VTDigger.com’s Nat Rudarakanchana has a terrific and thorough article about the State of Vermont shutting down one of its many EB-5 projects. Until it was shut down, Dream Life Retirement Resorts, LLC, had planned to build almost two hundred assisted-living apartment units with the aid of foreign investment from EB-5 funding. Three years ago American Dream was granted permission by Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development to seek foreign investor funding through the EB-5 program. But just last month, the state-regulated project was canceled 

[…] because of “material misrepresentations.” Three of the four individuals who represent the company cited themselves as attorneys for the project; none of the men identified [is] licensed to practice law in Florida, where the law firm cited in the agreement [is headquartered].

Some of the many highlights of Canadian Dream Life founder Richard Parenteau’s travails include the revelation that he was convicted of perjury in a dispute in Canada over a will, but is still a “background investor” in the Vermont sanctioned EB-5.

Parenteau, who declined comment for the story, is a very active entrepreneur but perhaps less talented at creatively naming those projects:

Over the last 20 years, Parenteau has created and dissolved more than two dozen companies in Florida and Vermont, […] Five of the entities bear the DreamLife name, including an insurance company, a real estate firm and a finance company, all three of which are now inactive.

The VtDigger.com piece has comments and general reassurances by past and present state officials about the sound regulation of other ongoing EB-5-funded projects. Vermont is an active player in regulating and promoting the EB-5 job-creating investment for visa-funded business complexes. But fear not, these state officials say, they are pros – they know the industry they regulate. And some have even joined in for the fun and profit.

Former Douglas Administration EB-5 official James Candido, who offers his thoughts on Dream Life in the digger article, invested in a luxury Montana Spa that obtains funds through EB-5. And of course, our current governor’s former deputy chief of staff/secretary of civil and military affairs Alex MacLean “completed” her state job and was hired to work for Vermont’s own EB-5 Bigfoot Bill Stenger.

Not that there is anything wrong with all that. It is just business as usual.

Then again, it's probably a good thing that state regulators called a halt before Dream Life's project became a regulatory nightmare.