General Discussion

He wasn’t building anything anymore. He was buying or leasing places. He’d change the design and then start marketing based mostly on his personal from his own telling and the TV show.

His marketing mainframe (if that’s the right term) was very likely how Russian interests communicated with him.

He marketed heavily to Russians. Many were simply bagmen cleaning money oligarchs couldn’t get out of Russia. I read once that one of his properties in Florida (I think) actually had street names in Russia. At least he was marketing the property.

In the period the author writes about, American banks finally realized he was a waste of time. I think before the TV show he only managed something like 5% of the things with his name on it.