El Monte Regional Center EB-5: What Happened

Immigration Attorney Adam Green has written an excellent summary of what went wrong the EB-5 El Monte Regional Center recently de-certified by USCIS.

Click here for the full article:  ADAM GREEN

According to Attorney Green, “El Monte gives us only the latest in a number of EB-5 project disasters, another being the embarrassing case of Missouri state officials lending public support to the catastrophic Mamtek International deal. Perhaps the only silver lining in El Monte’s debacle is that only two foreign national investors contributed to the project over the three-year lifespan of the regional center.  One of those investors had already received a conditional green card.  Unfortunately, it will now be impossible for him or her to ever receive a permanent U.S. green card via the El Monte Regional Center’s EB-5 immigrant investor project.  Had those investors performed due diligence, it’s unlikely they would have bothered with the El Monte Regional Center, which has been embroiled in legal troubles since 2009.”

The article goes on to state:  Despite multiple arrests, bankruptcy proceedings, a multi-million dollar lawsuit, and an FBI probe, the Pasadena Star-News reports that the El Monte Regional Center continued to promote this project to prospective investors in China and Korea.

Mr. Green goes on to conclude that not all EB-5 Regional Centers are created equal. 

A potential EB-5 investor needs to conduct his or her own detailed due diligence before investing in any regional center.  The El Monte Regional Center embarrased the city and hurt the two immigrant investors.  This same series of events could happen on a much larger scale as well.  The Mamtek project referred to above had 15 EB-5 investors