Trump U

The first insider account straight from Trump University, by one of its principal instructors.



While the President of the United States seems to be able to shock with each new tweet, and no depth seems too low for him to sink to, we've yet to hear from someone who was at the heart of one of his signature outrages--Trump University, the infamous and elaborate scheme to con hundreds of earnest citizens out of their hard-earned dollars.





Until now.





Stephen Gilpin is a real estate guy. His forte is buying distressed properties and flipping them; he's done a lot of that, in his day, in Florida and elsewhere. In the go-go world of the 1990s, he came to New York City from Pittston, PA., with nothing other than his looks, and after a brief and successful stint as a male model, managed to work his way into the thick of the brutal world of New York real estate. This was where the real money was, he correctly reasoned--where he'd meet men and women possessed of character, energy—and lots of cash.





But this is not a "Wolf of Wall Street" story. Gilpin quickly became an expert in leveraging properties, and he saw this as a way to rescue declining neighborhoods—and and get rich in the process. He wanted to share his knowledge with others, and when he was asked to join Trump University's Trump Entrepreneur Initiative as a "Master Real Estate Coach," to teach in the shadow of a man whom he then greatly admired, he jumped at the chance. Little did he know that he would become an unwilling participant in one of the largest con games in American history.





This is his story.