"Within days, Donald Trump could potentially have his sprawling real estate business empire ordered ‘dissolved’ for repeated misrepresentations on financial statements to lenders, adding him to a short list of scam marketers, con artists and others who have been hit with the ultimate punishment for violating New York’s powerful anti-fraud law,” the AP reports.
“An Associated Press analysis of nearly 70 years of civil cases under the law showed that such a penalty has only been imposed a dozen previous times, and Trump’s case stands apart in a significant way: It’s the only big business found that was threatened with a shutdown without a showing of obvious victims and major losses.”
The victim is the taxpayers of New York. The losses are the amount that they could not collect.
Did the prosecution even argue that in court? I don’t recall seeing it. The argument was that he was vastly overestimating the value of his properties to get favorable loan terms, not underestimatkng to avoid to taxes. I believe the tax valuation was used against him to show he lied when going for the loans, but I’ve not seen any argument that he substantially underestimated the property value to avoid taxes.
If they had been going after him for tax evasion, the charges would be different, i believe.
(edit) lol Downvotes but no explanation. I love this place sometimes.