No. of Recommendations: 11
It seems obvious the state of NY simply does not want to be in the business of seizing and operating Real Estate for a sale.
And there's the rub about relying on CIVIL penalties against high dollar fraudsters. Since actual jail time is not in the cards for a penalty, civil cases rely upon purely financial punishments to - ahem -- encourage a change in behavior of losing defendants. If the defendant is someone who has mastered the art of living on debt and literally controls NOTHING that can be immediately converted into cash, it poses a huge dilemma for the state.
If the state's emphasis is on actually HURTING the defendent, it can choose to simply confiscate what little the defendant owns in the clear, regardless of the nature of that asset, then try to sell it as soon as possible to extract cash. If everything the defendant owns in the clear are cumberson assets like golf course and commercial buildings which are already in a slump, taking those assets shifts the onus of OPERATING them until sale upon the government and all the risks that come with that. If you confiscate a hotel then a guest drowns in the pool, the GOVERNMENT is now subject to lawsuits that would have normally been shouldered by the defendant. If you take possession of an office building amid a real estate downturn and attempt to unload, you could lose another 20-30% by forcing a sale rather than waiting for a better window or a better fit with a buyer.
If the state's emphasis is on actually collecting restitution from the defendant, options are extremely limited. That's the case here. As mentioned in prior threads, I'm at the point where Trump's "wholly owned" to "any stake" ratio of his properties is probably less than 20% and from a dollar value standpoint, I am guessing that ratio is closer to 5-10 percent. (Meaning, if Trump says he "owns" 100 assets, the number of assets where HE is the 100% owner in complete control of the asset is less than 20. Meaning, if the total dollar value of all 100 of those assets is $4 billion, the value of the shares of those assets actually OWNED by Trump is probably 5% of that $4 billion, or $200 million.) And since he is not even the majority owner of the bigger properties, he is not in a position to force the sale so he can cash out his minority share, nor does he have any leverage on the majority owners to get them to buy him out to free up his cash.
In other words, this is another teachable moment for the little people in America to drive home the point that if you owe a little money, the world owns you. If you owe GOBS of money, you own the world as long as there's someone dumb enough to keep lending you money to make minimum payments or as long as someone else made big enough mistakes lending to you that they want to defer that reckoning more than you do and will do anything to keep you afloat.
At this point, at a minimum, I think New York State should confiscate his 757 and park it somewhere prominently at LaGuardia so everyone visiting NYC can get a reminder that the big shot isn't quite so big. Then let's carefully track who pays for his private jet travel and how he discloses so we know who will be bankrolling the rest of this charade.
WTH
