The American founder of a collapsed investment firm that was once one of the biggest accumulators of European soccer clubs was charged with fraud and other counts in an indictment made public by United States prosecutors on Thursday.
Josh Wander, a brash Miami businessman, drew scrutiny after buying soccer teams on three continents through 777 Partners, a firm he co-founded. According to the indictment, unsealed in Manhattan federal court, Mr. Wander fabricated financial documents and made misleading claims in an effort to “defraud lenders and investors” of as much as $500 million.
In all, Mr. Wander was charged with wire fraud, securities fraud and conspiracy to commit each of those crimes. The charges come a year after Mr. Wander came close to adding one of the most-storied clubs in English soccer to his firm’s stable of clubs.
His attempt to buy Everton Football Club caught the interest of the sports world, the investment community and the authorities. In May 2024, one of 777’s lenders accused it of running a yearslong fraud scheme. Since then, the company’s British entity was declared bankrupt by Britain’s top court and its main business in the United States was placed into limited receivership.
The charges against Mr. Wander cap almost two years of spiraling allegations against him and his firm, which for years made bold assertions about its financial health — it previously claimed $10 billion in assets — even as it was trailed by a string of lawsuits, corporate failures and unpaid bills.
Thursday’s 17-page indictment said many of those claims were false.
“To obtain financing for the firm’s operations, for example, Wander pledged more than $350 million in assets as collateral to private lenders, knowing that 777 Partners either did not own the collateral or had pledged the collateral to other lenders,” the indictment said. It also accused Mr. Wander of using money from lenders for purposes other than what he had pledged to use them for, which included buying stakes in soccer teams and expenses related to a loss-making airline.
“This is a business dispute dressed up as a criminal case,” Mr. Wander’s lawyer, Jordan Estes, said in a statement. “We look forward to setting the record straight.”
It has been a rapid descent for Mr. Wander, who in the fall of 2023 announced to The Financial Times that he was the most significant investor the multibillion-dollar soccer industry had ever seen. “Is there anyone in the world that’s been more serious about buying football clubs in history than Josh Wander?” Mr. Wander said at the time.
By the time his firm’s true financial state was discovered, several teams that the company directly owned, and others that it owed money, were left exposed.
777’s portfolio included stakes in teams in Australia, Brazil, Belgium, France and Germany, with almost all facing payroll struggles during the firm’s tenure. Some of the teams have since changed hands, while the future of the others remains uncertain. 777’s biggest lender — A-Cap, the owner of several insurance businesses — has taken control of the sports assets. At the height of his powers, Mr. Wander managed to secure a board seat on the body representing European soccer’s biggest clubs.
Mr. Wander and his co-founder, Steve Pasko, a Wall Street veteran, would not have been seen as typical sports team investors when they started 777 Partners in 2015. At the time, the company’s core investments were related to structured settlements, an opaque industry in which recipients of long-term annuities, typically the result of compensation claims, cash them out for lump sums of cash.
Tariq Panja is a global sports correspondent, focusing on stories where money, geopolitics and crime intersect with the sports world.
Benjamin Weiser is a Times reporter covering the federal courts and U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, and the justice system more broadly.
The post Brash Investor in Global Soccer Clubs Is Charged With Fraud appeared first on New York Times.
