Investors in the hotel business of this Broward developer say they face financial ruin

Once while promoting one of his projects on a TV show, Christian motivational speaker and businessman Rodrigo Azpurua said his company existed to benefit others.

“We built a vision based on the need to serve others,” Azpurua said in a morning show interview run by the Christian international Spanish network Enlace. “The ultimate goal of our company is not to make money but to provide for the well-being of our families and of our communities. It is the good [of the investors] we are seeking,”

But dozens of people heavily invested in Azpurua’s hotel-development projects in Florida see very little of the values the South Florida businessman professes, and instead claim they are looking at losing hundreds of thousands of dollars due to a series of fraudulent business practices.

“There is an intrinsic double standard to this individual,” said Leonardo Lasso, who invested more than $100,000 of his savings in a hotel Azpurua developed in Orlando. “He has a modus operandi in place where he raises the funds under certain conditions, but then turns around and spends the money however he wants, with total discretion and without keeping his word, for his personal gain and in detriment of those who trusted in him.”

Miami lawsuit

Lasso is one of at least 60 desperate investors, some of them living in Florida, claiming they are on the verge of losing their savings, and even their legal status in the United States, due to the mismanagement of the projects run by Azpurua.

In a lawsuit filed last month in Miami circuit court, two dozen investors accused Azpurua and his wife, Dania Carmela Azpurua, of deliberately misappropriating funds provided by investors for the development of a La Quinta hotel and of a Tryp hotel in Orlando.

Other investors contacted by the Herald said they faced similar problems with Azpurua’s hotel projects in Miami, one of which was never built.

Azpurua, a Weston resident who frequented TV shows and wrote newspaper columns promoting his projects, raised millions of dollars from individual investors, ranging from $50,000 to a million dollars each. Some of the investors provided the money under the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service’s EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program, which encourages foreigners to invest and can lead to U.S. residency.

“They siphoned money through a series of transactions and entities designed to obscure the true financial state of the Orlando Project. This misappropriation included improper distributions, diverting funds to related entities and personal accounts, using the funds for their own business endeavors, and treating the funds as their personal ‘piggy bank’,” investors said in the lawsuit.

Azpurua, who has been involved in South Florida real estate since the mid-2000s, is the owner of Riviera Point, a company that raised tens of millions of dollars through the EB-5 visa program. During the last decade, the company completed the construction of five office buildings in Doral and Miramar through the program, which grant foreigners the right to reside in the U.S. if they invest at least $500,000 in job-creating projects.

In more recent years, Riviera Point entered the hotel building and management business, constructing La Quinta Del Sol Orlando Hotel in 2019, Tryp by Wyndham Orlando Hotel in 2020, La Quinta Inn & Suites Sebring Hotel in 2020 and the Radisson Red Miami Airport Hotel in 2021, according to the company’s website.

But the company was not able to complete all the projects. A second hotel that was scheduled for construction near Miami International Airport never got off the ground, even though the land had been purchased.

Investors were asked to participate in each development individually, either through the EB-5 program or as non-EB-5 investors. Both groups provided Azpurua with more than $25 million for the construction of the Tryp and La Quinta Inn hotels in Orlando.

The investors were told the funds would be used in the construction of two well-recognized brand name hotels, which were to be run by an “experienced and independent hotel manager, with the expectation of financial returns and the opportunity to obtain unconditional U.S. residency through the EB-5 program,” the lawsuit states.

While the Orlando hotels were constructed and did begin operation, they soon ran into problems in the aftermath of the coronavirus outbreak, which affected the city’s tourism industry. Problems grew worse when the company found itself unable to comply with the terms of a $17.3 million loan obtained from Apollo Bank in Miami, which was later acquired by Seacoast Bank.

Effects of pandemic?

Contacted by the Herald, Azpurua flatly denied the accusations of wrongdoing and said the lawsuit is filled with false and slanderous statements. “It is all completely false,” he said.

Azpurua said the projects simply fell victim to adverse market conditions. “It all came about because of the COVID lock down. We had a national emergency because of COVID. And what happened to the city of Orlando? it collapsed. It suddenly found itself without visitors. And what company can survive without revenues?”

His investors, however, claim that Azpurua is simply using the COVID emergency as an excuse to cover up gross mismanagement and the arbitrary use of the funds they provided.

Some of the investors the Miami Herald spoke to said Azpurua’s Christian background and regular appearance on television were factors in deciding to invest in his business.

Azpurua, 53, who is listed as a teacher on the website of Miami’s Alpha & Omega Bible College, has been featured as a speaker in several business seminars, where he professed that his faith in God and his adherence to Christian principles has been the cornerstone of his success. In the summary of his book on Amazon, The Creative Dealmaker: A Life Built Upon The Rock, the Venezuela-born businessman says that “learning from many setbacks, he rebuilt himself upon the Gospels and grew stronger.

Brand hotels

Investors claim in the lawsuit that they entered into the project after being told that they would be funding the development of well-recognized brand-name hotels, managed by an experienced and independent hotel manager, with the expectation of financial returns and the opportunity to obtain unconditional U.S. residency through the EB-5 program.

The investments were made into RP I-Drive, LLC, one of the companies linked to Riviera Point, where Azpurua served as CEO.

According to the lawsuit, Azpurua ”betrayed the reliance of the investors and proceeded to defraud dozens of them by exploiting their desire for U.S. permanent residency and misappropriating their investments for his and his wife’s own personal financial gain”.

“The last step in the scheme is the purported sale of the properties that Defendants wish to execute imminently, which would irreparably harm investors that have their immigration status tied to this project,” the lawsuit says.

Anabell García, a Venezuelan national who lives with her two daughters in South Florida, said that she was able to obtain the U.S. residency status through Riviera Point’s EB-5 program but said she is very concerned about her $500,000 investment, which makes up the bulk of her savings.

In addition to the legal status, she was supposed to receive regular payments from Azpurua’s companies, but says these were never made. Once she learned that the hotels were in trouble in December, she tried to contact the company but the emails she sent went unanswered. She is now concerned about her future. “I need the money because I have an 18-year-old daughter that is going to college,” García said.

García and other Investors consulted by the Herald questioned Azpurua’s claim that lack of occupancy is at the center of the project’s trouble. At least one of them said that they have traveled to the La Quinta hotel in Sebring, Florida, and said he was told that they were fully booked for the following two weeks.

Another investor who asked for anonymity because she fears of losing her EB-5 status said the Orlando hotel has everything going in its favor. Located two miles away from Sea World, the Tryp by Windham should be a money-making machine, she said.

“The hotel was constructed in a strategic location, it has everything going to be very profitable, but he refuses to provide us with a single financial statement,” she said.

Other investors claimed that Azpurua on several occasions refused to grant them access to the project’s books.

Azpurua told the Herald this was another lie and said he disclosed financial information to his investors regularly. He said he had in fact invited his investors to conduct an audit of the company’s operations.

“I have told them, if you believe that these claims are true, go ahead and conduct an audit so you can prove it, but they won’t do it. Instead, they keep repeating: ‘You stole from me, you stole from me’, and to launch all of these false accusations,” he said.

The latest item in the investors’ list of grievances is a claim that Azpurua arranged a “back-door sale” of the property, although he had previously told them he would conduct an auction to obtain the best price.

Investors said that Azpurua rushed to make the deal knowing that investors were about to ask the courts to halt the auction claiming it would hurt their interests.

While the legality of the transaction is being challenged by the lawsuit, Azpurua said that the sale was the result of a online bidding process and that the winning bid was chosen under the advisement of the hired broker, the Kabani Hotel Group, which had expressed concern over the soft market conditions for hotels.

Lasso, whose family savings are also tied up in the hotel projects, said that the Azpurua’s handling of the sale is characteristic of his business practices.

“This confirms the underhanded dealings of this guy,” he said. “He had all of us distracted with the auction when all this time he was preparing the documents and working on the conditions of the sale, and while we were getting ready for an auction that was supposed to be held online we suddenly learned that there would be no auction because he had secretly sold the hotels.”