When a bunch of gullible marks came to Donald Trump, desperate to learn how he got so rich, the answer they were hoping for was probably not "by swindling chumps like you."

You are probably already familiar with Trump University, the weird not-a-university that is still the subject of ongoing consumer dissatisfaction and lawsuits. But have you heard about Trump Institute, which appears to be an even worse con?

Well, a Democratic super PAC would very much like to bring it to your attention.

Here's the short version of the story, though I do recommend reading the NYT's accounting in full: Since the 1980s, a couple named Irene and Mike Milin have been running a variety of get-rich-quick schemes mostly involving real estate, and a few years ago they licensed Donald Trump's name for a seminar that they seem to have copied from someone else's book. Though the Milins told their victims that Donald Trump was running the show, he was really just letting them use his name and likeness. Large portions of the curriculum were lifted from an old guide published by Success magazine, and a toll-free hotline that was set up for students contradicted what was taught in the course.

It's worth pointing out how these scammy shenanigans came to light: not from disgruntled students or vigilant consumer protection agencies, but from a Democratic organization that digs deep into Republicans' histories looking for scandal. It's called "American Bridge," and it was founded by David Brock — a former Republican, he once wrote a book attacking Anita Hill before switching sides and founding organizations like Media Matters and Correct the Record. It's largely thanks to American Bridge that the public found out about Todd Akin's cute "legitimate rape" quote in 2012.

The Trump Institute revelation is just scratching the surface (hopefully) of what American Bridge has uncovered on Trump. They're claiming to have amassed tens of thousands of hours of footage of him, and thousands of pages of research. FOIA logs show that they've recently combed through documents from various government agencies: USAID, the EPA, the Park Service, even the US Geological Survey.

What scandal could possibly be lurking in the shadows of Trump's dealings with geologists? Who knows. Maybe they're just taking a literal approach to the metaphor of turning over rocks to see what bugs crawl out.

For now, it's just been small ones. "I'm very busy," Irene Milin told the New York Times when they contacted her, and refused to comment further. But American Bridge has also documented Trump's ties to the mob, to Muammar Gaddafi, and to the NRA, so there are surely even bigger centipedes just waiting to be uncovered.