$99.4 Million Wine Ponzi Scheme Exposed as British Duo Admit Fraud in U.S. Court

Two British men, James Wellesley and Stephen Burton, have admitted in a Brooklyn federal court to orchestrating a $99.4 million Ponzi scheme that targeted investors with promises of high returns from loans supposedly backed by rare collectible wines. The guilty pleas were entered in October, following years of investigation and international pursuit by law enforcement agencies.

Wellesley appeared before U.S. District Judge Pamela Chen on October 7 and pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy. His co-defendant, Stephen Burton, had already reached a plea agreement with prosecutors earlier this year, admitting to both wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy. Both men now await sentencing, with Burton facing up to 29 years in prison and Wellesley facing up to 12 and a half years.

The scheme began nearly a decade ago, when Wellesley and Burton, sometimes using the alias Andrew Fuller, presented themselves as executives of Bordeaux Cellars, a wine brokerage they claimed operated out of London and Hong Kong. They attended investor conferences in cities such as Las Vegas and Cancun, pitching an investment opportunity that promised 12 percent annual returns. According to their pitch, investors’ funds would be used to provide short-term, high-interest loans to wealthy clients who needed quick access to capital. These loans, they claimed, would be secured by valuable bottles of wine from the borrowers’ private collections, stored in climate-controlled warehouses managed by Bordeaux Cellars.

In reality, neither the rare wines nor the wealthy borrowers existed. Instead, the money collected from investors was funneled into shell companies controlled by Wellesley and Burton. Some early investors received interest payments, but these were paid using funds from new investors—a classic Ponzi scheme structure. By 2019, all payments stopped, and many investors discovered that Bordeaux Cellars was a fiction.

The unraveling of the scheme led to a series of arrests and extraditions. Burton was first detained by British police in February 2019 at a hotel in Kent, where authorities found fake passports, luxury watches, precious metals, and nearly £1 million in cash. He was convicted in the UK for possession of fake passports and money laundering, serving four years before being released in 2020 due to pandemic-related concerns. He then disappeared until his arrest in Morocco in 2022, where he was caught attempting to enter the country with a fake Zimbabwean passport. He was extradited to the United States soon after.

Wellesley was arrested in the United Kingdom in 2022 and extradited to New York in July 2025. Initially pleading not guilty, he changed his plea after Burton’s cooperation with U.S. prosecutors.

During court proceedings, Burton admitted that the pair never controlled more than 217 bottles of wine, far fewer than the 25,000 bottles they claimed to have from prestigious producers such as Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Screaming Eagle. As part of their plea deals, both men agreed to forfeit millions of dollars in profits and assets. Wellesley will surrender $1 million in profits, funds from over two dozen bank accounts, and any remaining wine in storage. Burton has agreed to forfeit $26 million.

Sentencing is scheduled for early next year. Burton will appear before Judge Chen on January 6, 2026, while Wellesley’s hearing is set for February 3, 2026. The case has drawn attention from both the financial and wine communities, highlighting the risks of high-yield investment schemes and the importance of due diligence when dealing with alternative assets such as fine wine.