Let’s remember the time Donald Trump cashed a 13¢ check sent to him as a prank
http://fusion.net/story/170645/donald-trump-check-prank-spy/
Published between 1986 and 1998, Spy magazine was the hip, satirical, bomb-throwing magazine du jour, and in 1990 the writers had a great idea for a prank: What would happen if you sent checks for small amounts to celebrities and saw who cashed them, putting to test the theory that every man (and woman) has a price? In their words:
“We could however, send them checks for minuscule sums of money—sums so small they couldn’t fund as much as a minute of the recipients’ existence—and see who would bother to bank these teensy amounts of money.”
Spy thought “some subterfuge” would be necessary–it’d be suspicious to get a check from the magazine that lampooned so many of the intended recipients. This was specifically true for Trump, who Spy once famously referred to as a “short-fingered vulgarian.”
So, they created a fully funded and incorporated company called National Refund Clearinghouse, which allowed them to open a checking account. Then they drafted a letter explaining that the check was a refund for a small overcharge that had occurred in 1988–what the celebrities had been overcharged for was never mentioned. They sent the checks out (initially for $1.11) to 58 well-known people like Cher, Henry Kissinger, and, of course, Donald Trump. Of the 58, 26 cashed the checks–Donald included.
The magazine drafted a followup letter and checks for $0.64 to those 26 people to see who would take more free money. Thirteen–including Donald Trump–deposited the checks worth two quarters, a dime, and four pennies into their banks.
Then they went for one last score: in honor of those 13 people, 13 more checks for $0.13. Two people cashed them: a Saudi arms dealer named Adnan Khashoggi, and Donald Trump."
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