever his name was) and I can't tell you how excited I am to be having this conversation with you. This rarely happens but you should know that the reason for this call is Donald Trump has specifically asked me to speak to you because he has heard about you and wants you as a partner."
I laughed because I could literally see the shit flowing out of the earpiece of my phone. The next thing I thought was wow, I am going to make the most of this chance to totally screw with this guy. Mostly because I have no love for this kind of clown but also because I knew he had scammed the guy I knew.
I did not let the guy spew all of his idiotic word salad at me and instead laid into him like I was way above his pay grade. Telling him not to waste my time and that if he had a deal to sell put it all on the table or stop calling me. He gave me the crap about how top secret this all was and it was huge that Trump allowed himself to be identified to me and that I should come see the tech to see what I thought. I blasted the guy telling him basically put up or shut up. He said he would call me back.
On the next call he tried to rope me in to a "special private showing" of the tech, so I again messed with him. I told him to tell me what they were selling or get lost. I'll call you back was his thing. He and another guy conference call me back and give me a huge amount of nonsense about how secret this is and that they are not supposed to divulge the tech, finally telling me that because Trump is so interested in having me on board that they have been authorized to tell me what it is but I must swear I will keep it to myself and agree to go to a meeting if they reveal it. They make another key mistake in that the guy says to me that this is 2001 technology, meaning the movie and I laugh and point out we were already past 2001 which would make it old tech.
Bottom line their big reveal is they are selling a video phone that mounts on the wall in your house. I could not control my laughter. The sheer stupidity of it was just off the charts. Needless to say, once I started laying into them about how dumb that was the next thing that happened was my buy-in dropped from $10,000, to $5000 to $2500. I kept giving them fits and having a blast giving them the runaround.
Finally, they call me and say they can't believe they are doing this but Trump wants me in so badly that he asked them to invite me to a dinner with him. They claim he does not give out these invitations to people unless they are already in but I am a special case. At this point I figured we had reached about as far as we could go with this so I said "Guys, you should know that I would not cross the street to spit on Donald Trump if he was on fire. When his name first came up, I knew this was a con."
I never heard from them again. My friend called me though and I told him again to get out with whatever he could because what he was into was just a bad scam. He stayed in. As I recall what happened was the video phone aspect of the scam tanked, because you could already make video calls from your computer and cell phones I think were either just offering this as well or were about to. So, nothing ground breaking or new about the tech they were pitching. In fact the tech they were selling was at least 50 years old and had not changed the world.
Trump, not one to give your money back once he had it morphed the video phone garbage into of all things, some sort of travel scam. Some deal where you bought into that and then with however many people you could get to buy in you would earn travel to these hotels and resorts around the world. This also would fall apart and likely had something to do with Trump branded properties because you know all things Donald touches turn to shit.
Anyway long way around to say I saw this headline this morning and it all came rushing back:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/trump-disregards-hurricane-ian-risks-refuses-to-reschedule-florida-deposition-in-video-phone-fraud-case/ar-AA12n5hg?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=793f1e2bf4284746b742ec6f87144063
