Investigative Report

Grant Cardone Told Investors to “Tell the SEC” He Promised Them 15% Returns. The SEC Had Already Told Him to Stop.

Source: Pino v. Cardone Capital, LLC et al. | U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit | Filed June 10, 2025

While the SEC was sending Grant Cardone letters telling him his investment return projections had no backing and needed to come down, Cardone was posting those exact same projections on Instagram and YouTube, daring investors to go report him to the very regulators who had already flagged him.

The real estate influencer and self-described financial guru built his investment fund pitch on the promise of a 15% annualized internal rate of return, broadcasting it to hundreds of thousands of social media followers who were specifically categorized as “everyday investors,” the kind of people the law generally offers more protection to because they lack the wealth or financial sophistication to absorb a catastrophic loss.

This is how Grant Cardone got sued, why a federal appeals court just let that lawsuit move forward, and why the people who handed him their money deserve to know every detail of what the court found.

The Paper Trail: How This Case Got Here

This lawsuit did not happen overnight. It took years of legal fighting, two prior appeals, and one investor dying before the case reached its current stage. Here is the timeline the court documents establish.

Luis Pino filed this lawsuit. He did not live to see the appeals court rule in his favor. His daughter Christine is now the named plaintiff, carrying the case forward as his successor-in-interest. That is not a footnote. That is the human reality of what it costs everyday people to fight corporations in court.

The Numbers Cardone Put on the Table

Grant Cardone’s pitch had a specific number at its center: 15% annualized internal rate of return. He told investors that over 10 years, that would become a 150% total return, doubling their money. The court document establishes this as the central false promise of the case. Below is what that promise looked like versus how the SEC responded.

The SEC reviewed Cardone’s offering circular, which included the 15% IRR projection and related distribution projections. The SEC sent Cardone a letter stating those projections lacked backing and requesting they be removed. Cardone pushed back on other criticisms in the SEC’s letter, the court documents show. On this specific one, he said nothing. He just took the projections out of the official filing. Then he kept posting them on social media.

The Non-Financial Ledger

What This Actually Cost Real People

Grant Cardone did not build his audience with financial disclosures and risk disclaimers. He built it the way influencers build every audience: by making people feel like they were being let in on a secret, like they were finally getting access to the kind of wealth-building tools that “the rich” had hoarded for themselves. His funds were explicitly marketed to the “everyday investor.” That phrase matters. It is not neutral language. It is a targeting mechanism.

Unaccredited investors are legally defined as people who have not met specific wealth, income, or financial sophistication thresholds set by the SEC. These are people who, by legal definition, are considered more financially vulnerable. Cardone’s entire fundraising structure, operating under Regulation A of the Securities Act and classified under the JOBS Act as serving “everyday investors,” was built to reach exactly these people. The same legal framework designed to expand access to investing for working-class people was the vehicle through which the alleged misrepresentations traveled.

Luis Pino invested in 2019. He filed his lawsuit in 2020. He died before the case was resolved. His daughter Christine, now listed as his successor-in-interest, inherited not just a legal claim but years of courtroom warfare, two dismissals by a lower court judge, and multiple trips to the appeals court. She has been fighting this case since at least 2020, and as of the June 2025 ruling, the lawsuit has not yet gone to trial. The family has spent roughly five years in litigation just to get to the point where a court says the claims are legally viable enough to proceed.

The court documents reveal that the original plaintiff did not survive long enough to see his case vindicated, even partially. Christine Pino was substituted as successor-in-interest after her father’s death. There is no financial figure attached to that particular cost in any legal document. There rarely is. The loss of dignity involved in watching a grieving family fight a well-funded corporate legal team, across multiple courts, for years, while the person who started the fight is no longer alive, does not appear in a settlement calculation. It belongs in this ledger instead.

The investors who Cardone targeted watched YouTube videos and Instagram posts where a confident, charismatic man told them they would “walk away with a 15% annualized return,” that if he was in the deal for ten years they would “earn 150%,” and that they could “tell the SEC” that is what he said it would be. That specific phrase, that invitation to go report him to his own regulator, was not recklessness. It reads, in hindsight, as the kind of performative confidence designed to make skeptical investors feel foolish for doubting him. The SEC had already told him his projections lacked backing. He repeated those projections anyway, on camera, to people who trusted him.

Cardone also posted on Instagram that investors should ask who was responsible for the debt of the funds, and that the answer was Grant Cardone himself. The court found this was a material misstatement, meaning a reasonable investor’s decision-making would be significantly affected by knowing whether it was true. If Cardone was personally on the hook for the debt, that protected investors in a meaningful way. If he was not, and the debt burden fell on the fund itself, that changed the math on returns for everyone who had bought in. The court documents do not describe what happened to the investors who made financial decisions based on that specific false assurance. The law does not require that level of accounting. But the people who reorganized their finances based on Cardone’s Instagram posts deserve to have it named here.

Legal Receipts

Straight from the Court Documents

These are direct quotes from the Ninth Circuit’s June 10, 2025 opinion in Pino v. Cardone Capital, LLC. Every word below is from the court record.

“[Y]ou’re gonna walk away with a 15% annualized return. If I’m in that deal for 10 years, you’re gonna earn 150% . . . You can tell the SEC that’s what I said it would be . . . some people call me Nostradamus, because I’m predicting the future dude, this is what’s gonna happen.” Grant Cardone, YouTube video, as quoted in the Ninth Circuit Opinion, June 10, 2025

“Cardone pushed back on other criticisms from the SEC, but not this one, suggesting Cardone did not truly believe its own projections and lacked evidence to rebut the SEC. Even so, Cardone continued to repeat the IRR and distribution projections in other communications to would-be investors on social media.” Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Pino v. Cardone Capital, LLC, June 10, 2025

“One question you might want to ask is, who is responsible for the debt? The answer is Grant [Cardone]!” Grant Cardone, Instagram post, as quoted in the Ninth Circuit Opinion, June 10, 2025

“[T]hat truthful information is available elsewhere does not relieve a defendant from liability for misrepresentations in a given filing or statement.” Ninth Circuit, citing Miller v. Thane Int’l, Inc. — used to reject Cardone’s argument that the SEC letter was publicly available and therefore not “omitted”

“Cardone’s telling reaction to the SEC letter — removing the projections without any rebuttal or comment — evinces Cardone’s subjective disbelief. Construing the facts in the light most favorable to Pino plausibly supports the claim that Cardone did not believe these projections in the first place.” Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Pino v. Cardone Capital, LLC, June 10, 2025

“Section 12(a)(2) is unique as ‘a virtually absolute liability provision that does not require an allegation that defendants possessed scienter.'” Ninth Circuit, citing Miller v. Thane Int’l — meaning Cardone cannot escape liability simply by arguing he did not intend to deceive anyone

Societal Impact Mapping

Who Actually Pays When Influencers Run Investment Funds

Economic Inequality: The Whole System Was Built to Target Financially Vulnerable People

Cardone’s funds were categorized as emerging growth companies under the 2015 U.S. JOBS Act. The JOBS Act was sold to the public as a way to democratize investing, to give ordinary people access to investment opportunities that had previously been reserved for the wealthy. In practice, what it also did was reduce reporting and accounting requirements for companies raising money this way. Less transparency. Fewer guardrails. A lower bar for what they had to disclose.

Cardone’s funds operated under Regulation A of the Securities Act, which exempts smaller public offerings from full SEC registration while still requiring filings and qualification. Cardone Capital itself described these funds as an investment opportunity for the “everyday investor.” By definition, “unaccredited investors” are people who have not met wealth or income thresholds: these are not hedge fund managers. These are people who may be investing a significant portion of their available savings. When a person with $10,000 in savings puts money into a fund on the promise of a 15% annual return, and that return projection was made without evidential backing, the proportional financial harm is vastly greater than it would be for a wealthy investor absorbing a similar loss.

The lawsuit is structured as a class action, meaning many investors are alleged to have been harmed by the same conduct. The court documents do not specify how many people invested or the total dollar amount raised, but the structure of Cardone’s social media campaign, posting investment pitches on Instagram and YouTube to massive audiences, tells the story clearly. This was a mass-market financial pitch, delivered through influencer infrastructure, aimed at people the law itself recognizes as less financially sophisticated. The court found the alleged misstatements were material. That means a legal body has determined they were significant enough to change a reasonable investor’s decision. Multiply that by every person who saw those posts and bought in.

The debt obligation misstatement adds another layer of economic harm. Cardone told investors on Instagram that he personally was responsible for the funds’ debt. The court explained exactly why that matters: if Cardone was personally liable for the debt, investors would face fewer costs and thus greater returns. If he was not, the debt sat inside the fund structure itself, eating into returns that had already been projected without sufficient backing. Someone who made an investment decision based on Cardone’s personal guarantee of debt responsibility received materially different information than the truth. The court found that this could “alter the total mix of available information in the eyes of a reasonable investor.” That is not legal jargon. That means people made financial decisions based on something that was not accurate.

Public Health: When Financial Exploitation Reaches Far Enough, the Harm Goes Beyond the Bank Account

The source documents do not contain direct evidence of physical health harms. What they do contain is the record of a man, Luis Pino, who filed a lawsuit in 2020 and died before it was resolved in 2025. The court documents record his death factually, as a procedural matter requiring the substitution of his daughter as successor-in-interest. The connection between financial stress, health outcomes, and mortality in working-class and middle-class Americans is well-established in public health research, though that research is not part of this court record. What this record does establish is that an unaccredited investor invested in these funds in 2019, filed a lawsuit alleging fraud in 2020, and did not live to see a court vindicate his claims. His daughter is fighting the case now. That is the human cost this reporting can honestly name, based solely on what is in the source.

Financial exploitation targeting economically vulnerable people carries documented psychological and physical health consequences, including elevated stress, anxiety, and depression at the population level. The specific investors in Cardone’s funds are not named or counted in this document. But the structure of what the court describes, a mass social media campaign pitching unverified investment returns to everyday investors, without disclosing that the SEC had told Cardone his projections lacked backing, describes a harm that did not stop at the wallet.

They Tried to Dismiss This Case Twice. The Court Reversed Them Both Times.

The lower court dismissed this case twice. Both times, the appeals court reversed it. The second time the district court dismissed it, it did so without giving Christine Pino the opportunity to amend again, and with prejudice, meaning the judge intended to kill the case permanently. The Ninth Circuit reversed that decision too. The case is now alive on all three of Pino’s core claims.

The Cost of a Life: What Cardone Bet Against

What Now?

The People Still Running This, and Who Is Supposed to Stop Them

The entities named as defendants in this case are:

• Defendant Grant Cardone — founder of Cardone Capital, named individually as a defendant and as a controlling person under Section 15 of the Securities Act
• Defendant Cardone Capital, LLC — the real estate syndicator at the center of the alleged misrepresentations, named as a controlling person and seller
• Defendant Cardone Equity Fund V, LLC — one of the two investment funds at the center of the lawsuit
• Defendant Cardone Equity Fund VI, LLC — the second investment fund at the center of the lawsuit

Regulatory Bodies with Jurisdiction

• SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) — The SEC is the primary regulator here. They reviewed Cardone’s offering circular, sent him a letter about the unsupported projections, and yet this conduct reached retail investors on social media regardless. The SEC’s EDGAR database contains the original letter. Demand they act on the findings of this case.
• FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) — Oversees broker-dealer conduct and investor protection. Social media investment solicitation to unaccredited investors falls within the scope of conduct FINRA monitors.
• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) — The CFPB exists to protect everyday financial consumers from deceptive practices. Financial products marketed through social media to non-sophisticated investors belong squarely in their mandate.
• State Securities Regulators — Every state has its own securities regulator. If you invested in Cardone’s funds, your state’s securities division is a direct avenue for complaint. Find yours at NASAA.org.

If You Invested in Cardone’s Funds

• The lawsuit is a putative class action. If you are an unaccredited investor who put money into Cardone Equity Fund V or VI after seeing social media pitches, you may be a member of the class. Contact the plaintiff’s attorneys at Susman Godfrey LLP, who are listed in the court record.
• Document everything. Screenshot the social media posts you saw before you invested. Save any offering materials or communications you received from Cardone Capital. Your records matter to the case.
• File a complaint with the SEC at sec.gov/tcr. The SEC has a formal complaint system, and investor complaints are part of how enforcement priorities are set.

The people who lost money in Grant Cardone’s funds did not get there by being reckless. They got there because a man with a massive social media following told them, on camera, that they would earn 15% a year, that he was personally responsible for the debt, and that they could go tell the SEC he said so. The SEC had already told him to stop. He kept going. The court has now said, three times, that this case deserves a trial. Share this story. Find the other investors. And understand that the only reason this case is still alive is because one man’s family refused to let it die.