Cardone Capital Reviews 2026: Real Returns, Losses, Lawsuit

Updated October 16, 2026 — nothing new on EDGAR since September 4; the class action moved only on discovery, and Cardone's own site now claims $642M paid out. (1) Filings: we re-checked the SEC's filing lists for Cardone Equity Funds V and VI, Cardone REIT I, the Non Accredited Fund and Cardone Equity Fund 29 on October 16, 2026; the newest entry is the September 4, 2026 qualification of the Non Accredited Fund, so every filed figure below keeps its original date. (2) Court: the docket for the certified class action (C.D. Cal. No. 2:20-cv-08499) shows a new entry on October 13, 2026 (Dkt. 273) setting an informal discovery conference before the magistrate judge for October 14; the parties' joint filing still lists discovery closing November 16, 2026, the pretrial conference February 12, 2027 and trial March 3, 2027, while the court-approved notice site says “The trial date is currently scheduled on March 9, 2027.” We found no ruling on summary judgment, and no settlement. (3) Marketing: cardonecapital.com now shows $642M of investor distributions, 20,020 investors, $2B raised and $5.4B in assets under management, with no as-of date, and says the firm has “never missed a monthly distribution for over 240 consecutive months.” Those are the company's claims about cash paid; the filings still show no property sold and no realized return.

Updated October 11, 2026 — what "returns" can you actually verify from the filings? Three measures, and none of them is a sale. (1) Paper return: Cardone Equity Funds V and VI report a Class A internal rate of return since inception, net of fees, of 13.41% and 13.08% at December 31, 2024 and 12.42% and 11.70% at June 30, 2025 (down from 18.26% and 24.16% at the start of 2023); the funds say the calculation includes “ending net asset value as of each measurement date,” which means Cardone's own valuations of buildings that have not been sold. (2) Cash: Fund V paid its Class A investors $2,769,081 in 2024 (a “5.5% annual rate return”) and Fund VI $1,470,848 (“5% annual rate of return”); since inception Fund V has distributed $15,769,054 on $50,000,000 raised and Fund VI $8,335,710 on $29,463,000. (3) Losses: Cardone REIT I has paid $8,522,301 of accumulated distributions (to December 31, 2025) against 74,934 Class A units sold at $1,000, while its members' equity fell to $31,714,274. As of October 11, 2026 EDGAR shows no Cardone fund filing after the September 4, 2026 qualification of the Non Accredited Fund, and the public copy of the court docket (last entry October 13, 2026) shows no ruling on the curative-notice motion or on summary judgment that we could find. The full per-fund comparison is in the new section below.

Earlier update, October 8, 2026 — the judge blocked Cardone's buyout offer to the class, both sides are heading to summary judgment, and two of the funds are late with their reports. In the certified class action over Cardone Equity Funds V and VI (C.D. Cal. No. 2:20-cv-08499), Cardone asked on April 13, 2026 for permission to offer class members "a refund of their invested capital, plus interest, minus any cash distributions received to date." On May 15, 2026 the court denied it (Dkt. 250), saying the offer would be better used "as a basis for a Class-wide settlement rather than using it to negotiate what are essentially piecemeal settlements." The class plaintiff then accused the defendants of "improperly soliciting opt-outs and conducting individual buy-outs of class members" and asked for a curative notice; the defendants opposed, and the ruling is not yet in the public docket copy. Grant Cardone was deposed on July 17, 2026; on August 24 counsel conferred on anticipated cross-motions for summary judgment; discovery closes November 16, 2026, the pretrial conference is February 12, 2027, and trial is set for March 2027 (the court-approved notice site says March 9; the parties' latest joint filings say March 3). There is still no settlement and no ruling on the merits. On the filing side: Cardone REIT I paid a 4.00% annualized distribution for December 16, 2025–March 15, 2026 ($739,074) and the Non Accredited Fund 5.00% ($591,485); the Non Accredited Fund lost $1,858,406 in FY2025; Funds V and VI have not filed a FY2025 annual report (their last filing is the 1-SA of December 31, 2025), and Cardone REIT I has not filed its H1 2026 semiannual report. A sister offering circular (August 24, 2026) shows three 2025 Cardone funds put $15M, $15M and $108M into Bitcoin, and that as of June 30, 2026 "none of the Projects were sold or transferred" — so no Cardone fund has a completed, realized return to show yet.

Update, August 2026: the securities class action against Cardone Capital and Grant Cardone was certified on March 27, 2026 and a jury trial is set for March 2027. We track the docket, the Ninth Circuit's reversal and what Funds V and VI report in their own audited filings in The Cardone Capital Class Action in 2026.

Why this review exists — and the correction it has to make first

Search "Cardone Capital review" and you will find two kinds of content: promotional pieces echoing Grant Cardone's own pitch ("15% annualized returns," "double your money," "passive income"), and outrage pieces claiming "Grant Cardone settled with the SEC." Both are wrong in opposite directions. This review exists to replace both with what the primary documents — SEC EDGAR filings and federal court opinions — actually say.

The most important correction up front, because it is the one most often repeated as fact: there was no SEC settlement and no SEC fine against Cardone Capital. Anyone telling you otherwise is repeating a misremembering of two separate, real events — a routine SEC staff comment letter, and a private investor lawsuit. We lay out both precisely below, because on a topic involving a litigious public figure, accuracy is not optional.

This review is built from the audited Reg A+ filings of Cardone's funds on SEC EDGAR — the Cardone Equity Fund V 1-K and 1-SA, the Cardone REIT I FY2025 1-K (filed April 30, 2026), and the Non Accredited Fund 1-SA — plus the Ninth Circuit's June 10, 2025 opinion in Pino v. Cardone Capital, the official court-approved class notice documenting the 2026 class certification and March 9, 2027 trial date, and the contemporaneous legal analyses. It belongs in the cautionary tier of CrowdfundedWealth's coverage alongside our reviews of real estate crowdfunding failures, the DiversyFund review (the Reg A+ app whose offering the SEC permanently suspended in 2023), and the platforms we explicitly do not recommend.

The two real regulatory events

Event 1 — the 2018 SEC staff comment letter (not a settlement)

When Cardone Equity Fund V went through Regulation A+ qualification in mid-2018, SEC staff reviewed the offering circular and, in a July 2018 comment letter, instructed Cardone to delete a projected "approximately 15% annualized return" and related monthly-distribution figures appearing on page 17 "and throughout the offering statement," on the basis that the projection lacked a reasonable foundation. Cardone complied in writing — the response was essentially "We have removed the references on pages 17, 26, and 32," with no defense of the number — and the fund was qualified.

This is a routine part of the SEC's disclosure-review process. It is not an enforcement action, a fine, or a settlement. The forensic significance is not the comment letter itself but what happened next: having agreed to remove the unsupported 15% projection from the legal document, Cardone continued promoting "15% annualized return" on Instagram and YouTube. That contradiction is the seed of the lawsuit.

Event 2 — Pino v. Cardone Capital (a live private class action)

An investor who described himself as non-accredited, and who had put the minimum into Cardone Equity Funds V and VI, sued on September 16, 2020 (C.D. Cal. No. 2:20-cv-08499) over the 15% IRR and distribution claims used to market those funds; the current lead plaintiff was appointed class representative when the class was certified on March 27, 2026. The case has produced two notable Ninth Circuit decisions:

• December 21, 2022 (No. 21-55564; reported at 55 F.4th 1253): The Ninth Circuit held that Cardone's mass social-media communications constituted "solicitation," making the promoter a statutory seller liable under Securities Act §12(a)(2) — a landmark ruling for influencer/securities liability.
• June 10, 2025 (No. 23-3512): On a second appeal, the court again reversed dismissal, holding that Pino adequately pleaded both objective and subjective falsity under the Supreme Court's Omnicare standard, and that omitting the SEC comment letter — even though it was public on EDGAR — could support a misstatement-or-omission claim. The court reasoned that Cardone's silent removal of the projection "evinces [his] subjective disbelief" in the very number he kept advertising. On August 1, 2025 the Ninth Circuit denied rehearing en banc and sent the case back to the district court.
• March 27, 2026 — class certified (C.D. Cal., No. 2:20-cv-08499): On remand the district court certified the class, defined as anyone who acquired an interest in Cardone Equity Fund V or VI through their public offerings. The exclusion (opt-out) deadline was July 14, 2026. Cardone asked the Ninth Circuit to review the certification under Rule 23(f); on June 1, 2026 the court denied the petition (No. 26-2252).
• May 15, 2026 — buyout offer blocked (Dkt. 250): two weeks after certification, the defendants asked permission to offer each class member "a refund of their invested capital, plus interest, minus any cash distributions received to date." The court refused, worried about "widespread confusion" among class members it described, quoting the defendants, as "everyday retail investors," and said the offer would be better used "as a basis for a Class-wide settlement."
• June–August 2026 — fight over contacts with the class: the class plaintiff alleges the defendants kept "improperly soliciting opt-outs and conducting individual buy-outs of class members" and asked the court to deem opt-outs withdrawn, send a curative notice and bar Cardone's social-media posts about the case; the defendants opposed. We could not find a ruling in the public docket copy as of October 16, 2026; its newest entry (October 13, 2026, Dkt. 273) only sets a discovery conference. Grant Cardone was deposed on July 17, 2026.
• Next steps: both sides announced cross-motions for summary judgment (conference of August 24, 2026); discovery closes November 16, 2026; pretrial conference February 12, 2027; jury trial in March 2027 (March 9 per the court-approved notice site; the parties' July 25 and August 26 joint filings list March 3). This is the development most search results miss: the case is not dormant — it has cleared the pleading stage AND certification, settlement talk is now on the court's record, and it is headed to summary judgment and trial.

Two things must be said plainly. First, certification is not a finding of liability — it means the case can proceed as a class, but there has been no merits judgment, and the allegations remain unproven (Cardone denies wrongdoing). Second, this is a private securities class action, not a government action. Describing it as an "SEC case" or "SEC settlement" is simply wrong. But it is a real, live and now escalating legal overhang on the manager's core marketing conduct — a certified class with a 2027 trial date — and it is the single largest reason the Regulatory/Legal dimension scores 1.5.

Separately, in 2025–2026 two civil suits were filed against Grant Cardone personally — a defamation claim by a former Miss Universe Canada delegate (filed December 2025) and a whistleblower-retaliation/defamation claim by Cardone Capital's former chief marketing officer (filed May 2026). Both are unproven allegations, and neither concerns the funds' securities — but for a manager whose distribution engine is his personal brand, escalating personal litigation is a key-person risk worth noting. The class action also reaches into a third suit: on August 19, 2026 a magistrate judge ordered briefing on whether Cardone must produce documents and sworn testimony from his Florida defamation suit against the former CEO of T-Mobile, which has since settled. In parallel, Cardone Capital pivoted part of its strategy toward Bitcoin, and the filings now put numbers on it: the prior-performance tables in the Non Accredited Fund's August 24, 2026 offering circular show Cardone Equity Fund 26 (10X SCF) and Fund 27 each allocating $15,000,000 to Bitcoin and Fund 28 (which raised $205,709,600) allocating $108,000,000 — a material strategy shift for investors who bought a multifamily-real-estate thesis.

The marketing-versus-reality gap

The promotional thesis is aggressive: "15% annualized," "double your money in 10 years," "monthly cash flow." As of October 16, 2026 cardonecapital.com adds a cash claim, “$642M returned on $2B raised,” plus “never missed a monthly distribution for over 240 consecutive months,” with no date on either. Distributions are cash paid to investors, not a realized round-trip return, and the audited filings tell a different story.

A fund compounding at 15% does not report multimillion-dollar net losses, and two of the funds that file annual reports do (Cardone REIT I and the Non Accredited Fund). Funds V and VI are the better case: they carry their buildings well above cost (Fund V's net assets rose to $105,724,878 at December 31, 2024 on $10,722,025 of unrealized gains, then slipped to $104,688,434 by June 30, 2025), and they report a since-inception IRR of 11.70% to 13.41%, which is below 15%, lower every year, and not a sale. The Non Accredited Fund's 1-SA shows each property at a book loss, with "current book valuations significantly below the purchase price of the properties," though it attributes that loss "primarily to non-cash depreciation and amortization" and says the figures do not consider any market appreciation since acquisition. Rising rates also reached the payouts: Cardone Equity Fund XVIII told investors in July 2022 that its distribution "was impacted by a $67k increase in interest expense due to rising interest rates," and an independent blog reported the rate was cut from 6% to 4%. Funds V and VI, by contrast, held or raised their payout rates that year (Fund V from 4% to 4.5%, Fund VI at 4.5%).

The verdict on the headline number: the marketed "15% annualized return" is not supported by the filed financials. The closest the filings come is Fund V's 13.41% since-inception IRR at December 31, 2024, and that is a paper figure; the cash paid out is 4% to 5.5% a year. SEC staff said as much in 2018; the EDGAR filings confirm it through 2025. And there is still no realized return to point to: the Non Accredited Fund's August 24, 2026 offering circular says that, across roughly $1.9 billion raised in 28 funds for 35 properties, "none of the Projects were sold or transferred" as of June 30, 2026, and its table of completed projects reads "Inapplicable as no properties have been disposed of." What investors actually receive today is the cash distribution — 4.00% annualized at Cardone REIT I and 5.00% at the Non Accredited Fund for the quarter to March 15, 2026 — on capital that is still marked, not sold.

What returns can you verify from the filings?

Search "Cardone Capital returns" and you get two numbers: the 15% in the marketing and whatever a blogger computed. The funds' own filings give three kinds of number, and they are not equally hard: cash paid is the hardest to fake, book value is the Manager's own estimate, and the internal rate of return (IRR) that Funds V and VI publish is built on that estimate.

Three things the table does not say out loud:

• The IRR is a valuation, not a payout. The funds define it as a dollar-weighted internal rate of return, net of fees, “including ending net asset value as of each measurement date.” No building has been sold, so the last term in that calculation is the Manager's own fair value. It has also moved the wrong way: Fund V's figure went from 18.26% to 14.42% to 13.41% to 12.42%, and Fund VI's from 24.16% to 14.10% to 13.08% to 11.70%. Neither fund has filed an annual report for FY2025, so June 30, 2025 is the latest reading.
• The Manager's catch-up comes out of the exit. In Fund V the Class B share has been paid at a reduced rate (“$0” to Class B in the first half of 2025), and the filing says paying the full split on a cumulative basis would mean “an additional $4,203,979” to the Manager. Cardone REIT I discloses $2,130,575 of deferred Class B distributions and the Non Accredited Fund $818,211, both payable at a future capital transaction. When a building is sold, that is paid before the investor's net multiple is final.
• Cash is 4% to 5.5%. That is the yield the filings document: 5.5% (Fund V) and 5% (Fund VI) in 2024, 4.00% at Cardone REIT I and 5.00% at the Non Accredited Fund for the quarter ended March 15, 2026. It is a real number and it has been paid, but it is a third of the marketed 15%, and at Cardone REIT I it has been paid while members' equity fell by $20,693,630 over 2024 and 2025 (from $52,765,248 to $31,714,274 at December 31, 2025).

What the filings cannot give you is a realized return. As of June 30, 2026, “none of the Projects were sold or transferred.” Until one is, every figure above except the cash is an estimate.

The debt structure — the proximate cause of the losses

Cardone's multifamily portfolio was built substantially on floating-rate and mezzanine debt, which is what turned the 2022-2024 rate-hike cycle into net losses. The Cardone REIT I 1-SA discloses that, as of mid-2025, four of its five leveraged property entities carried floating-rate loans (three after the August 2025 refinancing, per the FY2025 1-K), with interest-rate caps as high as roughly 5.1%-6.25% on senior debt and 7.5%-8.1% on mezzanine debt. As the SOFR base rose, interest expense climbed faster than rents, compressing distributable cash and driving the reported losses.

There is some 2025 deleveraging to credit honestly: the REIT I filings disclose that one floating-rate loan was refinanced in August 2025 into a new $90,846,000 five-year fixed-rate loan at 4.895%, and Cardone has publicly emphasized a shift toward all-cash and fixed-rate acquisitions. The refinancing was paid for by bringing in a new partner — Cardone Equity Fund 27, which took a 27.84% stake in the Miami River property — so Cardone REIT I's own share of that building fell from 15.00% to 10.82%; Fund 27 is also one of the 2025 funds that allocated $15,000,000 to Bitcoin. But the existing portfolio's rate exposure is the reason a "passive income" pitch produced distribution cuts and net losses in the prior cycle, and it remains the dominant risk factor.

The fee and promote structure

The economics flow toward the manager. Per the Reg A+ filings, Cardone Capital takes:

Three layers of 1% fees plus a 20% to 35% promote is a manager-favorable structure, and it is worth knowing that nobody else is being paid to sell you into it: all 26 Form D filings across the 22 Reg D funds report $0 in sales commissions and $0 in finders' fees, so the money that a conventional sponsor pays a broker-dealer network stays inside this structure rather than reaching the investor. After fees and the carried interest, a large share of any upside accrues to the manager — which sharpens the conflict between the marketing (which maximizes capital raised) and the investor's net outcome. Grant Cardone does co-invest — Funds V and VI's filings say he owns 1% to 5% of each property-owning LLC, but the current Cardone REIT I 1-K says "0% to 2.5%" and the Non Accredited Fund 1-K "1% to 2.5%" — which provides some alignment, but it does not offset the promote.

Access — the one genuine strength

To be fair where fairness is due: the $5,000 minimum on the Reg A+ funds is a real democratizing feature — assuming you can still get in, and the Cardone Non Accredited Fund's own filings show $47,976,059 sold as of July 17, 2026 — the same as its Class A capital at December 31, 2025 — and the SEC only qualified its latest offering amendment on September 4, 2026, the first qualification since September 2023. It gives a non-accredited investor exposure to institutional-scale multifamily real estate that would otherwise require accreditation or six-figure minimums — the kind charged by an accredited-only fund like the Origin Investments IncomePlus Fund at its $100K entry point. And because Reg A+ Tier II requires audited annual 1-Ks and semiannual 1-SAs filed on EDGAR, the transparency at the filing level is better than most fully private syndications — which is precisely why this review can be written from primary documents at all. The funds own real, titled Class A apartment properties, not paper or crypto. Those are genuine positives, and they are why Accessibility scores 3.5 and the overall rating is 2.0 rather than lower.

The catch is liquidity. These are long-horizon vehicles — roughly a 10-year hold — with little or no redemption program. Capital is locked. An investor attracted by the "monthly cash flow" pitch needs to understand that the principal is illiquid for the better part of a decade.

ProsCons

FAQ

Verdict

Cardone Capital earns 2.0 out of 5 in this forensic, cautionary review — and the rating is built on primary documents, not vibes. The legitimacy question has a nuanced answer: it is a real, SEC-reporting Reg A+ fund manager that owns real apartments and files audited financials, and its $5,000 minimum genuinely democratizes access. Those facts keep it out of the bottom tier.

What pulls it down to 2.0 is the gap between what is marketed and what is filed. SEC staff rejected the "15% annualized return" projection in 2018; the EDGAR filings show net losses ($5.26M in FY2025) and a widening accumulated deficit through 2025; rising interest expense hit at least one fund's 2022 distribution; the fee-and-promote structure favors the manager; and a federal securities class action over the core marketing conduct is not just live but certified, with a buyout offer to the class blocked by the judge and a jury trial set for March 2027 after two Ninth Circuit reversals. The single thread connecting all of it is a marketing engine — Grant Cardone's personal brand — that has consistently described an investment more attractive than the one the audited numbers describe.

For a non-accredited investor drawn in by the "15% / double your money / passive income" pitch, the honest forensic conclusion is: read the actual 1-K and 1-SA filings on EDGAR before sending a dollar, understand that the principal is illiquid for roughly a decade, and weigh the live litigation and the documented marketing-versus-reality gap. We do not recommend Cardone Capital. We earn nothing from it, and this review links only informationally to its SEC filings — which are, in the end, the most useful thing the company has produced for a prospective investor.

Sources

Primary SEC EDGAR filings:

• Cardone Equity Fund V (CIK 1741665) — annual report on Form 1-K (FY2024, filed December 29, 2025)
• Cardone Equity Fund V — semiannual report on Form 1-SA
• Cardone Equity Fund V — original Form 1-A offering statement (2018)
• Cardone REIT I (CIK 1882616) — semiannual report on Form 1-SA
• Cardone Non Accredited Fund (CIK 1915521) — semiannual report on Form 1-SA
• Cardone Non Accredited Fund — annual report on Form 1-K (FY2025, filed April 30, 2026)
• Cardone Non Accredited Fund — Post-Qualification Offering Circular Amendment No. 6 (August 24, 2026; qualified September 4, 2026)
• Cardone Equity Fund VI (CIK 1766343) — annual report on Form 1-K (FY2024, filed December 29, 2025)
• Cardone Equity Fund VI (CIK 1766343) — semiannual report on Form 1-SA (H1 2025)
• Cardone Equity Fund 29 (CIK 2111881) — Form D (filed August 19, 2026)
• EDGAR company search — all Cardone entities

Court and legal analysis:

• Pino v. Cardone Capital — Ninth Circuit opinion, June 10, 2025 (No. 23-3512)
• Pino v. Cardone Capital — official court-approved class notice site (certification, opt-out July 14 2026, trial March 9 2027)
• Pino v. Cardone Capital — district court docket, C.D. Cal. No. 2:20-cv-08499 (CourtListener/RECAP), incl. the May 15, 2026 order denying the buyout-offer motion (Dkt. 250)
• Pino v. Cardone Capital — Ninth Circuit Rule 23(f) docket, No. 26-2252
• Cardone REIT I FY2025 Form 1-K (SEC EDGAR, filed April 30, 2026)
• Morgan Lewis — Ninth Circuit holds social-media posts can give rise to Securities Act liability (2022 decision)
• Duane Morris — Ninth Circuit clarifies §12(a)(2) misstatement claims under Omnicare (2025)
• National Law Review — failure to push back on an SEC comment as evidence
• InvestmentNews — court revives lawsuit over 15% fund-return promise

Context:

• The Real Deal — 2020 class-action filing against Grant Cardone
• BBB profile — Cardone Capital, LLC

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