Anyone who sells you an EB-5 offering for compensation is selling a security, and in the United States that activity normally requires registration as a broker dealer or as a registered representative of one. Two free public databases settle the question in about ten minutes. FINRA BrokerCheck covers brokers and brokerage firms. The SEC Investment Adviser Public Disclosure system covers investment advisers. If the person asking you to wire $800,000 appears in neither, they are unregistered or relying on an exemption, and a real professional can name that exemption without pausing.
Most overseas migration agents sit in a gray zone the industry discusses badly. A consultant in Ho Chi Minh City or Dubai who introduces you to a US regional center and collects a fee from that regional center is doing something American securities law cares about, even though enforcement against foreign finders has been sporadic and the jurisdictional questions remain genuinely unsettled.
You will almost certainly face no penalty yourself for using an unregistered agent, because the exposure runs the other way. An unregistered salesperson has no supervising firm and no compliance officer reviewing the marketing deck. There is no arbitration forum where you can claw money back. There is no license for a regulator to revoke. Whatever you were promised verbally is worth nothing once the wire clears.
What actually turns someone into a broker
Effecting securities transactions for the account of others triggers broker registration under US law, and the loudest single signal is transaction based compensation. Payment per closed investor. That is the test regulators reach for first, and it catches far more people than they expect.
An EB-5 limited partnership interest is a security. The regional center offering is usually sold under Regulation D inside the United States or Regulation S offshore. A migration agent who earns a five figure fee for every subscribed investor is being paid the way a broker is paid, whatever the business card says. Registered representatives carry a CRD number, so ask for it and then look it up yourself, because a screenshot of a database page can be edited in a minute.
Form I-956K, the register almost nobody reads
The EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 created a disclosure regime that did not exist before. Direct and third party promoters who market a regional center project must register with USCIS on Form I-956K, the promoter registration form, and the sponsor has to disclose what it pays them. People who run or control a regional center are separately vetted through Form I-956H bona fides filings.
Ask the regional center for the I-956K covering the person selling to you. A compliant sponsor produces it in a day. Evasion tells you the promoter is off the books, and the statute conditions a regional center's ability to work with promoters on that registration, so an off book agent is a compliance problem for the project as well as a warning about the salesperson. Ask on the first call, because this one question separates serious sponsors from the rest faster than any marketing brochure.
Two databases and one phone call
Run these checks before you sign a subscription agreement, not after.
- FINRA BrokerCheck. Search the individual and the firm separately. Open the disclosure events section, where customer complaints and regulatory actions appear.
- SEC Investment Adviser Public Disclosure. Advisers file Form ADV. Part 2 describes fees and conflicts in readable English, and it is where an adviser has to admit who else pays them.
- Your state securities regulator. State registration exists independently of the federal system. A person barred in one state sometimes keeps working out of another.
- The issuer itself. Call the regional center on a number taken from its own website and ask whether this individual is authorized to sell the offering. Two minutes of your time.
None of this replaces reading the offering. Verification tells you the salesperson exists inside a regulated structure. It says nothing about whether the project can repay $800,000, which is a separate exercise covered in our beginner guide to EB-5 due diligence.
Where your agent's money actually comes from
Nobody works for free. Your agent is paid out of the offering, which means the money comes from investor capital, from the developer budget or from a marketing allowance already priced into the deal. Ask for the figure in writing. An advisor who refuses to say what they earn on your $800,000 has answered the question you asked.
Watch for double dipping. Some agents charge the investor a consulting fee and take a placement commission from the sponsor on the same transaction. A registered representative would have to disclose that conflict in writing. An unregistered one simply does not mention it.
Red flags visible in the first meeting
- A guarantee that your I-526E will be approved. Nobody can promise how USCIS will adjudicate a petition.
- A guaranteed return or a structure described as risk free. Capital must stay at risk, and 8 CFR 204.6 has never permitted a redemption promise.
- Any suggestion that the SEC has approved or endorsed the offering. The SEC publishes an investor alert about claims that the SEC approved an offering precisely because this pitch keeps working.
- Wiring instructions pointing at a personal account, or at a jurisdiction with no connection to the project.
- Urgency built on a deadline that does not exist. Real deadlines exist: regional center authorization currently runs to 30 September 2027, petitions filed by 30 September 2026 are grandfathered against a lapse, and the first inflation adjustment to the $800,000 and $1,050,000 thresholds is due 1 January 2027. Ask which one applies to you.
- Any refusal to let your own lawyer review the private placement memorandum before signature.
A longer catalogue of warning signs sits in our list of EB-5 red flags to check before you wire funds, and the mechanics of how offshore agencies build credibility are covered in spotting fake visa agencies abroad.
Your lawyer should not be picked by your agent
The most damaging structure in EB-5 is quiet rather than dramatic. An agent recommends a law firm. That firm receives a steady stream of clients from the agent. Over time the firm stops asking hard questions about the agent's projects, because the referral pipeline is worth more than any single case. Nothing illegal has happened yet, and the investor has already lost their independent check.
Hire counsel yourself. An EB-5 law firm working for you should be willing to tell you a project is bad, and should be paid by you alone. Verify any US attorney through the relevant state bar, whose records are public and free, exactly as you verify a broker.
Keep the roles apart. Immigration counsel handles the petition. A securities lawyer or an independent adviser reads the offering documents. One person doing both while collecting a fee from the sponsor is the arrangement that recurs in the EB-5 fraud cases that ended badly for investors.
Already wired the money?
Stop sending anything further. Preserve every contract and transfer receipt, plus the chat threads people assume are private, because those threads are frequently the strongest evidence available later. Then retain counsel who has no relationship with the agent or the sponsor.
Two reporting channels matter, and they are separate. Securities misconduct goes to the SEC and to FINRA. Immigration related fraud goes to USCIS through its fraud and misconduct reporting channel, and conduct that crosses into criminality is handled by the Justice Department fraud section.
Reporting rarely returns your capital. It builds the record that regulators need, and it can matter for other investors still deciding. Check also whether your funds ever left the escrow account structure, because the answer changes what can still be recovered.