Mike Milin

Mike and Irene Milin were known to law enforcement officials in a number of states for a host of get-rich-quick schemes and alleged real estate scams. The Milins’ oft-investigated National Grants Conferences, in effect, became the blueprint for Trump Institute. The two seminar businesses used some of the same speakers and shared office space in Boca Raton, Florida. The Milins launched National Grants Conferences in 1998, promising customers lucrative grants from the government, which they could not fulfill. Before that, the couple basically got run out of each state in which they set up a different iteration of the same shady practice. NGC went bankrupt just two years after the Trump partnership began, after being dogged by a major complaint from 34 attorneys general across the United States. National Grants Conferences claimed that it could offer customers hundreds of billions of dollars in “free” government grants and loans. Following previous models the Milins developed, the program would provide one free seminar, after which individuals were encouraged to pay $999 for access to this information about grants, which amounted to a series of brochures and counselors who promised to help people get money. Mike Milin began his career as a salesman in the mid-1980s for the notorious get-rich-quick scheme artist Tony Hoffman, who was famous for wearing dollar sign-shaped rings and driving a brown limousine with a license plate reading “NEGOT8R.” When Hoffman’s company “National Superstar Inc.” went bankrupt in 1986, Milin and his wife, Irene, began to run their own seminar programs, using an infomercial hosted by Robin Leach of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous to advertise their products. Milin claims that he became a banking expert after writing his master’s thesis at the University of California, Berkeley, focusing on banking and sociology. He also alleges that he turned to real estate investing as a result of being laid off as a sociology professor at the university where he taught after graduating. According to the Times article, Berkeley’s office of admissions had no record of Milin attending or teaching at the university. And Kathleen Maclay, of Berkeley’s Media Relations department, told The Daily Beast “we have no student records for a Michael Milin.” The next move for the scamming couple was a Texas-based company called Information Seminars International, for which they were also sued—this time by the Texas attorney general in 1993—who found them liable for deceptive trade practices. The Milins’ program promised that if customers paid $499 for what they referred to as the “Milin Method,” the company would turn around and help them re-sell real estate at government auctions. The Milins loaned out some of their staffers to actually deliver seminars for Trump Institute, which have been described as live-action real estate infomercials. It is unclear what if any direct contact Trump himself had with the Milins, but according to a 2006 report, NGC and the Trump Institute shared at least three of the same owners and a joint Boca Raton address. By the time that NGC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2008, they owed $2.1 million to 20 of their creditors. The couple also has an outstanding lawsuit filed in Palm Beach County court alleging the Milins defaulted on a commercial property lease. After their business crashed and burned, the Milins later got politically involved, hosting a fundraiser for Mitt Romney in Boca Raton, shortly after his disastrous “47 percent” comment. They have contributed considerable amounts of money to political candidates, but surprisingly none to Donald Trump this cycle.