Jilted Investors Ask to Intervene in FTC’s Belize Real Estate Suit

In 2018, the Federal Trade Commission revealed what it calls “the largest overseas real estate investment scam” and unfortunately for Belize, the scammers used its name and landscape to attract victims. As we have reported extensively, the FTC alleges that a group of companies including Sanctuary Bay Belize under lead scammer Andre Pukke and their officers sold hundreds of lots in southern Belize under the claim that the real estate project would be completed swiftly and the investors could reap profits of two to three hundred percent. But that didn’t happen despite the collection of more than one hundred million dollars. More than a thousand American investors lost tens of thousands of dollars and Pukke and his accomplices squandered millions of dollars. Today, a group of the jilted investors has urged the U.S. federal court to let them intervene in the lawsuit. According to Law360, “the eighteen proposed interveners who filed their motion on Friday say they and other property owners wish to create an owners’ association to represent the more than one thousand individuals who have bought into the purported luxury real estate development.” In addition, the interveners asserted that they are “the victims” the FTC sought to protect when it sued the developers, but neither the agency nor the temporary receiver has visited the sanctuary to learn the development’s needs.  The FTC charges Atlantic International Bank with facilitating the Sanctuary Belize scam.