A report from Rolling Stone has revealed that, in addition to all the trouble already surrounding the Trump Organization, the ex-President business is now facing down additional accusations of insurance fraud — allegedly swindling their insurance company with wildly over-inflated damage claims — according to one former employee of Donald’s golf course.
Two different insiders — both of whom requested anonymity — claim that the insurance fraud accusations hail from a 2011 flooding incident at Donald’s Briarcliff golf course. The Trump Organization reportedly received a staggering $1.3 million from their insurance claim to repair the damages incurred from the flooding, only to ultimately spend a fraction of the insurance payment on actual repairs.
Rolling Stone’s Hettena reports, “When a deluge flooded the Trump Organization’s Westchester County golf course and a nearby town in 2011, the organization used a wildly inflated claim to score an insurance payout of nearly $1.3 million, pulling in far more than what it spent to repair the course,” going on to add, “The previously unreported insurance claim at Trump National Golf Club in the Village of Briarcliff Manor far outstripped the cost to repair the damages, which were about $130,000 to $150,000, one of the sources says.”
According to the former Trump golf course employee, “The work was never completed. They basically band-aided it.”
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The report notes that the ex-President’s scandal-ridden Organization actually requested an even larger payout from the insurance company, attempting to file a much larger claim, but the insurer ultimately refused the payout when the Organization failed to produce receipts to back up the claim.
“Questions around the claim could spell more legal trouble for a Trump Organization already eyeball-deep in lawsuits and investigations. The Westchester County District Attorney’s office has opened a criminal investigation into financial dealings at Trump’s Briarcliff club. The New York Times, which first reported the investigation, said it appears focused at least in part on whether the Trump Organization misled local officials about the value of the property to reduce its taxes,” the Rolling Stone report goes on to read. “The organization’s alleged insurance shenanigans at Briarcliff may help explain how the Trump Organization, year over year, took in more from insurance than it paid out in premiums. One of the sources said the company would routinely gather overinflated repair estimates, often from members of Trump’s clubs, that could be used to justify insurance claims. In a conversation with top company officials, the source learned that the Trump Organization calculated that it got more than $2 back from insurers for every dollar it paid in — a return of more than 100 percent. Broadly, the source says, the company viewed insurance not as an expense, but rather as an ongoing source of profit.”
Hettena goes on to report that the newest accusations against the ex-President’s already floundering business were born of a lawsuit filed against the Trump Organization by the Village of Briarcliff Manor. The lawsuit laid the blame for the flooding on the Trump Organization, due to modifications made at the club, and noted that the water damage extended to neighbors.
You can read the full report here — requires a Rolling Stone subscription.
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
