Basically, Trump dodged this bullet in part because, by the 2000s, fraudulent house-flipping instruction had been normalized, with dodgy, unlicensed "real estate schools" sprouting in every city and proliferating online like mushrooms on horseshit. By 2006 there were at least three such schools based in Baltimore alone, not counting Trump U, which trolled for suckers in hotel ballrooms just out of town. So consumers could be forgiven for believing it was perfectly legal to dupe people out of $1,500 or $3,000 or $35,000 in exchange for unethical house-flipping advice they could find free on internet message boards. In paying the $25 million, President Trump admitted no wrongdoing, of course.