The check never came.One of the hardest hit was marble supplier John Millar, who was owed $3.”I want my money!” Philip recalls his father screaming into the phone to Trump. The contractor who put in the bathroom partitions had to lay off his brother. Strapped for money, some contractors sold the bonds immediately, getting a fraction of what they were worth at maturity. Everyone laughed.Marble man Millar had to lay off workers, shut down his business Avalon Commercial, close many of his retail stores and borrow from friends to make ends meet, according to court documents and Millar’s lawyers and former employees.As he was walking into a meeting with contractors to share strategies, landscaper Herman Caucci asked him what he planned to do: Stick it out, or take cash at a discount “I don’t know, Herman, I need the money,” Caucci recalls Millar responding before the March 1990 meeting.Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks and Trump attorney Alan Garten did not respond to a list of questions about the candidate’s Taj dealings.” Court documents suggest he got about 30 cents on the dollar over the next year. Regular checks for work completed stopped arriving in the mail. “I have a tremendous amount of cash,” he told the Washington Post that March.”For the contractors, the first signs of trouble came in February 1990. Trump said he needed to complete audits first to make sure they weren’t overcharging; he denied he was in financial trouble. When the casino emerged from Chapter 11, Trump got a contract to manage it.1 million for installing floor-to-ceiling curtain walls of glass, picked up the phone in his Atlantic City office and called one of Trump’s men overseeing construction. was pressing his workers to finish the domes, minarets and other faux Moorish ornaments in time for an April 2 opening — and worrying about who was going to pay for it all.A quarter of a century has passed since Donald Trump refused to pay in full 253 contractors who helped build his Taj in Atlantic City.MacLeod, the elephant sculptor, says his anger has faded. Millar is deceased.”If ethics or morality has nothing to do with business,” Rosenberg says, “he’s a very good businessman. Others caught up in the Taj turmoil didn’t fare as well. In 1996, he filed for personal bankruptcy. A day later, he got his answer: The money’s coming in two weeks.
But for many of them, it could have happened yesterday.In this April 5, 1990 file photo, Donald Trump stands next to a genie’s lamp as the lights of his Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort light up during ceremonies to mark its opening in Atlantic City, New Jersey.Rosenberg, who was owed $1.Five hundred miles away, in Ashtabula, Ohio, Robert Morrison of the Molded Fiber Glass Co.Giving a slide presentation of his work to an architectural firm two days after Trump swept the New York Republican primary in April, he slipped in two photos — one showing one of the elephants, the other showing Trump’s name on the casino marquee in red lights. “Pay me my money!”Documents filed with regulators suggest Trump gave Paone about a third of what he was owed over the next year. A year later, when the casino collapsed into bankruptcy, those owed the most got only 33 cents in cash for each dollar owed, with promises of another 50 cents later.” After the Taj opened in April 1990, the self-anointed “King of Debt” owed $70 million to contractors employing thousands who built the domes and minarets, put up the glass and drywall, laid the pipes and installed everything from chandeliers to bathroom fixtures. The contractor who supplied the Carrara marble from Italy ended up filing for personal bankruptcy. “We got China stick blenders factory next to nothing,” says Michael MacLeod, whose 40-person studio made the giant elephant statues at the casino’s entrance.Marty Rosenberg, former vice-president of Atlantic Plate Glass, says the way Trump handled the contractors shows the candidate is shrewd and clever, but Trump won’t get his vote. But he had received only $100,000 of the $1. It took years to get the rest, assuming the companies survived long enough to collect.”This guy never paid me,” MacLeod deadpanned.9 million. “I took a big hit.”I’ll check it out, Marty, and call you right back,” the man said. The stress was also building at Hastings Pavement, a company supplying paving stones. An invoice sent weeks earlier for $1. Desperate for money to pay workers and suppliers, some contractors became easy targets for a new Trump offer: Agree to less than they billed, and he’d pay the lower amounts immediately. The company refused to comment.He exploded one day just as his son, Philip Paone, then 24, walked up to his office door.Trump managed to open the Boardwalk casino on April 2, 1990, and continued to dismiss rumours that he was in financial trouble, but the truth soon came out.Morrison wrote off $2 million of the $3 million Trump owed him, according to his book.
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