Schneiderman, in a statement announcing the deal, called it a "stunning reversal" by Trump, who had "fought us every step of the way, filing baseless charges and fruitless appeal​s​ and refusing to settle for even modest amounts of compensation for the victims of his phony university." Phony is right; one pillar of Schneiderman's lawsuit was that Trump had not even bothered to get his "university" licensed by New York state as a bona fide educational institution. "More than 5,000 people across the country who paid Donald Trump $40 million to teach them his hard sell tactics got a hard lesson in bait-and-switch," Schneiderman said when he filed his lawsuit in August 2013.