Trump, as a brand, angers buyers

NEW YORK, May 13 (UPI) -- Court papers in several lawsuits claim U.S. real estate developer Donald Trump deceived buyers by attaching his name to various building projects.

After several of the projects collapsed, it was revealed Trump had no connection to the developments, except in selling the rights to others to use his name, The New York Times reported Friday.

Alex Davis, a one-time devotee to all things Trump, including his books and his television show, said he lost his entire $100,000 deposit on a $500,000 unit in the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Fort Lauderdale, which Trump referred to as "my latest development."

It turns out, Trump had no legal ties with the construction of the project that bore his name, the Times reported.

"The last thing you ever expect is that somebody you revere will mislead you," Davis said.

Another buyer, retired Army Lt. Col. John Robbins, said he put down a $150,000 deposit to get in on the Trump Tower Tampa in Tampa, Fla., which Trump described as, "my first project on the Gulf of Mexico."

It was later revealed Trump was required to meet with buyers by contract "for no more than six working hours" on at least two occasions and that he was paid $4 million, plus a share of profits, to have his name connected to the project.

Otherwise, he was not legally the project's developer or builder, the Times reported.

The agreement, however, stipulated that the contract granting builders use of the Trump name was to be kept confidential.

"When things got overinflated in the world, we removed ourselves from the ground-up development world, where we are risking a lot more," Trump's son Donald Trump Jr. said in an interview.

"We switched more to a license model," he said.