USA EB-5 GREEN CARD WHICH LURES FOREIGNERS FOR GREEN CARD AND ASIAN ORIGIN CITIZENS NOW AMERICAN LOOKING EASY MONEY FROM THEM WHICH RESULTS IN ASIANS CHEATING ASIANS BY TAKING MONEY THEN EITHER NOR INVESTING IN PROPER VENTURE OR USING MONEY FOR THEM SELF IN BOTH THE CASES SUITS HAVE BEEN FILED ONE GOT MONEY BACK OTHER FACING 22 CHARGES 8TH JANUARY 2014 The EB-5 (immigrant investor) program keeps attracting a number of interesting and controversial people, because of the lure of apparently easy money. This is the DHS-run program in which an alien can secure a family-size collection of green cards for placing either half a million dollars, or one million, into a government-approved (but not guaranteed) private-sector investment. Now we have two more cases, not mentioned by CIS before and separate from each other, in which an American resident or residents of a given national background has been charged with conning an alien, from the same national background, through the EB-5 program. Both cases are based in California, and both are still being litigated. The accused parties, of course, are to be regarded as innocent until proven guilty. Both stories appear to be reflective of an under-reported underside of immigration: how sometimes earlier arrivals learn the ropes in America, and then prey on newer arrivals from the same nation. I am not saying that most immigrants who prosper do so at the expense of their compatriots, but some do, and some of the latter use the EB-5 program in the process. In neither case is USCIS, the agency that runs the program, involved in seeking to correct the situation. In both cases the alleged victims are using other means in an effort to recoup their fortunes. In these cases the investments were to be $550,000 in an ethanol factory and $1,080,000 in an unspecified banking venture. The investors were, respectively, a couple from China, and a successful businessman from Iran. Those being sued are, again respectively, Justin Moongyu Lee, a LA lawyer, and several EB-5 middlemen, all with Iranian names. The California bar is in the throes of a disbarment procedure against Mr. Lee, and the one alien Iranian is suing all the other Iranians in federal court in the Northern District of California. In both cases, as in many EB-5 situations (in which the set of visas is the star attraction, not the financial prospects of the investment), the aliens did not engage in a sufficient amount of due diligence initially, but in these instances they later took action against the middlemen. In many cases duped EB-5 investors do not sue. The Ethanol Plant. The Chinese couple retained Lee as their EB-5 lawyer; he then took their $550,000 and invested it in a planned ethanol plant in the little rural town of Ulysses, Kan. This was done as, or just after, the enthusiasm for ethanol peaked, a feeling which has since lapsed. The money was spent, the plant was not finished, no ongoing jobs were created, as Kansas Watchdog reported. Meanwhile, Lee turned out to be the owner of both the plant and of the USCIS-licensed EB-5 regional center used in the transaction. The couple was lucky for those venturing into EB-5 waters; they sued and got their money back. They then sought Lees disbarment for, among other things, conflict of interest. It is not known whether they got green cards, too. For more on the disbarment proceedings see here. The Not Quite Regional Center. More recently there is the case of Saeid Mohebbi, an Iranian businessman. He appears, according to the complaint in the case, to have lots of money in Iran, no English, a trusting nature, and a strong desire to get out of that country. He learned about the EB-5 program on a Farsi language website and got in contact with U.S. Immigration Investment Center (USIIC), an entity he gathered was a USCIS-approved regional center. It was not an approved center, and remains to this day only an applicant for that status. Mohebbi was attracted to USIICs pitch that it was the only such entity to seek to use the EB-5 program to work in the financial sector (most EB-5 programs deal with real estate.) The story is a complicated one – there are 22 different charges in the complaint – but the bottom line is that Mohebbi trusted his fellow Farsi speakers, signed various documents in English based on verbal assurances by the middlemen, and invested $1,080,000 in USIIC ventures. Once he perceived that these investments would not lead to a green card, he sued. For a detailed account of the suit,
Posted on: Thu, 16 Jan 2014 05:09:39 +0000