A fraud complaint in the United States against Cayman Islands realtor RE/MAX and related parties has been dismissed on jurisdictional grounds.
“All of the parties in this case, aside from the three American Defendants – which in reality are peripheral players that Plaintiff seeks to hold liable under a theory of vicarious liability – are either Caymanian or, at the time of their alleged wrongdoing, were principals or agents of Caymanian entities,” stated U. S. District Judge Andrea R. Wood when granting the defendant's motion to dismiss on October 11th at federal court in Chicago.
“The entire dispute centers on a Cayman Islands company, a Cayman Islands franchise, and the Project on Grand Cayman and at least some of the claims are governed by Cayman Islands law. There is no reason for such a dispute to be litigated in the Northern District of Illinois.”
The complaint had been filed in March 2015 by Peter Anderson and Matthew Wright, of RHSW (Cayman) Limited, as Joint Official Liquidators of Caribbean Island Developments Ltd., against RE/MAX Holdings, Inc., RMCO, LLC, RE/MAX, LLC, Simba Ltd., d.b.a. RE/MAX Cayman Islands; Kim Lund and James Bovell, who both own RE/MAX in Cayman; Oliver DeHart, and Michael Beggs, who both operated Caribbean Island Developments.
“This fraudulent scheme ran from 2007 to 2011, and induced more than 30 people to pay almost $5.6 million on condominiums in the Island Resort Project,” it had been alleged. “By July 2011, CID still had not obtained financing, and without ever starting construction, it went belly up. Because the Cayman Defendants had already taken (and laundered) their victims’ money, including sending a portion up to RE/MAX, no money was returned to the victims of the fraud.”
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