Financial Crime and Fraud

A federal indictment unsealed Friday charges Miami real‑estate developer Rishi Kapoor, 41, with orchestrating an $85 million investment‑fraud scheme, failing to pay millions in payroll and personal taxes, and lying to banks to finance a 68‑foot yacht and a luxury home in the Cocoplum enclave of Coral Gables. Prosecutors say Kapoor, CEO of Location Ventures, raised roughly $85 million for projects in Coral Gables, Coconut Grove, Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale that largely were never built, while diverting far more than his capped $400,000 salary for personal use, including an expensive yacht, jewelry and real estate. The indictment alleges he deceived escrow agents to release pre‑construction condo deposits, misrepresented his own financial contribution to the company, and falsified bank statements and tax filings to secure more than $9 million in credit, all while withholding payroll taxes from employees but not remitting them to the IRS. Court filings say Kapoor failed to file his personal tax returns from 2019 through 2023 despite earning more than $2.8 million in 2022–23, and that he diverted over $2 million from company accounts for himself; a parallel SEC civil case has also been filed. If convicted on all counts, Kapoor faces potential decades in federal prison, and the case adds to growing scrutiny of investor protection, developer oversight and payroll‑tax compliance in hot real‑estate markets like South Florida, where social‑media chatter has already been rife with complaints about stalled or phantom projects.