[Music] wellcome welcome welcome to Last Week Tonight I'm John Oliver thank you so much for joining us and let us Dive Right In this week with the 2016 election or as it's increasingly known America's fastic cir to dismay now the big news this week surrounded Donald Trump a punchline that is quickly becoming a nightmare like like like if you said take my wife please and then she was actually kidnapped by ISIS now this week revealed a somewhat startling statistic a new report from USA Today found Trump and his businesses have been involved in at least 3,500 lawsuits over three decades 3500 lawsuits that is unprecedented for a Presidential nominee in fact if each lawsuit involving Trump with the basis of an episode of Law and Order they could sustain all 456 episodes of the original all 389 episodes of Law and Order SVU or 195 episodes of Law and Order Criminal intent and all 22 Episodes of Law and Order La as well as every episode of The Practice Ali MCB La law Boston Legal Night Court The Good Wife Matt lock Jag Perry Mason Judging Amy the guardian the public defender Owen Marshall counselor at law Harry's Law Courthouse suits family law sweet Justice 1971's the da 2004's the da reasonable doubts damages shark The Defenders the paper chase head cases Jud for the defense and all three episodes of NBC's First Years and at that point you're still missing one lawsuit but you've also basically run out of television shows about lawyers meaning Trump's lawsuits exceed the limits of the genre well well lately lately there have been some new developments with Trump related litigation after he complained about a judge presiding over two particular cases against him I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump a hater he's a hater his name is Gonzalo curiel and he is not doing the right thing the judge who happens to be We Believe Mexican which is great I think that's fine oh oh you do do you you think that's fine great news people of Mexican desent Donald Trump thinks it's fine for you to be a human being existing on this planet now for the record the judge in question was born in Indiana but that's not the point because as he later clarified it was the judge's Mexican heritage that made him unfit to judge Trump you're invoking his race when talking about whether or not he can do his job ja I'm building a wall okay I'm building a wall I'm trying to keep business out of Mexico Mexico's fine there's nothing but he's he's American uh he's a Mexican heritage and he's very proud of it as I am where I come from wait where he where exactly are you from because you look like you came out of a clogged drain at the Wonka Factory and and you know what that's great I think that's fine but think about think about what he's implying there the judge is unfit to do his job because of his ethnic background and just this morning Trump took it a step further what if he was a Muslim though you've had been very tough on temporary Muslim immigration ban if were a Muslim judge would you also feel like they wouldn't be able to treat you fair Fairly because of that policy of yours uh uh it's possible yes yeah that would be possible absolutely I would say that was the dictionary definition of bigotry except after this campaign the definition of bigotry might just become C Trump comma Donald now as it happens the judge he initially insulted his overseeing cases involving the controversial Trump University and he ordered a cach of documents to be released this week which was very exciting to us because we actually looked into his university when we did our big piece on Trump back in February and it wound up up on this very long list of awful Donald Trump stories that we literally didn't have time to delve into even in a 22-minute piece but once we started reading through these new documents we figured oh it let's take some time to talk about it now because Trump University is kind of amazing back when it opened Trump made some big claims at Trump University we teach success that's what it's all about success it's going to happen to you if you don't learn from the people that we're going to be putting forward and these are all people that are handpicked by me then you're just not going to make it in terms of the world of success the world of success it it sounds like what Donald Trump calls his bedroom welcome to the world of success please enjoy a mint and a non-disclosure agreement now unfortunately Trump University ran into problems in several states starting with the name itself we started looking at Trump University and uh discovered that it was a classic bait and switch scheme it was a scam starting with the fact that it was not a university holy Trump University wasn't even a university which is enough to make you wonder what the was in Trump Stakes oh God it was possum wasn't it it was possum you monsters but the name was just the beginning cuz remember how he had handpicked instructors well according to his own depositions he did not personally select instructors for live seminars and was unable to recall the names of key faculty members and it's probably good that he didn't handpick them himself that would be dangerous anything Trump's tiny fingers touch turn into an ex-wife or an abandoned casino and and it doesn't stop there according to the sworn testimony by several former employees many instructors and mentors had no experience buying or selling real estate in fact one had worked as a Salesman for lows and another had been manager for Buffalo Wild Wings or as I call it BDubs dubs and and even a former member of Trump's own sales staff testified that it was among other things a joke a facade and was just selling false hopes and lies and to be fair every university has sold some of its students false hopes and lies it's just most of the time they call it a Theater Arts degree now these these new documents also include several revealing playbooks of sales tactics for instance the room temperature was to be no more than 68° which is partly to keep students alert and partly because Professor Wild Wings doesn't want the ranch Source getting all gamey there are also instructions on how to sell and upsell students or as the playbooks call them buyers on expensive courses with typo riddled tips like if a client is adamant about knowing the price simply say our course range anywhere from $29 $9 to $35,000 and if prospects seemed at all wary there was advice for dealing with that you must be very aggressive one passage from The Playbook reads if they complain about the price remind them that Trump is the best you might laugh but that is the same technique that Trump has been using to run for president and apparently it works these playbooks are Rife with sleazy salesmanship for instance employees were told to substitute the word thank you with congratulations so that the potential customer ends up thanking you which is pretty obnoxious if I started this show every week with welcome to Last Week Tonight congratulations on joining us you would quite rightly turn it off and I know what you're thinking well what about people who simply didn't have the money Trump you didn't really have a problem with that a set of playbooks for the sales team coached them on how to market the courses even into single mothers with three children who quote may need money for food money instructed The Playbook is never a reason for not enrolling in Trump University if they really believe in you and your product they will find the money you are not doing any favor by letting someone use lack of money as an excuse lack of money is not an excuse is not what single parents need to hear it's what Donald Trump needs to hear when a fifth company of his inevitably Falls for chapter 11 bankruptcy and as you might expect some of of the customers on the other end of that hard sale wound up feeling duped like Carmen Mendes who put a $35,000 course on her credit cards and was left disappointed I thought that I'm going to be a millionaire because Donald Trump is a millionaire and they were offering a course for people to get rich this is the closest Mendes got to Trump during the course a picture of her with a picture of Donald Trump oh that's not a oneoff cuz another former student said we were told that we would get to have our pictures taken with Donald Trump it ended up being a cardboard cutout of Mr Trump which is actually a perfect metaphor for Trump University You're Expecting the real thing but in the end all you get is a tacky two-dimensional facade with Donald Trump's face slapped on it but perhaps the most suspicious thing of all is that the playbooks even include Specific Instructions on what to do if an attorney general shows up and believe or not the answer is not kick over a table as a distraction and get the out of there no apparently you contact April immediately and it also reminds you you do not have to show them any personal information unless they have a warrant which is suspicious advice for a University employee I'm pretty sure Harvard doesn't tell its new professors welcome here's a gun and a cyanide capsule in case the fuz show up don't let them take you alive now Donald Trump Donald Trump has broadly denied the claims in the lawsuit and his attorneys have gathered statements from satisfied customers in fact to hear Trump tell it the school was very good value 98% of the people that took the courses we have report cards from everybody they report carded on the course 98% of the people that took the courses 98% approved the courses they thought they were terrific okay first there is something instantly fishy about 98% the only things that have that level of unanimous approval are dictators Pixar movies and Neapolitan ice cream yeah it's got chocolate for the chocoholics vanilla for the borings and strawberry for the perverts in fact according to plaintiffs the reason those numbers are so high is because the surveys were not Anonymous and were filled out when participants were still expecting to receive future benefits from the program such as Assistance or mentoring from the instructor they were evaluating so listen to why one former student gave it a good review that he now regrets I really look at it like this is is say you go to a really nice restaurant and uh really expensive restaurant you eat this really gorgeous dinner and the chef comes out near the end of your meal and asks you how you like the meal and you really really loved it but then you by the time you go home you realize that uh you gotten food poisoning and you're really really sick what do you think about Trump University I felt like I've been poisoned I just felt like I was just duped and poisoned and ripped off the only thing worse than that is having that same feeling and then realizing oh he's got 3 years 364 days left in his first term but but perhaps the most valuable lesson to come out of trump University is the one that it is currently giving all of us in what's behind Trump's campaign strategy because the Playbook tells his salespeople you don't sell products benefits or Solutions you sell feelings and that is what is happening now crowds at the Trump rally may not be able to point to a concrete benefit or solution he offers but they know how he makes them feel and that is jacked up and ready to boo any name that sounds vaguely Latino so if you are planning to vote for Trump in November I'd like to direct you to a quote from the top of trump University's old homepage take the risk but before you do learn what you're getting yourself into Donald I could not have said it better myself so thank you or should I say congratulations and now B and now Wolf Blitzer States the obvious and we'll hear from the president the cameras will be in there they'll be rolling obviously he's got Ebola uh and that's obviously a source of great concern they would like a good solution obviously when they prevents Iran from developing a nuclear bomb an 18-point Le for Hillary Clinton in South Carolina obviously uh that's welcome news for her campaign apparently kills about a third of those who get this virus and that's obviously very very terrifying bringing in Nazis and Hitler and all of this obviously not appropriate if anyone uh sees them obviously don't get near them M Ry obviously he's a Mormon obviously a lot of media there obviously we have a gas [Music] mask moving on our main topic tonight concerns debt it's the reason Nicholas Cage has made so many great choices in recent years and and presumably it's the fuel he uses to power performances like this one from his recent movie The trust open it open it open it open it open it open it open it open holy he he delivered that line like a child on PCP opening birthday presents which he clearly hopes are full of more PCP Now American households can collectively owe over 122 trillion in debt and right now 436 billion of that debt is seriously delinquent meaning it's 90 or more days past due and it is not good when anything is that late if your baby were 3 months overdue you'd effectively just be giving birth to a floppy toddler and look clearly if you have debts you should pay them if you can but many people can find themselves in debt for no direct fault of their own take Bob winoff a few years ago he was in intensive care over breathing trouble and after 4 days of treatment the hospital told his wife that their insurance was not going to cover the costs she said uh the bill is up to $80,000 already and she said Mrs Winecoff I hope you realize that you're responsible for this bill I was just hysterical I thought what am I going to do I've worked my whole life is this how my life is going to end that's terrible because some debts are completely unavoidable this isn't someone spending $80,000 on this Versace coat that looks like a banana a raw shark test no this is someone spending $80,000 to breathe but the fact that so many people have money trouble is not really surprising what may surprise you is the extent to which seriously delinquent debts have now given birth to an entire debt buying industry when most consumers get a call and say I'm calling on your Bank of America debt you assume that it's someone at Bank of America but what happens is Bank of America sold off that debt for pennies on the dollar years ago and it's been bought and sold and bought and sold and bought and sold most of the big Banks do it and not just Banks but payday loans U book club membership gym fees auto loans every year billions of dollars of this debt is sold off cheap it's true debt buying companies like these that you've probably never heard of have amassed a huge amount of Americans debt in fact the largest oncore Capital Group which as the subsidiaries tell investors that one in five consumers either owes them money now or has owed them money in the past which is incredible because that means statistically one member of Evan Essence owes or has owed Encore money and I think we all know who that would be it would be guitarist and backing vocalist Troy mccorn but as you will see almost every step of how this industry is allowed to operate is problematic and let's start at the very very beginning let's say you have a $1,000 credit card debt that you can't pay at a certain point your bank might write off the $4,000 on its taxes and then to make just a little extra money sell it off to a debt buyer for a tiny fraction of the cost maybe $50 and that debt buyer can then come after you for the full original amount and if it can't collect potentially it can then resell that debt for a fraction of what it paid to someone else who can still come after you for the original amount or sell it for a fraction of what it paid and so on and so on and so on now you might think the information Changing Hands would include a lot of verifiable information but you would be wrong it's I think helpful to understand that when I talk about debt that's being bought and sold here we're really just talking about an Excel spreadsheet the spreadsheet will have debtor's name social security number address balance date that the account was opened maybe one or two other fields but that's basically about it that's right the information about your debt May be sold in an Excel spreadsheet which is troubling for two reasons first nothing good happens in Excel most of us go into a cold sweat if we just open it by accident oh god oh no please no let me go back in time and fix this no and second in many states there is little obligation on the part of the debt seller to provide additional documentation many leaked contracts have explicitly stated the debts are being sold as is and with all faults which are weird terms to see in a major business transaction they'd even be troubling in the context of an Okay Cupid profile as is with all faults sometimes I masturbate to The Little Mermaid hey hey it's the fish half that does it for me now as for debt buyers they aren't always scrupulous about checking their information before collecting which is why it is not surprising to see incidents like this I opened the door and a envelope was thrown at me and the guy said you've been served and left supposedly it was a debt that I owed it was right under $5,000 uh what it was with a company I never had a card with it's humiliating it's intimidating uh it it it it provokes a lot of anxiety humiliating intimidating and provokes anxiety now to be honest I've had a similar experience but at least afterwards I got to brag the that I finally lost my virginity it was it was it was some years after that but it's not it's not just it's not just being sued for a debt you don't recognize buyers can end up harassing you over debt that is p past the statute of limitations or that you've discharged through bankruptcy or that you've paid you may have seen stories like this on local news because it's got a fun name is called Zombie debt that's debt that you thought was dead but starts to take on a whole new life much like a zombie buried old debt coming back to life it's called Zombie debt we're not talking about the kind of zombies that terrorize humans each week on The Walking Dead old debt thought to be settled and buried coming out of the Grave if not to eat your brain then certainly to give you a headache yeah zombies are fun but the comparison is actually quite apt cuz just like on The Walking Dead zombie debt comes back from the grave is incredibly hard to deal with and seems to disproportionately impact minorities so so once once a company has bought your debt whether the information is accurate or not they are going to try to collect on it and they can either do that themselves or assign it to a collection agency and while many collectors work within the bounds of the law some behave like this James give me my money back I want my money or else I'll kill you and if you refuse to answer the door to me I guarantee you I will wake up every neighbor in your entire building it's just why don't you just go J in front of the train you want to be a man or you want to hide behind the telephone like a little bitty Mouse we're going to have your dog arrested we're going to shoot him out we're going to eat him whoa W that is not just horrifying it's stupid how are you going to put handcuffs on a dog they don't have wrists the Cuffs are just going to slip straight off their doggy Paws your plan is silly and and some debt collectors won't just stop at calling you listen to an employee of an Upstate New York debt buyer explain one of his tactics to a hidden camera one of the things that I like to do ,000 which is pretty nasty though is that I'll find out where somebody works and then I'll find out who the owner of their company is find out their number and call them at home I love that call the boss at home that's my favorite thing to do that's your favorite thing that is the weirdest favorite thing I've ever heard and I am including whiskers on kittens and brown paper packages tied up with string that's a parcel bomb she's describing a parcel bomb also what's wrong with the rest of the kitten you creep now tactics like the ones that man described are illegal but debt buyers have been caught operating in flagrant disregard for the law just look at William Scott and Associates Federal prosecutors alleg in a criminal trial that will start next month that they lied to dets telling them they were part of a government task force set up to investigate fraud and using this letterhead featuring a clip art image of scales and the logo of for some reason the state department and they even gave their employees aliases like senior investor Gator Ace Rogers and Joe steel which sound like the stage names of understudy Chip andales sorry Ace sorry Joe everyone's here again tonight please put your shirts on and leave and look the debt buying industry will tell you that all these abuses are outliers and that most debt Buyers work within the law but one way they do that is that they sue people a lot debt buyers are among the heaviest individual users of our state court systems in fact in some cities like Newark St Louis and Chicago and this is true debt buyers have been found to file more cases than any other type of plaintiff and if you're wondering how the law representing debt buyers possibly have time to review all those cases they often don't when one New Jersey collection firm was sued they found that one attorney reviewed up to a thousand cases a day reviewing one case for Just 4 seconds and look there are definitely things that you can review in under 4 seconds uh laay biscuits and gravy flavored potato chips for instance one 2 three awful there you go uh or your mother's new boyfriend One Mississippi two Miss are not my real dad but but judging whether you have enough information to sue someone should really take a little longer than that and it turns out there is a strategy behind filing so many lawsuits these companies Bank on consumers ignoring the lawsuits which means they're automatically responsible for the debt they're dealing with 90 to 95% of these lawsuits going unanswered it's true they go unanswered meaning people don't turn up to their court dates and the debt buyers win by default and the phrase by default makes any situation sound less legitimate hi I want you to meet Carson he's my boyfriend by default oh hi Carson I have a lot of questions then and if they win in many states they then have the power to garnish your wages directly and given all of this it is hardly surprising that the debt collection industry of which debt buyers are a major part can claim a dubious honor we receive more complaints about this industry than any other and last year alone consumers filed over 280,000 complaints with Federal authorities related to debt collection wow there aren't even 280,000 complaints on the Yelp page for Hitler's bunker although although I'd actually like to add one more why is there a Yelp page for this one star one star for you now regulators and prosecutors have taken some successful actions against big players in the debt industry and some states have tightened their laws concerning debt buyers but others like these have all loosened regulation just look at Arkansas where in 2013 representative John Vines proposed HB 2028 which he claimed didn't do much at all what it does is it defines the term credit card which is apparently not being defined um throughout our many UCC Provisions so all this does is Define um credit card and uh other um terms that are uh Germain to uh credit card and credit card usage 2028 now I know that sounds like the world's most boring man describing the world's most boring bill boringly but that's not all it did because that bill actually defined the legal term creditor to include debt buyers and established a presumption of correctness of information in favor of the debt buyer that is a very friendly deal for them or anyone like a bank that would want to sell to them and it's worth noting that representative vines's wife works for a bank and I'd say he should have disclosed that but there was really no need to because the legislature was too busy creepily joking about it and is this considered a pro consumer bill or not not neutral or is help for the banking what what what I don't I don't know that it's going to have any effect on the consumer it's more just clarify the terms of usage I think presently used in the industry representative Williams if it's not good for banking I suggest that represent representative Vine's not go home tonight well I I would suggest it the same way I want to make sure that he's taking care of the bankers always oh always tell you what if I don't take care of the bankers I'm going to be taking care of myself in the shower for the rest of the week y'all know what I mean five give me five I'll take a another five let's make it a 20 now by the way that that bill passed the Arkansas house 83 to0 but perhaps what's most concerning about all of this is that in some states there is a shockingly low barrier of entry into this industry in these states you can purchase debt with no license and in these states you can collect on debt with no license essentially that means there are places in this country where you need to fill out less paperwork to start collecting money from people's pockets than you do to collect fish from a Lake now the debt buyers trade group DBA International claims the industry is working to regulate itself in fact it's developed a code of ethics it calls the gold standard of the industry it actually has an annual conference in Las Vegas which does make sense as Vegas as we know is the gold standard of shitty places anyone can go to their conference though I frankly wouldn't recommend it it's pretty BL Bleak and the reason I know that is we sent people with a hidden camera and the footage they brought back was fascinating not fascinating like a good book more fascinating like a rat carrying a wedding ring across some train tracks there's a story there and it's a sad one but right from the start of the conference there was a defensive tone one seminar was actually titled debt buyers are the good guys how to convince the court although their argument for that seemed shaky at best what we're doing unbeknown to the most of the world is we're helping the economy we're securing monies from sources that wouldn't ordinarily uh have been paying them we're helping people who are struggling with that to try to restructure that and get their lives back in order oh yeah they're really helping people get their ducks in a row but only in the Windover Chinese restaurant sense th this good guy conference also featured a free shoe shine booth for a business promising to liquidate your bankrupt and deceased debt which is exactly what it sounds like because their business includes collecting on a debt after the deta passes away and that is the sleaziest way of making money imaginable other than a petting zoo attendant charging 10 bucks extra to let you get to second base with a goat and whenever the law did come up speakers could be surprised in glib for instance some debt buyers try to collect on out of Statute debt which is debt that has grown so old you can no longer be sued over it and that is something that some states now require debt buyers notify you about in letters that they send but what the contempt with which one speaker dismisses those warnings who's going to read and understand these words on this letter the unsophisticated consumer I don't know do you think do you think we're is it really going to impact your collection I'd be curious to know you know put all those disclaimers you want in the letter have it has it really negatively impacted collections I'm not sure nobody I'm sure nobody wants to raise their hand and say I looked at it and I know it doesn't but I heck I depose these planets in these lawsuits they don't even read the letter oh you no no good guy business model has ever been based on the logic of well don't worry about people's legal rights I'm pretty sure half these unsophisticated morons can't read right guys right am I right though guys look it is pretty clear by now debt buying is a grimy business and badly needs more oversight because as it stands any idiot can get into it and I can prove that to you because I'm an idiot and we started a debt buying company and it was disturbingly easy let me explain back in April we spent $50 to incorporate a debt acquisition Company online in Mississippi and incidentally over the Internet is the best way to experience Mississippi we called it we called it central asset recovery professionals or C after the bottom feeding fish I became chairman of the board and carp set up this very Bland website and dipped our toes into the debt market and with little more to go on than that website we were soon offered a portfolio of nearly 15 million dollar of out of Statute medical debt from Texas at a cost of less than half a cent on the dollar Which is less than 60 grand for that amount carp would be sent the personal information including names current addresses and Social Security numbers of nearly 9,000 people so we bought it which is absolutely terrifying because it means if I wanted to I could legally have carp take possession of that list and have employees start calling people turning their lives upside down over medical debt they no longer had to pay there would be absolutely nothing wrong with that except for the fact that absolutely everything is wrong with that and that is why we actually decided to go another way because we thought well instead of collecting on the money why not forgive it because on one hand it's obviously the right thing to do but much more importantly we'd be staging the largest one-time giveaway in television show history because as best we can tell the most anyone has ever given away on a TV show at one time to date was this car a car a car oh my goodness everybody get the call yes yes yes now that giveaway was worth nearly $8 million but we bought nearly twice that in medical debt so instead of having the file sent to CP we had the seller send it directly to a nonprofit organization which specializes in forgiving medical debt with no tax consequences for the debtor and tonight at my signal with the power vested in me as chairman of the board of car they will commence the debt forgiving process so what are you saying are you ready to make television history let's do this now clearly this is only going to help the 9,000 people whose medical debt we bought the larger issue is we need much clearer rules and tougher oversight to protect consumers from potentially predatory companies like the one that we set up but in the meantime it seems the least we can do with this debt that I cannot believe we are allowed to own is to give it away so are you ready to do this you are about to watch me give away $15 million you Oprah it's done it is done I am the new queen of daytime talk thank you so much for watching the show thank you to the dead Bo industry and our unable problems associated see you next week good night [Applause]
