PUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No. 18-2194 XIA BI; NIAN CHEN; YUANYUAN CHEN; QINGLI CHENG; YING CHENG; DONGSHENG HU; JUN HUANG; KUI LE; CHUNGSHENG LI; ZHONGHUI LI; LIN LIN; LAN LIU; LING LIU; ZHENG QIN; MEIMING SHEN; YUNPING TAN; BIXIANG TANG; XIAONAN TANG; CHUN WANG; RUI WANG; YAHONG WANG; YUE WANG; JIAN WU; LEI YAN; JUNPING YAO; JIN YOU; ZHEN YU; HOUQIAN YU; NIANQING ZHANG; XUEMEI ZANG; HUIBIN ZHAO; YAN ZHAO, Plaintiffs – Appellants, v. TERRY MCAULIFFE; ANTHONY RODHAM, Defendants – Appellees and XIAOLIN CHARLES WANG; AMERICAN IMMIGRATION CENTERS, LLC, a Virginia limited liability company; CAPITAL WEALTH HOLDINGS LIMITED, a British Virgin Islands company; GREENTECH AUTOMOTIVE CAPITAL A-3 GP, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company; GREENTECH AUTOMOTIVE, INC., a Mississippi corporation; GULF COAST FUNDS MANAGEMENT, LLC, a Louisiana limited liability company; WM INDUSTRIES CORP, a Virginia corporation; DOES 1-100, Defendants. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, at Alexandria. Claude M. Hilton, Senior District Judge. (1:17-cv-01459-CMH-IDD) Argued: May 7, 2019 Decided: June 12, 2019 Before WILKINSON and NIEMEYER, Circuit Judges, and DUNCAN, Senior Circuit Judge. Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Wilkinson wrote the opinion, in which Judge Niemeyer and Senior Judge Duncan joined. ARGUED: Gerard Patrick Fox, Marina Vladimir Bogorad, GERARD FOX LAW P.C., Los Angeles, California, for Appellants. Marc Erik Elias, PERKINS COIE LLP, Washington, D.C., for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Scott M. Abeles, GERARD FOX LAW P.C., Washington, D.C., for Appellants. Bruce V. Spiva, Amanda R. Callais, PERKINS COIE LLP, Washington, D.C., for Appellees. 2 WILKINSON, Circuit Judge: Twenty-seven Chinese investors appeal from the dismissal of their claims against Terry McAuliffe and Anthony Rodham stemming from failed investments in an electric vehicle startup. For the reasons that follow, we affirm. I. A. We accept as true the following facts, which come from plaintiffs’ amended complaint. Plaintiffs-Appellants are a group of twenty-seven Chinese citizens who invested $500,000 each in a partnership that loaned their money to GreenTech Automotive. GreenTech, founded in 2008, was a Mississippi corporation that wanted to enter the hybrid and electric vehicle markets. Initially, GreenTech planned to produce the “MyCar,” a vehicle that would travel at low speeds and thus be subject to lower levels of regulatory scrutiny. This ambitious plan required a great deal of capital. GreenTech sought to raise some funds from foreign investors who might qualify under the Employment-Based Immigration Fifth Preference, or EB-5, Program. See 8 U.S.C. § 1153(b)(5). This program offered a path to permanent residency for foreign investors whose investments in American projects created or preserved at least ten jobs for American workers. While the program ordinarily required a $1 million investment, investments of $500,000 in certain rural areas or areas with high unemployment may also qualify under the EB-5 program. 3 GreenTech thus planned to build a new manufacturing facility in Tunica, Mississippi to take advantage of the lower investment threshold. The company collected funds from potential EB-5 immigrants through several different investment platforms. Some Chinese investors, for example, ...
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