Their money was meant to help create jobs — instead it appears to have gone towards buying one man three mansions.
So claims the Securities and Exchange Commission in a case filed against Queens developer Richard Xia.
According to documents the government agency filed in federal court in the Eastern District of New York earlier this month, Xia allegedly defrauded a group of investors by using their money not for the development of two Queens real estate projects, but the purchase of three Long Island manors, Crain’s reported.
Xia used assets from his investors — who were part of the federal EB-5 visa program, which provides investors in job-creating US real estate projects with green cards — as collateral to get over $30 million in loans, which went significantly towards the acquisition of two estates in Great Neck and one in Sands Point. Meanwhile, one of the Queens projects the investors believed they were funding — a 498-room luxury hotel, convention center, retail space and performing arts center called Eastern Emerald — remains undeveloped.
The tony Long Island properties, on the other hand, are very much constructed and Xia, along with his wife, is currently living in one: a 13,000-square-foot Kings Point Road home boasting seven bedrooms, seven fireplaces and 13 bathrooms spread across 3 acres with views of the Manhattan skyline and Long Island Sound.
In a deposition defending his purchase of the property (which is
under his wife’s name), Xia claimed it was a business transaction
because he uses it as an office, Crain’s reported.
