(Crain's Chicago Business) A Chicago developer who swindled nearly 300 Chinese investors
in a failed $912 million hotel project near O'Hare International Airport
was sentenced to three years in prison today. U.S. District
Judge John Z. Lee also ordered the developer, Anshoo Sethi, to pay $8.8
million in restitution, according to a spokesman for the U.S.
Attorney's Office in Chicago. In January 2016, Sethi pleaded guilty to charges that he defrauded 290 Chinese citizens who had agreed to invest $158 million in the development through a controversial U.S. visa program.
Sethi,
33, raised the money for the 995-room project at 8201 W. Higgins Road
through the EB-5 program, which issues green cards to overseas investors
who invest in qualified U.S. projects. But he never broke ground, and
Sethi admitted that he used bogus and forged documents to solicit
investors. Several lawmakers in Washington are pushing to
end or reform the EB-5 program amid criticism that it's vulnerable to
fraud—Sethi's project stands out as the largest EB-B fraud case to
date—and doesn't do enough to create jobs in depressed areas. Prosecutors
had asked Judge Lee to sentence Sethi to 78 to 97 months in prison and
order him to pay $10 million in restitution, court records show. Sethi
has already repaid most of the money he raised from investors, and he sold the development site last fall for $6.8 million to Chicago developer Albert Friedman.
