In June 2025, the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the lower court in the long-running case of Pino v. Cardone Capital.

The case is back on. 

After some preliminaries, Pino filed a pretrial motion to compel documents from Cardone Capital.

An opposition to this was filed by Cardone’s attorneys and a hearing was held on November 26, 2025 — a scant two days after Cardone’s fellow Scientologist David Gentile was released from a US Federal Prison after his sentence was commuted by Trump.

The news of Gentile’s sleazy commutation went viral and generated a tsunami of global media coverage that Grant Cardone can only dream about. 

Self-proclaimed hustler and social media influencer Grant Cardone has been fighting the Pino class action for many years as it poses a significant threat to his business and reputation. Cardone said he has spent millions fighting this case on principle. We do not buy this because if a jury ever sees the evidence then, we think, Cardone will be exposed as a charlatan in a court of law. He has to fight this case. 

Luis Pino passed away and his daughter Christine Pino became the lead plaintiff in the case. Cardone Capital is the defendant. Excerpts from the Court offer a concise summary of the issues in the case: 

One of the issues is that Grant Cardone made a material misstatement in claiming that he was personally responsible for the debt of a fund. 

This is a material misrepresentation and the facts prove it: 

•  Grant Cardone acquires properties as an individual. He uses his own cash and debt. 
• Cardone then sells his property to Cardone Capital at a markup. Cardone is self-dealing here in that he makes a profit selling his personal properties to his company and its investors. 
• Cardone generally takes a small position in his funds as, we think, a PR gesture used to claim he believes in what he sells. 
• In Pino v. Cardone Capital, the company is being sued and not Grant Cardone as an individual. This shows that Grant Cardone shifts the financial and legal risks and liabilities away from himself and onto his companies. 
• Once Grant Cardone sells a property to his company and takes his profit, Cardone Capital and its investors become responsible for all debts and liabilities. Cardone thereby recovers his personal cash, plus a profit, and moves onto acquiring his next property using cash and debt. This is a lather, rinse and repeat formula. 
• As the CEO of Cardone Capital, Cardone takes an acquisition fee when he sells his property to his company.  Like David Gentile, Cardone takes fees anywhere and everywhere in his companies. 
• Grant Cardone takes annual management fees on each of Cardone Capital’s  properties. 
• Cardone takes 35% of the profit on the backside when a Cardone Capital fund exits a property. 

Grant Cardone has made numerous misstatements over the years. His most infamous lie was made during the depths of the Pandemic when he claimed he had gone bankrupt and was headed to prison:

After a firestorm of angry pushback from social media, Cardone said he made the video to “get above the noise” of the news stories about the hundreds of thousands of people that had died, and were dying, of the virus.

Cardone states in his court filings that Cardone Capital put a Social Media Compliance Manual into place after the SEC had written the company a letter about certain representations Grant Cardone had made online.

Cardone has tried to argue that claims he made online about the performance of his funds do not constitute statutory sales of securities. The Ninth Circuit held:

In this case, Defendants [Cardone Capital] allegedly relied significantly on social media to source investors for the Funds at issue here. Cardone posted on social media that Fund V was funded through “crowdfunding using social media,” and touted the use of social media as an intentional strategy to reduce promotional costs. FAC ¶¶ 38, 40.

Accordingly, through their social media engagement, Cardone and Cardone Capital were significant participants in the selling transaction because they disseminated material information to would-be investors. To conclude that their social media communications fall outside the Act’s protections would be at odds with Congress’s remedial goals. As observed by the Eleventh Circuit in Wildes, under Defendants’ interpretation of the Act, a seller liable “for recommending a security in a personal letter could not be held accountable for making the exact same pitch in an internet video.” 25 F.4th at 1346

Pino recently filed a motion to compel documents in its revived case. against Cardone. A hearing was recently held and a ruling will be handed down shortly.

In a supplemental pretrial filing made last month, Cardone argues that Pino is a $10,000 individual case that has not been certified as a class action. However, that argument seems inapposite. The issue in this case is focused on Grant Cardone’s alleged material misrepresentations he used on social media to engage in the statutory selling of securities to a class of potential investors. Cardone’s alleged material misstatements are alleged to have acted as a inducement to unsophisticated investors to invest in Cardone Capital.  

The Ninth Circuit Opinion of June 10, 2025 which sent Pino v. Cardone back to court: 

The Motion to Compel: