Indian-American jailed for duping Chinese investors
An Indian-American hotel developer has been sentenced to three years of imprisonment by a US court for defrauding around 300 Chinese nationals who invested in his failed $900 million project.
Anshoo Sethi, 32, pleaded guilty in a Chicago court on Tuesday following which the judge handed down the sentence. As per the court papers, Sethi, the founder of A Chicago Convention Centre LLC, purported in 2011 to build a hotel and convention centre near the O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.
He solicited Chinese nationals to invest $500,000 each in the project, plus $41,500 in administrative fees to his company. Each Chinese national who participated in the project also applied for an EB-5 visa, which allows foreign investors to obtain a temporary twoyear visa that could later be converted to a permanent visa upon success of an employment-generating investment. Sethi raised around $158 million from more than 290 investors.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission brought a civil lawsuit against Sethi and was able to restore around $147 million. While soliciting the investors, Sethi made several false statements, including lies about funding and tax credits from the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago, none of which materialised.