Developer linked to ex-Miami mayor arrested in $85 million fraud scheme
A once-rising developer who put Miami’s former mayor on his payroll was arrested by federal agents Friday on a sweeping 37-count indictment accusing him of an $85 million fraud scheme.
Rishi Kapoor is charged with swindling investors of millions of dollars, lying to financial institutions to obtain funds to buy a luxury yacht, and failing to pay millions in taxes despite earning a seven-figure income.
Kapoor, who formerly lived in a waterfront estate in the Cocoplum neighborhood of Coral Gables, made his first appearance in Miami federal court on Friday afternoon to face charges stemming from his role as the chief executive officer of Location Ventures and its subsidiary URBIN. Both companies, before their collapse in 2023, developed and planned several mixed-use condo projects in Coral Gables, Miami and Miami Beach.
Kapoor was arrested at a hotel in Fort Lauderdale on Friday morning, on what happened to be his 42nd birthday. The developer gained notoriety in 2023 when the Miami Herald broke a story revealing that he had hired then-Miami Mayor Francis Suarez as a $10,000-a-month consultant for URBIN while the company was developing a major project in Coconut Grove. Suarez, whose second term as mayor ended in 2025, is not charged in the new federal case and has denied any wrongdoing.
The indictment includes charges for money laundering, bank fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and various tax violations. During his appearance in federal court Friday afternoon, Kapoor’s wrists and ankles were shackled. He wore an orange long-sleeve shirt with a University of Miami logo — his alma mater — along with blue pants and flip-flops.
Prosecutor Elizabeth Young said in court that if convicted of count 1 — wire fraud conspiracy — Kapoor faces between 13 years and 16 years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines. The loss to investors ranges from $9.5 million to $25 million, Young said. She said Kapoor “lied” to investors and lenders about various financial matters.
“There are many acts of deception alleged in the indictment,” Young told U.S. Magistrate Judge Marty Elfenbein during a detention hearing on Friday afternoon.
Young said during the hearing that she wants Kapoor detained before trial because she considers him a flight risk based on his family’s wealth and his travels to the Bahamas and elsewhere. Kapoor’s defense attorney, Fred Schwartz, proposed a $2.5 million bond secured by Kapoor’s father’s real estate holdings in Atlanta, but Young disagreed.
Elfenbein sided with prosecutors, agreeing that Kapoor is a flight risk and denying him bond.
“These are really serious charges,” Elfenbein said. “It’s rare that I see such a robust indictment.”
Kapoor expressed his disappointment to the judge, who said he can appeal to the district judge. The U.S. deputy marshals escorted Kapoor to federal lock-up near the courthouse. His arraignment is scheduled for March 20.
Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Florida said in a news release that while Kapoor raised approximately $85 million from investors, “most of the promised real estate projects were never built. Despite being entitled to a capped salary of $400,000 plus certain fees, Kapoor diverted substantially more funds for personal use, including the purchase of a 68-foot yacht and a residence in Cocoplum.”
Prosecutors further allege that Kapoor misrepresented to investors the amount that he had personally contributed to Location Ventures, claiming he and his business partner and family had invested $13 million, “when, in reality, he contributed roughly half that amount.” He also stands accused of deceiving escrow agents “to secure the release of pre-construction condominium deposits and then misappropriated those funds for personal expenses unrelated to the developments. As a result, condominium projects in Coconut Grove and Miami Beach were never built.”
U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Jason A. Reding Quiñones alleged in the news release that Kapoor also withheld payroll taxes from employees “but failed to turn that money over to the government, effectively stealing from his own employees.” Instead of remitting those taxes to the IRS, prosecutors allege that Kapoor diverted over $2 million “from company accounts for his personal benefit.”
SEC alleged Kapoor ‘shuffled investor funds’
Kapoor, a University of Miami business and law school graduate, was under investigation by the FBI, IRS and U.S. Attorney’s Office for more than two years. In November 2024, he reached a settlement agreement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to resolve a lawsuit claiming he defrauded dozens of investors in his companies’ projects. That civil case is still unresolved, however, as both sides have failed to reach an agreement on how much Kapoor must compensate those investors.
The SEC case underscores the charges in the new federal criminal case. In the SEC case, Kapoor admitted liability in a consent judgment with the regulatory agency without admitting or denying its allegations that he misappropriated $4.3 million for himself while raising about $93 million from more than 50 investors in his South Florida real estate projects.
According to the agreement, Kapoor was barred for five years from serving as an officer or director of any company that sells security investments.
The SEC had filed suit against Kapoor in December 2023 and then obtained a federal judge’s order freezing his bank accounts and other properties to preserve his remaining assets to help pay back investors in his firm’s residential projects near downtown Coral Gables, Coconut Grove and Miami Beach. The judge also appointed a receiver to assume control of Location Ventures and its subsidiary, URBIN, and to liquidate its assets, a process that is still underway.
In an emergency motion to freeze his assets, the Miami-based SEC regional office said that Kapoor “shuffled investor funds” between different development projects and “misappropriated at least $6 million — $4.3 million of which Kapoor misappropriated for himself.”
SEC lawyers accused Kapoor of using Location Ventures and various other affiliates in a “scheme to defraud investors” while falsely claiming that he, his business partner and family members put $13 million of their own money into the umbrella company. The SEC, led by attorney Russell O’Brien, asserted that Kapoor sold “investment contracts” in individual projects that were actually “securities” subject to federal regulation, placing him in the agency’s cross-hairs.
The SEC also pointed out that Kapoor’s annual compensation wasn’t supposed to rise above $400,000 without the approval of Location Ventures’ board of directors. In 2022, according to the SEC, Kapoor paid himself $1,686,303 as compensation without board approval; the previous year, he also paid himself $629,600 without approval.
Calling his conduct as an executive “fraudulent,” SEC lawyers noted that during this period, Kapoor purchased a 2023 68-foot Princess yacht for more than $5 million, bought a marina slip at the Cocoplum Yacht Club for $695,000, leased a 2020 600LT Spider McLaren sports car and paid a private chef $10,000 a month. Kapoor, who is married, also bought a waterfront home in the exclusive Cocoplum area of Coral Gables for $6 million — one of several assets that he was forced to sell to pay back lenders and investors, according to a judge’s order.
Notably absent from the SEC’s motion to freeze Kapoor’s assets and its civil complaint was any mention of his hiring Suarez as a consultant for URBIN while the Location Ventures affiliate was seeking approval from City Hall for a residential and retail project at Commodore Plaza in Coconut Grove. Suarez, featured in the Herald investigative series “Shakedown City,” was not mentioned at all.
URBIN ended up paying Suarez more than $200,000 from July 2021 through at least March 2023, according to corporate records and sources familiar with the payments. In the past, Suarez has maintained that, as a consultant for URBIN, he did not use his mayoral office to help Kapoor or his development company on permitting issues before the city of Miami.
He told the Herald he was not immediately available for comment on Friday.
Suarez was subpoenaed in 2024 by the SEC to testify in Kapoor’s case about his relationship with the developer and his duties as a consultant for URBIN, which involved raising funds from potential investors. His statement to the SEC was not included in the court record.
The regulatory agency’s civil investigation of Kapoor was first reported in June 2023 by the Herald in a story that also revealed the FBI was examining his relationship with Suarez in the parallel criminal probe. The following month, Kapoor, an Atlanta transplant, was forced out as the head of Location Ventures and URBIN. Suarez was not a target of the federal investigations.
This story was originally published March 6, 2026 at 11:29 AM.
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