title:  Donald Trump Could Be Running The Greatest Scam In American History
text: Donald Trump likes to promote himself a shrewd businessman, but many who have done business with the man have been cheated and lied to.While few people are under any illusions as to Trump s honesty or integrity, a closer look at his campaign finance scheme suggests he may be running an enormous scam on all of us.From the time Trump announced that he was entering the race for the republican presidential nomination, Trump has been telling his supporters that his campaign is mostly self-financed.That s true, and it s not true.Donald may want people to think he s a multi-billionaire, but as Addicting info reports here, his actual net worth is estimated to be much lower.As it turns out, Trump is  self-financing his campaign  by lending money to himself. As of February, the Trump campaign had loans totaling $17.5 million, more than 70 percent of all the money his campaign had brought in to date.As this graph from Sunlight Foundation shows, Trump has actually given very little to his campaign.Image credit: Sunlight FoundationDetails on the terms of these loans appear to be a well-kept secret. It s hard to imagine a profiteer like Donald Trump not charging interest on $17.5 million in loans.Then there are revelations that the Trump campaign is spending large sums of money at Trump owned businesses.As The Daily Beast reports here, between the time he entered the race and the close of 2015, the campaign had paid more than $2 million to Tag Air Inc.Trump owns a commercial-sized plane, a Boeing 757-200, which is equipped to safely transport 43 passengers in seat belts plated with 24-carat gold although they might prefer to sit in the dining room, one of two bedrooms, or in the shower, (or they might prefer to travel in his smaller jet or one of his two helicopters).His aircraft ferry him around the country, from New York to Des Moines to Manchester to Biloxi, at a steep cost.Steep is right. The bill ran over $500,000 for a single day, in June of 2015.There were also huge bills paid out to Trump owned restaurants like Trump Cafe and Trump Grill, while Trump Restaurants LLC got a $74,000 all on its own.The campaign paid rent and utilities to Trump Tower Commercial LLC, along with in-kind rent to Donald J. Trump, Trump CPS LLC, and Trump Plaza LLC.The Daily Beast also reports:Trump even has his own companies to manage payroll, Trump Payroll Corp. and Trump Tower Commercial LLC, where tens of thousands of dollars are regularly funneled before landing in the pockets of his well-compensated staff.Campaign finance law bars candidates from profiting off their own campaigns.Yet at least one FEC expert told The Daily Beast that Trump s financial scam is unprecedented.According to Paul Ryan, of the Campaign Legal Center This is sort of a strange gray area of the law that I don t think the FEC has ever addressed. As Olivia Nuzzi of The Daily Beast reports:Were Trump to profit from, say, the sale of 15 Ivanka s Salads, Ryan said it would be a  technical violation  of FEC law,  but it doesn t make sense for it to be a violation. Why should it matter, in other words, if it was his own money to begin with, if it is being recirculated back into his pocket throughout the course of the campaign?Trump once vowed to be the first presidential candidate to make a profit from his campaign.Back in February, The New York Times reported that he may be closer to doing that than anyone realizes.But in the end, Donald Trump s campaign may up being little more than a costly political commentary on the shady way that corporate America functions.If Trump is an expert at anything it s privatizing profits, while transferring losses onto U.S. taxpayers.He s filed multiple bankruptcies, so many in fact, that according to CNN Money, Trump s casino empire surpasses every major U.S. company when it comes to the number of bankruptcies filed over the past 30 years.The idea that Trump could walk away from his presidential bid with millions of dollars in profits, while leaving the taxpayers holding all the bills, is not all that far-fetched, especially given his expertise in the world of shady corporate finance.Image credit: Gage Skidmore