House Oversight — Estate records
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_029520
Palm House Robert Matthews EB-5 Clintons Trump Tony Bennett
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Palm House Robert Matthews EB-5 Clintons Trump Tony Bennett https://therealdeal.com/miami/issues_articles/lost-paradise-at-th... ! ! " # $ % SOUTH FLORIDA NEW YORK LOS ANGELES CHICAGO NATIONAL TRI-STATE ! SUBSCRIBE MY ACCOUNT JJune 2019 Lost paradise at the Palm House The planned $91M hotel-condo project has been a case study in EB-5 fraud, leaving investors in the lurch and an unfinished building in its wake By Keith Larsen | June 17, 2019 11:00AM The Palm House When Chinese, Iranian and Turkish investors received marketing brochures for the town of Palm Beach’s first EB-5 project in 2012, it seemed like a sure thing. Pamphlets in Chinese and Farsi showed photos of the Clintons and Donald Trump as part of the Palm House condominium and hotel advisory board of “political and business leaders with worldwide experience.” In addition, the marketing materials named Celine Dion, Tony Bennett and billionaire Bill Koch as celebrity members at the hotel’s club. But more than six years later, the Palm House’s planned $91 million makeover remains unfinished. The dilapidated 80,000-plus-square-foot hotel finally sold in a bankruptcy auction last month to a U.S. affiliate of the real estate investment firm London & Regional Properties for just shy of $40 million. To add salt to the wound, Trump and Clinton were never on the project’s advisory 1 of 10 6/26/19, 11:57 AM Palm House Robert Matthews EB-5 Clintons Trump Tony Bennett https://therealdeal.com/miami/issues_articles/lost-paradise-at-th... ! ! " # $ % SOUTH FLORIDA NEW YORK LOS ANGELES CHICAGO NATIONAL TRI-STATE ! SUBSCRIBE MY ACCOUNT in EB-5 funding for personal expenses, including the purchase of a 151-foot yacht named “Alibi” and his own debt payments. Matthews and the project’s general contractor, Nicholas Laudano, recently pleaded guilty to fraud charges in federal court, while the 91 EB-5 backers lost their $500,000 investments and never received their green cards. The EB-5 regional center in charge of marketing the […]