Jay Peak EB-5 Fraud: How Green Card Investors Were Misled

The Jay Peak EB-5 fraud was a scheme run through a Vermont ski resort. Its owners raised more than $350 million from foreign investors who wanted US green cards. According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, more than $200 million was used for other purposes, including about $50 million for the owner Ariel Quiros's personal expenses (SEC, 14 April 2016). More than 700 investors from at least 74 countries were caught up in it (SEC, 2 February 2018). Quiros pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges and was sentenced to 60 months in prison in April 2022. Ten years after the case began, the court-appointed receiver says about 650 investors have secured green cards and roughly 80 to 100 still face immigration uncertainty (Akerman, 2 June 2026).

That is the short answer. If you are thinking about any investor visa, in America or anywhere else, this case shows exactly where the risk sits.

Imagine you are a businesswoman in Ho Chi Minh City, or a surgeon in Seoul. You have saved for twenty years. An agent shows you a brochure: a ski resort in Vermont, a new hotel, an indoor waterpark, and a biomedical research park with clean rooms and artificial organs. Put in $500,000, the agent says, and the project creates ten American jobs for you. In two years you get a conditional green card. Then a permanent one. Your children study in Boston.

The project has been approved by a state agency. The resort is real. You can ski on it.

What nobody tells you is that money from newer projects is filling holes in older ones. The building you are paying for will never be built. And your green card depends on jobs that will never exist.

This page sets out what the public record shows: what investors were told, what regulators and courts found, what the men behind it have said, what happened to the money, and the checks that matter if you are looking at EB-5 today.

Key facts about the Jay Peak EB-5 case

What is EB-5, and why does the project decide your green card?

EB-5 is a US immigrant visa for investors. Congress created it in 1990. You invest a set amount in a new American business, and that business must create full-time jobs for at least 10 qualifying workers (USCIS, updated 18 November 2025). Most investors put their money into a pooled project through a "regional center", which is allowed to count indirect jobs.

Here is the part that makes EB-5 different from buying shares. Your immigration status is tied to how the project performs. First you file a petition based on the business plan. If it is approved, you get a conditional green card. Later you must prove the money was invested and the jobs were created. If the jobs never come, your permanent green card can be in doubt.

At the time of Jay Peak, the amount was $500,000 in a targeted area. As the US Attorney's office put it, investors "could obtain lawful permanent residency (green cards) by investing $500,000 each in a United States business that would create ten jobs per investment" (US Attorney, Vermont, 14 August 2020).

So when a developer lies about jobs, two things are at risk: your money and your family's right to stay. The SEC said exactly that in 2016. The diversion of funds left "little money for construction of the research facility investors were told would be built and thereby putting the investors' funds and their immigration petitions in jeopardy," said Andrew Ceresney, then the SEC's enforcement director.

What investors were told, and what the SEC says happened

The SEC's 2016 complaint was civil, and in 2018 Quiros and Stenger settled it "without admitting or denying the allegations" (SEC, 2 February 2018). The criminal case is different. In the criminal case, Quiros admitted facts in court.

The AnC Bio project: how a "ghost" raised $85 million

AnC Bio Vermont was the seventh EB-5 project run by Quiros and Stenger, and "the first involving a business outside a ski resort", according to the 2019 indictment (US Attorney, Vermont, 22 May 2019). It was meant to raise $110 million from 220 investors to build a biotech facility in Newport. It would "rent clean rooms, market stem cell therapies, and manufacture artificial organs."

To get USCIS approval, the project needed a plan for at least 2,200 jobs (US Attorney, Vermont, 14 April 2022). When Quiros pleaded guilty, he admitted that investors "were deceived in regard to all three facets of the future business."

The pattern is worth learning, because it can happen in any investor visa:

1. Work backwards from the visa. The number of jobs in the business plan matched what the visa needed, not what the business could do.
2. Sell the story, not the numbers. Stem cells and artificial organs sound like the future. Few investors can test those claims from abroad.
3. Use the trust of a real place. Jay Peak was a working resort. Investors could see real hotels built with earlier EB-5 money. That made the next project easier to believe.
4. Keep raising while the cracks show. In late June 2014, after the state's regional center raised concerns, Stenger agreed to stop marketing AnC Bio. He later admitted submitting false documents in January 2015 to get permission to market it again (US Attorney, 14 April 2022).

Ask yourself one question. If a project needs exactly the number of jobs the visa requires, who wrote that number first: the business or the visa?

How the money moved

The SEC and prosecutors describe several routes:

• Later investors covered earlier projects. Money raised for newer phases filled deficits in older ones (SEC, 2016).
• Personal spending. The SEC said about $50 million went to Quiros's personal expenses and other undisclosed uses, including luxury condominiums and taxes. Quiros admitted a $6 million payment to the IRS in early 2015, funded by a loan secured with investor money (US Attorney, 29 April 2022).
• Loan payoffs. The indictment alleged that about $21 million in investor funds paid off a loan unrelated to AnC Bio.
• Buying another resort. The SEC said investor money was used "to purchase a different ski resort" (SEC, 2 February 2018).

Most of the money sat in accounts in Florida at Raymond James, according to Stenger's own account. In 2017 the receiver reached a settlement of nearly $150 million with Raymond James, which regulators said Quiros had used to carry out fraudulent transactions (Valley News, 17 October 2026).

Who was charged, and what happened to them?

Sources: SEC, 2 February 2018; US Attorney for Vermont, 14 August 2020, 14 April 2022 and 29 April 2022.

What they have said

Quiros admitted the facts of the AnC scheme as part of his guilty plea, and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

Stenger was not accused of taking investor money for himself. The SEC noted he "was not alleged to have personally profited from the fraud." Prosecutors said he "knew about and assisted in" the misuse of funds and hid the projects' problems from regulators and investors (US Attorney, 14 April 2022).

Stenger has spoken publicly several times. Before going to prison he told Vermont Public: "My biggest regret is not paying more attention to it. I was co-general partner, I should have paid more attention to it. I thought I could trust him, and I was wrong" (Vermont Public, 3 June 2022). He also said: "When I became suspicious in 2015, I should have done something."

The state's former deputy financial regulator, Michael Pieciak, disputed part of Stenger's account in the same interview, saying "It's pretty hard for me to believe that that's a truthful statement."

In August 2026 Stenger said he is "extremely proud of what is at Jay Peak and Burke Mountain" and added: "I should have paid more attention. I will live with that forever, but I'm not ashamed of most of the work that I did" (Vermont Public, 17 August 2026).

What happened to the investors' money and green cards?

When the SEC filed its case in April 2016, a federal court in Miami appointed a receiver, the lawyer Michael Goldberg, to take control of the companies. Ten years later, this is where things stand:

• Recoveries. About $150 million from Raymond James (2017), $76 million from the sale of Jay Peak (2022), $11.5 million from the sale of Burke Mountain (2025) and $1.1 million for the empty Newport lot known as "the pit" (2026), along with other legal settlements (Valley News, 17 October 2026). In total, more than $300 million was recovered and distributed (Akerman, 2 June 2026).
• Partial repayment for some. Each of the 121 Burke Mountain investors got $183,322 back, "about 36% of the $500,000 they each contributed" (VTDigger, 22 September 2025).
• Green cards. About 650 investors secured green cards with the receivership's help. Roughly 80 to 100 "still face immigration uncertainty despite no wrongdoing on their part", Goldberg said (Akerman, 2 June 2026).
• Costs. More than $14 million in legal and financial expenses over ten years, paid from recovered money (Valley News, 17 October 2026).

Even with those recoveries, a decade passed, many investors lost part of their money, and some families still do not know if they can stay.

Was Jay Peak a one-off?

No. Vermont Public calls it "the largest financial fraud in Vermont's history" (3 June 2022), but the same shape appears elsewhere.

In February 2013 the SEC froze the assets of a Chicago project that promised a "zero carbon" hotel and convention centre near O'Hare Airport. The SEC said it raised more than $145 million plus $11 million in "administrative fees" from more than 250 investors, mostly from China. Each paid $500,000 plus a $41,500 fee that was supposed to be refundable if the visa was denied. The SEC alleged the promoter spent more than 90 percent of the fees and gave USCIS a fake comfort letter from Hyatt Hotels and a false financing letter from the Qatar Investment Authority (SEC Litigation Release 22615, 8 February 2013).

The common thread: big brand names, a fixed "fee" on top of the investment, and a business plan written to fit the visa.

What changed in 2022, and what it does not fix

On 15 March 2022 the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act became law (USCIS, updated 18 November 2025). It changed several things:

• Higher amounts. For petitions filed on or after 15 March 2022, the minimum is $1,050,000, or $800,000 in a targeted employment area or infrastructure project. These amounts will be adjusted for inflation every five years, starting with petitions filed on or after 1 January 2027.
• Reserved visas. 20 percent of EB-5 visas each year are set aside for rural areas, 10 percent for high-unemployment areas and 2 percent for infrastructure.
• More reporting. Every regional center must file an annual statement on Form I-956G and pay a yearly EB-5 Integrity Fund fee of $10,000 or $20,000 depending on its size (USCIS EB-5 Q&A).
• Protection for good-faith investors. If USCIS terminates a regional center or debars a project because of misconduct, investors who were not "a knowing participant" may keep their eligibility. They generally have 180 days after USCIS notifies them to move to a new regional center or project (USCIS Policy Manual, Vol. 6, Part G, Ch. 8).

What it does not do is guarantee your money. The new protections help your immigration case survive a bad project. They do not refund you, and moving $800,000 to a new project in 180 days is hard for most families.

One more date to know: the regional center program is authorised through 30 September 2027 (USCIS). Anyone selling you a regional center deal should explain what happens to your case if Congress does not renew it on time.

Red flags to check before you invest in any EB-5 project

The honest lesson

The investors at Jay Peak were not careless people. Many were successful professionals who did their homework on the resort. What they could not see from abroad was where the money went after it left their bank.

An investor visa is two things at once: an investment and an immigration case. Most agents sell you the immigration case and treat the investment as paperwork. Jay Peak shows it is the other way round. If the business fails, the visa fails with it.

So check the business first. Ask the boring questions about escrow, audits and job maths, and pay for an immigration attorney and a securities adviser who work only for you. If the answers are vague, the project is not ready for your family's future.

If you are weighing an investor route against other ways to move, our guide to golden visa countries compares what each program really sells, and startup visas cover routes where you build your own business. We do not sell EB-5 projects and take no commission from any developer. If you want an independent person to compare routes for your family, our plan check covers up to three countries.

Frequently asked questions

Is EB-5 a scam?

No. EB-5 is a real US immigrant visa run by USCIS, created by Congress in 1990. But some projects have been used for fraud. At Jay Peak in Vermont, the owner pleaded guilty to federal charges, and in 2013 the SEC halted a Chicago convention center project it said misled investors. Treat each project as an investment that needs independent checks.

What happened at Jay Peak?

The SEC said in April 2016 that Jay Peak's owners raised more than $350 million from foreign EB-5 investors and used more than $200 million for other purposes, in "Ponzi-like fashion". A court appointed a receiver. Owner Ariel Quiros later pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges over the AnC Bio project and was sentenced to 60 months in prison in April 2022.

Did Jay Peak investors get their green cards?

Most did. The receiver, Michael Goldberg, said in June 2026 that about 650 foreign investors had secured green cards, and that roughly 80 to 100 still faced immigration uncertainty through no fault of their own. He has been working with immigration counsel to help the remaining families.

Did Jay Peak investors get their money back?

Some got all or most of it, others only part. The receiver recovered and distributed more than $300 million, including about $150 million from Raymond James and $76 million from the sale of Jay Peak. Each Burke Mountain investor received $183,322, about 36 percent of the $500,000 invested.

Who was convicted in the Jay Peak EB-5 case?

Ariel Quiros was sentenced to 60 months after pleading guilty to wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering and concealment. Bill Stenger was sentenced to 18 months after pleading guilty to submitting false documents to the Vermont Regional Center. William Kelly was sentenced to 18 months. A fourth man, Alex Choi, was charged but remained at large as of April 2022.

Is EB-5 worth it in 2026?

It can be, for families with $800,000 or more to put at risk and time to wait. The green card depends on the project creating jobs, so a weak project can cost you both money and status. Compare it with other routes first, and only invest after independent legal and financial checks on the specific project.

How much is the EB-5 investment in 2026?

For petitions filed on or after 15 March 2022, the minimum is $1,050,000, or $800,000 in a targeted employment area or an infrastructure project. USCIS says these amounts will be adjusted for inflation every five years, with the first adjustment for petitions filed on or after 1 January 2027.

How do I check an EB-5 regional center?

Start with USCIS's published lists of approved and terminated regional centers. Then ask the regional center for its annual statement filings, the escrow terms for your money, audited accounts of earlier projects, and how its job numbers were calculated. Have an immigration attorney and a securities adviser who work only for you review the offering.

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