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<\/p>\nRishi Kapoor, a Miami developer of mixed-use projects who once had the mayor of Miami on his payroll, was arrested Friday and charged with multiple counts of fraud, tax evasion and falsifying bank statements.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n Courtesy of Location Ventures\n <\/p>\n
\n Location Ventures founder and CEO Rishi Kapoor\n <\/p>\n
Kapoor, the founder of the now-defunct Location Ventures<\/a>,\u00a0raised $85M from investors for the purpose of developing projects in\u00a0Coral Gables<\/a>, Coconut Grove, Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale<\/a>, but\u00a0at least two of those developments never came to fruition as Kapoor diverted funds to his personal accounts, according to the Justice Department<\/a>.<\/p>\n The University of Miami alumnus allegedly instead spent investor money on a 68-foot yacht, which was later seized, a house in the Cocoplum neighborhood of Coral Gables and luxury goods. Prosecutors said they plan to seize\u00a0a Rolex Daytona watch and a 2.5-carat platinum ring\u00a0to compensate alleged victims.<\/p>\n Kapoor was arrested at a hotel in Fort Lauderdale on his 42nd birthday Friday before appearing in front of a magistrate judge, who denied his request for bail on the basis that he poses a flight risk, the Miami Herald reported<\/a>. He\u00a0is scheduled to appear before a district judge to be arraigned on March 20, according to court records.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are many acts of deception alleged in the indictment,\u201d\u00a0Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Young said in court Friday, the Herald reported.<\/p>\n The 37-count indictment was filed under seal. The DOJ said in a press release that Kapoor was charged with\u00a0conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy to commit offenses against and to defraud the U.S., failure to pay payroll taxes, tax evasion, failure to file tax returns and bank fraud.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kapoor could spend\u00a0decades behind bars if convicted on more than one of the charges \u2014 bank fraud alone carries a maximum sentence of up to 30 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n At one point,\u00a0Location Ventures and its subsidiary, Urbin,\u00a0had a development portfolio\u00a0of roughly $500M<\/a>. It developed condos, luxury single-family homes and coworking and coliving concepts.\u00a0<\/p>\n But in 2023,\u00a0Kapoor resigned as CEO<\/a> of Location and Urbin amid\u00a0allegations that he siphoned investor money from projects for personal uses. He was sued for fraud in January 2024 by the Securities and Exchange Commission<\/a>, which accused him of many of the same actions for which he is now being charged criminally.<\/p>\n The SEC said he had been lying to investors and \u201cshuffling investor funds\u201d to misappropriate at least $6M, $4.3M of\u00a0which he allegedly embezzled for himself.<\/p>\n That same year, the\u00a0Miami Herald reported<\/a> that Kapoor had retained then-Miami Mayor Francis Suarez as a consultant for $10K a month, paying him roughly $170K in total.<\/p>\n Suarez hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing \u2014\u00a0Miami has a \u201cweak mayor\u201d system in which the city’s top elected official doesn’t have a vote on the city council and is\u00a0allowed to work in the private sector.<\/p>\n Kapoor\u00a0settled the SEC investigation<\/a> in 2024 and agreed to pay restitution to investors without admitting wrongdoing. A receiver has been selling Location Ventures and Urbin’s assets to pay out that settlement, and the court case has yet to be resolved<\/a>.<\/p>\n In addition to the investors scheme, the DOJ claims Kapoor never paid income taxes between 2019 and 2023, despite making\u00a0$2.8M in 2022 and 2023 alone. He also allegedly withheld payroll taxes from his employees but never transferred them to the Internal Revenue Service<\/a>, then diverted $2M of those funds for his personal use.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rishi Kapoor, a Miami developer of mixed-use projects who once had the mayor of Miami on his payroll,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[32322,15579,225,227,226,85463,85461,85464],"class_list":["post-184724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hialeah","tag-department-of-justice","tag-francis-suarez","tag-hialeah","tag-hialeah-headlines","tag-hialeah-news","tag-location-ventures","tag-rishi-kapoor","tag-urbin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}