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SEC halts fraudulent scheme meant to exploit immigration program
by Joseph Earnest February 12, 2013
Newscast Media WASHINGTON, DC—The Securities and Exchange Commission announced charges and an asset freeze against an individual living in Illinois and two companies behind an investment scheme defrauding foreign investors seeking profitable returns and a legal path to U.S. residency through a federal visa program.
The SEC alleges that Anshoo R. Sethi created A Chicago Convention Center (ACCC) and Intercontinental Regional Center Trust of Chicago (IRCTC) and fraudulently sold more than $145 million in securities and collected $11 million in administrative fees from more than 250 investors primarily from China.
"Sethi orchestrated an elaborate scheme and exploited these investors' dream of earning legal U.S. residence along with a positive return on their investment in a project that was not nearly the done deal that he portrayed," said Stephen L. Cohen, Associate Director in the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. "The good news is that working closely with USCIS, we intervened early and stopped him from getting very far, and the asset freeze preserves nearly all of the money invested."
Click here to view entire SEC Complaint (pop-up)
The SEC alleges that Sethi and his companies falsely boasted to investors that they had acquired all the necessary building permits and that several major hotel chains had signed onto the project. They also provided falsified documents to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) — the federal agency that administers the EB-5 program — in an attempt to secure the agency’s preliminary approval of the project and investors’ provisional visas. Add Comments>>
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