Palm House Robert Matthews EB-5 Clintons Trump Tony Bennett https://therealdeal.com/miami/issues_articles/lost-paradise-at-th...
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“really just needs a business plan and numbers to support the government's jobs
projections and give the appearance that it is able to execute on that plan.”
But a handful of legal experts argued that there’s minimal oversight by USCIS during
the course of most projects being built.
The agency is “inept at controlling the fraud,” said Michael Gibson, managing director at the EB-5 advisory firm USAdvisors.org. “No one knows who the true owners of the regional centers [are,] and there is no information on any of this. How can you deter
fraud when there is no way for anyone to do any due diligence?”
A spokesperson for USCIS said the agency has a team of auditors that conduct compliance reviews on regional centers and noted in an email to The Real Deal that it “does not release information on specific EB-5 applications, investors or related
projects due to [the Privacy Act] and other restrictions.”
“USCIS takes any violation of the law seriously, and we will explore all actions available to us to ensure the integrity of our immigration system,’ the spokesperson added. “Where instances of fraud are suspected or proven within the program, USCIS takes appropriate measures to deal with any actors involved in the fraud, including
terminating regional center designation.”
Regional centers have come under scrutiny for their roles in these EB-5 frauds in
recent years.
USCIS shutdown Vermont’s sole EB-5 regional center last year on the heels of the country’s largest EB-5 fraud to date in the state’s so-called Northeast Kingdom.
Elsewhere, in Jupiter, Florida, Nicholas Mastroianni — who's helped raise EB-5 funds for the Kushner family’s real estate projects — was sued last October over his Harbourside Place development by nearly 80 Chinese investors who accused him of
defrauding them. Mastroianni has denied these charges.
One of the underlying problems is that regional center
6/26/19, 11:57 AM
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