It's a fascinating complaint to read. It's long, stretching to over 220 pages, but has lot's of interesting details in it.
One thing that is interesting is the nature of the fraud complaint, at least as described in the first quarter of the complaint.
When people think of fraud, people tend to think of things like the Madoff example. Madoff makes false statements, provides false documents, etc..., and as part of that he lines his own pockets with other people's money, and his investors basically lose everything they invested.
The AG seems to be saying that is not the same case here. This is not necessarily a case where any individuals or businesses or banks were harmed. To the contrary, it appears that in an effort to dodge this complaint, most of the loans and other lenders have been paid.
The basic claim of the AG is this: Trump prepared false financial statements by grossly inflating the values of property, used the financial statements to get big loans, then financially benefited from those loans. The AG acknowledges that the banks were all paid back. It is the AG's position that under NY fraud law, you don't need someone harmed by the false statements. It's enough that you benefited financially from those false statements.
I think that's very interesting. It's almost a victimless crime, but one by which Trump clearly benefited.
I haven't had time to read the last three quarters of the complaint, so I'm curious to see what the rest of the allegations are, including things like the tax fraud.
