{"id":177342,"date":"2019-10-16T17:56:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-16T22:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/10\/16\/yeah-and-hes-mobbed-up-too\/"},"modified":"2019-10-16T17:56:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-16T22:56:00","slug":"yeah-and-hes-mobbed-up-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/10\/16\/yeah-and-hes-mobbed-up-too\/","title":{"rendered":"Yeah, and He’s Mobbed Up Too"},"content":{"rendered":"
The good folks at ProPublica<\/i> have looked at Donald Trump’s property tax filings and his statements to banks, and find conclusive evidence of fraud<\/a>:<\/div>\n

Documents obtained by ProPublica show stark differences in how Donald Trump\u2019s businesses reported some expenses, profits and occupancy figures for two Manhattan buildings, giving a lender different figures than they provided to New York City tax authorities. The discrepancies made the buildings appear more profitable to the lender \u2014 and less profitable to the officials who set the buildings\u2019 property tax. <\/p>\n

For instance, Trump told the lender that he took in twice as much rent from one building as he reported to tax authorities during the same year, 2017. He also gave conflicting occupancy figures for one of his signature skyscrapers, located at 40 Wall Street. <\/p>\n

Lenders like to see a rising occupancy level as a sign of what they call \u201cleasing momentum.\u201d Sure enough, the company told a lender that 40 Wall Street had been 58.9% leased on Dec. 31, 2012, and then rose to 95% a few years later. The company told tax officials the building was 81% rented as of Jan. 5, 2013.<\/p>\n

A dozen real estate professionals told ProPublica they saw no clear explanation for multiple inconsistencies in the documents. The discrepancies are \u201cversions of fraud,\u201d said Nancy Wallace, a professor of finance and real estate at the Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley. \u201cThis kind of stuff is not OK.\u201d <\/p>\n

New York City\u2019s property tax forms state that the person signing them \u201caffirms the truth of the statements made\u201d and that \u201cfalse filings are subject to all applicable civil and criminal penalties.\u201d <\/p>\n

The punishments for lying to tax officials, or to lenders, can be significant, ranging from fines to criminal fraud charges. Two former Trump associates, Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort, are serving prison time for offenses that include falsifying tax and bank records, some of them related to real estate.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is the least surprising thing that I have heard in at least a month.<\/p>\n

Even if he weren’t Donald Trump, we would find this going on, because this, and exploiting political connections for profit, is pretty much what all real estate developers do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The good folks at ProPublica have looked at Donald Trump’s property tax filings and his statements to banks, and find conclusive evidence of fraud: Documents obtained by ProPublica show stark differences in how Donald Trump\u2019s businesses reported some expenses, profits and occupancy figures for two Manhattan buildings, giving a lender different figures than they provided …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,573,575,393,480],"class_list":["post-177342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-donald-trump","tag-fraud","tag-real-estate","tag-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177342"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177342\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}