EB-5 Visa Due Diligence: How to Spot the Warning Signs of Fraud
Another EB-5 visa fraud, more burned investors. For people outside the United States trying to pick a reputable investment that will get them permanent residency in the U.S., sorting through hundreds of projects is often the hardest part of the job.
There is plenty written about what you should do before you invest, one of the latest guides being from the North American Securities Administrators Association, here. You can read up on EB-5 frauds here.
What are the warning signs of fraud? Last year’s revelation of a huge fraud at a Vermont development that had sucked in hundreds of investors led many to wonder, “How could we have known this would blow up?”
There is no guaranteed way to find fraud, but if you see things that would give a prudent investor pause; if the project’s sponsors don’t have a good track record; if you don’t understand the risks of the project (and they all have risks) walk away.
Remember, many reputable immigration lawyers refuse to recommend an EB-5 investment because they don’t want to be sued if the investment encounters problems, whether of a normal business variety or because of fraud. Even if your lawyer recommends an investment, you should still perform due diligence on the project.
Even more surprising to some non-Americans, once the government spots EB-5 fraud, it’s often too late for the investors who have put in their money. Sometimes investors can recover and sometimes not, but the green cards they wanted will not be delivered and they have lost time in addition to money.
Looking at the track record of a developer is much easier than going through the hundreds of pages of documents you and your lawyer will need to examine before you invest your money. You will always need to do both, but as you sort through five or ten possible investments, start with the track records.
The Vermont Fraud Warning Signs
One of the most celebrated of all the projects was the group of investments in the northeastern state of Vermont, near the border with Canada. Jay Peak was an old ski hill that fell into the hands of a Canadian operating company. They began with the EB-5 program by raising money for one project, but then in 2008 the Canadian company sold the business to a man local press described as “mysterious,” Ariel Quiros. He grew up in New York, was of Puerto Rican and Venezuelan background, but had spent years in Korea building unspecified businesses which supposedly gave him the ability to buy Jay Peak for $25 million.
Once Quiros bought the mountain, the EB-5 projects accelerated, with six more projects for hotels and finally, before the scheme was exposed, a bio-technology park that was supposed to flourish among the ski hills and dairy farms of far-northern Vermont.
The main thing an investor should have asked about Jay Peak was, who exactly is Ariel Quiros, the owner? The whole sickening unravelling of the investment project is available at vtdigger.org (going from most recent to oldest story). But anyone investing after January 14, 2014 would have had an easy way to throw this one in the waste basket. A Vermont Digger article available on line described Quiros’ track record this way:
- He lost his seat on the board of Bioheart Inc. after AnC Bio [Quiros’ company] failed to make the second installment in a $4 million investment.
- Quiros also survived a Texas lawsuit in which two investors alleged breach of contract after they didn’t get their money back in full in 10 years.
- And a Florida man claims he never received almost $16,000 worth of equipment from a [Quiros] company called Q Vision, but he appears to have dropped his pursuit of the matter.
Of course, full due diligence could involve verifying the assertions in this article, but if they turned out to be true, who would entrust half a million dollars and a green card to someone with a track record of not following through on investments and unhappy investors alleging breach of contract?
If Quiros occasionally had disputes with investors and partners, you would also ask a more basic question: how did he make his money – the money that bought Jay Peak — in the first place?
The article in January 2014 said,
“Quiros has melded street smarts from New York, military sensibilities from the Korean Demilitarized Zone and a love of adventure into a business empire that spans the globe, starting with international trade from Korea in the early 1980s… GSI Group, where he got his start in Korea, imported and exported goods ranging from shoes to women’s blouses to radios…He specialized in raw materials, much of it for the Korean government, he says.”
In addition, Bloomberg says that “Mr. Quiros serves as a Director and Principal of GSI Group, a raw materials procurement company for the South Korean manufacturing community with offices in Seoul, Beijing, Sydney, Hong Kong and Miami.”
The only problem is, GSI is one difficult company to find. Quiros shows up on open-source databases as a corporate officer of 96 companies, but these are all in Florida, Panama and Vermont. None of the Florida companies are called GSI.
On line, there is www.GSIkoreanet., but this mentions no overseas offices. GSI Australia’s website says it is a company dealing in poultry, swine and grain. There are no Korean links evident. And it is based in Queensland and Victoria, not New South Wales where Sydney is. The Australia companies registry provides no evidence of any Korean trading company registered in New South Wales.
In Hong Kong, a search of directors of all Hong Kong companies shows that nobody named Quiros and no company called GSI directs any Hong Kong company.
A search of regulatory filings in the U.S. turns up nothing on Quiros until 2010, after he bought Jay Peak. A news search on Bloomberg turns up only GSI Group Inc., a maker of agricultural equipment.
The earliest mention of Quiros in securities filings in the U.S. is in 2011, as an investor in a U.S. biotech company. His Korean address in this filing was: 10th Floor, H&S Tower, 119-2 Nonhyun-Dong, Gangnam-Gu, Seoul, Korea 135-820. A reverse search of this address turns up nothing on GSI.
Are we therefore stunned to learn today that according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Quiros never used his own money to buy Jay Peak in the first place? Instead, according to the judicial complaint filed in 2016, Quiros took money investors had already put into Jay Peak when it was owned by the Canadians, and used that cash to buy the ski resort.
Subsequent cash that came in for new projects funded prior projects, but eventually the game was up when Quiros told investors that their hotel project was cancelled and converted into a loan. They would get their money back, he promised, but green cards would not be forthcoming. Quiros is fighting the SEC, while his President has settled with the agency.
In the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme, there were red flags that sent many prudent investors away: a small-time accountant for what was supposed to be a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, and no independent custodian for the investor money.
In the case of Quiros and the Vermont project, a history of unhappy investors and a murky source of funds should have been enough for investors to say, “Not this one.”
About the firm:
Charles Griffin Intelligence is an independent consulting firm that performs investor due diligence for hedge funds, corporations and individuals both inside and outside the United States. We never do work for any EB-5 developer or regional center. We do not provide legal advice, but can help investors and their lawyers assess the business risk of an investment.
For more information about the firm, please see the website at www.charlesgriffinllc.com. You can also read our blog, The Ethical Investigator, at www.ethicalinvestigator.com
