Who is Don Hankey? The billionaire and ‘king of subprime car loans’ behind Trump’s $175m fraud bond

Donald Trump managed to post the $175m bond in his New York civil fraud case on Monday thanks to the help of a California lender called the Knight Specialty Insurance Company.

“As promised, president Trump has posted bond,” the former president’s attorney Alina Habba told ABC News in a statement.

“He looks forward to vindicating his rights on appeal and overturning this unjust verdict.”

Knight Specialty is owned by Malibu-based businessman Don Hankey, whom MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin described as “the king of subprime car loans” – specialising in lending to automobile buyers with poor credit ratings at high rates of interest.

Mr Hankey, 80, is a married father-of-four who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from the University of Southern California, himself the son of a Ford car dealer.

He succeeded his father in 1972 and built the family business into the Hankey Group, a conglomerate whose principal enterprise was Westlake Financial Services, which specialised in auto loans.

“Hankey repossesses around 250 cars every day and his debt collectors have been known to spoof their caller ID so it appears that they are calling from the local pizzeria,” Forbes wrote of him in 2015.

Mr Hankey was placed 128th on Forbes’s 400 List in 2023 and 317th on its Billionaire’s roster for the same year.

He is also a prolific Republican donor and the largest shareholder in Axos Bank, which was founded in San Diego in 2000 under the name Bank of Internet USA.

The bank refinanced loans on Mr Trump’s Trump Tower complex in Manhattan and his Doral golf resort in Miami, Florida, in 2022, worth $100m and $125m respectively. Those loans are due for repayment by 2032.

Axos Banks was also involved in the $375m sale of the Trump