HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_029520.txt

In 2012, a $91M hotel-condo project called Palm House was marketed to Chinese, Iranian and Turkish investors as a promising EB-5 investment. The marketing materials featured photos of the Clintons and Donald Trump as part of an advisory board along with celebrities like Celine Dion and Tony Bennett. However, more than six years later, the project remains unfinished and the hotel's dilapidated structure was sold in a bankruptcy auction for just shy of $40 million to a U.S. affiliate of London & Regional Properties. The key people involved in the project, Robert Matthews and Nicholas Laudano, pleaded guilty to fraud charges related to EB-5 funding misappropriation, while the 91 investors lost their $500,000 investments and never received their green cards.