Foreign investor sues Florida EB-5 sponsor, alleges he was left empty-handed after $72M sale

A foreign investor put in $550,000. The building later sold for $72 million. He says he never got his money back.

That is the case at the center of a lawsuit filed June 2, 2026, in federal court in Miami. Anton Volkov says he was drawn into an EB-5 immigrant-investor deal and left with nothing to show for it. For anyone whose practice touches private placements or alternative deals, the complaint reads like a checklist of how disclosure can go wrong.

Start with the program. EB-5 lets foreign investors earn a shot at US residency by funding projects that create jobs. Volkov says he put $500,000 into a limited partnership, Ventech Partners II, and paid a $50,000 fee, to back a Miami building called Design 41. Total outlay, per the complaint: $550,000.

The filing says the pitch oversold the deal. According to the complaint, the materials promised about 555 jobs - "over 14 jobs per investor" - well past the EB-5 floor of ten. But Volkov alleges 295 of those jobs, 53% of them, hinged on leasing up a building that was only about 25% leased when he wrote his check. The complaint says the figures were presented as near-certain when, it alleges, they were anything but.

Here is the part compliance teams will flag. The complaint alleges the same sponsor and the same controlling principal had run an earlier EB-5 project, the Las Olas Ocean Resort, that failed badly. Per the filing, a $36.94 million foreclosure hit it on January 25, 2018 - 14 days before Volkov invested - and the developer filed for Chapter 11 on February 26, 2018. None of that history, the complaint says, reached Volkov.

He also alleges the sponsor, Florida Overseas Investment Center, was listed as "Non-Transparent" on an industry tracking site for failing to file required annual reports with US immigration authorities, and that this stayed hidden.

The structure is where the lesson lives. The complaint alleges Volkov's money sat at the bottom of the stack, behind up to $24 million in construction debt and a $14.5 million position held by another partnership - even though the materials called his vehicle an "equal co-investor." That gap between the label and the numbers is the kind of half-truth that securities claims are built on.

Then the twist. The complaint says Design 41 sold in February 2026 for $72 million, above its appraisals, leaving roughly $33.5 million after senior debt. Volkov says he has seen no principal, no interest, and no accounting.

His claims include securities fraud under Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5, control-person liability under Section 20(a), Florida securities and consumer-protection counts, breach of fiduciary duty, and civil conspiracy. He wants rescission, damages, disgorgement, and punitive damages.

For RIA principals and broker-dealer compliance staff, the signals are plain. Projections need honest risk language. A sponsor's history and regulatory standing are material facts. And words like "secured" and "equal" have to square with the numbers.

These are allegations, untested in court. The defendants have not yet responded, and no court has ruled.