Ponzi scheme leaves investors wining to be whole

Stephen Burton, 58, of the United Kingdom, was flown to New York from Morocco on Friday to be arraigned on charges of money laundering and wire fraud for a yearslong scheme that allegedly involved providing high-yield loans backed by ultra-high-priced wines that didn’t exist.
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Prosecutors say that from 2017 through 2019, Burton was the chief executive of Bordeaux Cellars, an investment scheme based in the U.K. and Hong Kong that pooled money for high-yield lending to people who had high-priced wine as collateral. Over the years, the men said they had amassed a cache of high-priced bottles of wine worth millions in a storage facility in London.

According to court filings, Burton and Wellesely would approach wine connoisseurs at investor conferences and sales shows and pitch them the scheme which they said would yield 12% interest by lending to high-net-worth individuals who needed quick access to cash.

They claimed that they would only lend up to 35% of the value of the millions of dollars worth of wine held in storage and that if borrowers defaulted, they would just sell the wine so investors would never lose their money. The pair claimed they had lent out $152 million in such loans over the course of six years.
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pmbug said:

...for high-yield lending to people who had high-priced wine as collateral...

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pmbug said:

...would approach wine connoisseurs at investor conferences...

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lending to high-net-worth individuals who needed quick access to cash.

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if borrowers defaulted, they would just sell the wine so investors would never lose their money.

Click to expand...