More than $14 million in legal and financial expenses have been rung up over 10 years since the largest investor fraud scandal in Vermont’s history, according to an Oct. 9 court filing by the receiver overseeing properties in the Northeast Kingdom that were engulfed in the scheme.
Michael Goldberg, the court-appointed receiver, submitted a new request seeking $1,017,849 to help with the latest costs and expenses, including help from accounting and immigration experts.
The new request covers the fees and expenses from May 1, 2025, to Aug. 31 of this year.
Federal Judge Darrin P. Gayles, who has presided over the receivership since it began in April 2016, this week approved Goldberg’s latest expense and fee request.
Goldberg wrote in his filing that along with other financial and legal professionals, he has been working on “winding down” the receivership with the goal of closing it out as soon as the end of the year.
He could not be reached Thursday for comment.
Goldberg was named the receiver in April 2016 when state and federal regulators leveled civil investor fraud enforcement actions against Ariel Quiros, then Jay Peak’s owner, and Bill Stenger, the resort’s former CEO and president.
Quiros and Stenger, as well as Bill Kelly, a key adviser to Quiros, all later reached plea deals with federal prosecutors on criminal charges and served jail time in connection with one of the EB-5 projects, a more than $100 million biomedical research facility proposed for Newport, known as AnC Bio Vermont.
According to filings from the state and federal regulators, the developers misused hundreds of millions of investor dollars raised through the EB-5 visa program, which was designed to reward foreign investors with green cards or permanent U.S. residency in exchange for putting money into qualified projects in the country.
The investments were to pay for massive upgrades at Jay Peak and Burke Mountain ski areas and additional projects in other communities in northern Vermont, including the proposed biomedical facility in Newport.
Some of the projects materialized, but later ones ran into financial trouble when authorities said the “Ponzi-like” scheme began to fall apart.
The receivership case was brought in federal court in Florida because that was where Quiros was living at the time the civil enforcement actions were filed.
Money to pay for Goldberg’s requested fees and expenses comes from previous sales of properties, including the resorts, as well as legal monetary settlements reached over the years.
Last year, the receiver oversaw the $11.5 million sale of Burke Mountain Resort to Bear Den Partners LLC, a group of people with longtime ties to the ski area.
That transaction followed the sale of Jay Peak Resort in 2022 to Pacific Group Resorts Inc., based in Park City, Utah, for $76 million.
In 2017, Goldberg reached a nearly $150 million settlement with Raymond James & Associates Inc., a financial institution that federal regulators said Quiros had used to carry out fraudulent transactions.
This summer, Goldberg agreed to sell off the last receivership property, land in downtown Newport known as “the pit,” for $1.1 million.
According to Goldberg’s latest court filing, the receivership in the past few months has been working on that Newport sale. In addition, Goldberg wrote, he has been assisting foreign investors whose green cards were put in jeopardy by the fraud.
A breakdown of Goldberg’s latest billing request shows $996,370 to cover professional fees and $21,478 for expenses, bringing the total to $1,017,849.