In 2014, a financially struggling hospice caregiver in California decided to invest in a video phone marketing company by the name of ACN.
She knew little about business and even less about telecommunications, but a video heavily featuring Donald Trump's endorsement of the company as "one of the best businesses" played at an ACN "training event" she attended allayed her fears.
The woman bought in, paying ACN a $499 "registration fee" to join the company, then forking over thousands more to attend "training events" all over the country over the next two years.
Trump photos and the Trump video featured heavily in every seminar and twice-monthly meetings ― a fixture seemingly designed to ease questions of legitimacy and coax members to continue forking over cash. (For the thousands she put in, by the time the woman quit ACN, she had got back just $38.)
And according to a lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan on Monday, ACN, along with two other Trump-endorsed "business opportunities," amounted to little more than predatory schemes that deliberately preyed on inexperienced, financially distressed investors. The suit, filed on behalf of four people who lost money in the get-rich-quick schemes, seeks class action status on behalf of thousands of similarly treated individuals.
The lawsuit claims ACN secretly paid Trump millions of dollars for his endorsement (Trump claimed in his ACN promo that his endorsement was "not for any money") in exchange for his falsely portraying ACN and several other schemes as legitimate business opportunities.
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