Paul Singer and David McKay Wilson

USA TODAY

The Texas Attorney General’s Office opened a deceptive trade practices investigation of Trump University in 2010 and chased the business out of the state, saying the promises made to students were “virtually impossible to achieve,” according to documents unearthed by a Democratic super PAC.

Assistant Attorney General Rick Berlin wrote to Donald Trump’s lawyers in June 2010 that Trump University seminars – for which students paid thousands of dollars – were targeted at real estate novices and promised "to teach these novices everything they need to know to be a successful residential real estate broker — in 3 days."

But in Texas, "to become licensed as a real estate broker you must have 900 hours of classroom instruction and 2 years selling experience,” Berlin said, in the memo the Democratic super PAC American Bridge 21st Century uncovered through a public records request and provided to USA TODAY. The information given to students by Trump University “is essentially unusable,” and students “will be unable to recoup their investment in the course, much less make a profit, as promised by Trump U,” Berlin wrote.

“In addition to encouraging unlicensed activity (which is a misdemeanor in Texas),” Berlin wrote, “the course materials in a number of respects are simply wrong under Texas law.

In an email this week, AG spokeswoman Teresa Farfan told USA TODAY that after the office opened its probe, “we understand they left Texas.”

The investigation apparently never went further than the exchange of emails and documents between the AG’s office and Trump’s lawyers. In a May 2010 email, Trump lawyer Michelle Lokey said “it was never our client’s intent to deceive Texas consumers” and “nothing about the either the workshops or the materials presented at the workshops is, in fact, deceptive or misleading.”

Donald Trump: Litigator-in-chief

Nevertheless, she said Trump University “will of course continue to honor its commitment to you and will continue to suspend its workshops in Texas while we address the remaining issues with your office.” It appears Trump University never reopened in the Lone Star State.

Berlin's boss at the time was Attorney General Greg Abbott, a Republican, who is now governor. Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for president.

Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks still defends the enterprise.

“Trump University was a professionally run company which provided students with a valuable and substantive education and the tools to succeed in business and real estate,” she told USA TODAY. “Those students that applied these strategies, were overwhelmingly satisfied and many were able to make substantial profits. Trump University did not promise, nor was its curriculum designed to teach students to become a real estate broker.”

Trump tweeted Thursday that maybe he will reopen the school.

But some former students and employees say it was just a scam to sell more Trump-branded products.

A California judge Tuesday unsealed hundreds of pages of Trump University manuals that gave detailed instructions to staff on how to aggressively push students to buy tens of thousands of dollars on Trump seminars, even going deeply into credit card debt to pay for it. The manuals provided a raft of "rebuttals" for students who were hesitating to make a purchase, emphasizing that they needed the assistance of a "Trump-trained mentor" and "a proven system from Mr. Trump" to make money in real estate.

Court docs offer glimpse into Trump University

"Trump University's seminars were a scheme involving a constant upsell," said Ronald Schnackenberg, a former Trump sales manager, in a 2012 declaration unsealed by the court this week, part of one of two class-action suits agaisnt Trump U. now pending in California. "I believe that Trump University was a fraudulent scheme, and that it preyed upon the elderly and uneducated to separate them from their money."

About 7,500 people paid for Trump University programs, according to a declaration from Mark Covais, who served as the director of operations. Covais said 572 of those people bought top-level Trump "Gold Elite" programs, which typically cost $35,000 for a series of three-day workshops and a yearlong mentorship. Covais' description of the packages customers bought suggests that Trump University generated in the neighborhood of $40 million in sales.

Covais said he collected and complied hundreds of student evaluations of the program, and 97% "rated TU programs 4.85 or higher on a 1-5 scale, with 5 being the highest score in terms of customer satisfaction."

But the university has left a trial of unhappy customers.

Fort Lauderdale attorney Sherri Simpson and her partner, Laura Marmontel, who paid $38,500 in 2010 for Trump University’s Elite Gold program and Miami bus tour, are among those seeking refunds from the real-estate education arm of the Trump business empire.

Simpson recalls the free seminar in a room with eight-foot high cardboard cut-outs of Trump.

At the time, real estate prices were rock bottom in the wake of the financial meltdown. She and her partner thought they could capitalize on the low prices, and turned to a trusted real-estate name to learn the ropes.

“If you have a choice of schools, you want to go with the best you can possibly choose,” she said. “We knew the Trump name and reputation. We relied on him and his name.”

Trump general counsel Alan Garten said that Trump University had a very generous refund policy, with students allowed to seek refunds within three days of signing up, or at the end of their first day in a course. He said the plaintiffs, not Trump University, were the cause for their own disappointment.

“When they got into the classes, they found it was far more involved, and required far more dedication and commitment than they were willing to give,” he said.

What Simpson found, however, was a program that failed to deliver on its promises of providing instructors selected by Trump, and a mentor who would provide assistance as she sought to buy her first investment property.

Her mentor never called to schedule a time to talk, according to her August 2011 letter to Trump University President Michael Sexton seeking a refund. In fact, she never heard from him again until he contacted her on Facebook to become his friend.

“The three-day workshop was pretty much useless,” she recalled. “Then he disappeared.”

Simpson, who appeared in an anti-Trump ad by the conservative American Future Fund ahead of the Florida primary, said she joined the class action suit to recoup the fees she paid.

“I’m aggravated that I lost all that money,” she said. “He promised to hire the best, to hand-pick the instructors, make sure everyone affiliated with the program was the best. But he didn’t do that.”

On Wednesday, Trump's campaign posted a video of three people identified as former Trump University students speaking about how pleased they were with the program. But USA TODAY discovered that the participants in the video all had other ties to Trump, including one whose company makes a protein drink that Trump is selling at several of his properties.

Trump’s success-story students in new video have other ties to him