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The British citizen James Wellesley has been sentenced to ten years in prison in New York for fine wine fraud, as reported by the US Department of Justice. He had already pleaded guilty in October 2025 to defrauding more than 140 people worldwide of nearly 100 million US dollars with purported investments in fine wines (wein.plus reported).
Between 2017 and 2019, Wellesley posed as the senior trader of the company "Bordeaux Cellars," founded in 2010. With this legend, he and his partner Stephen Burton solicited investors worldwide. They claimed to facilitate short-term loans for wine collectors, fully secured by their high-quality wine collections. They promised investors regular interest payments from borrowers and stated that Bordeaux Cellars would store the wines during the loan term, thereby securing the loans.
However, neither the wine collectors nor the wines used as collateral existed. Instead, Wellesley and Burton used incoming investor funds to make purported interest payments to earlier investors and to finance personal expenses. Of the more than 97 million US dollars (82 million euros) they received from victims, Bordeaux Cellars only repaid about 12 million euros before the Ponzi scheme collapsed. This resulted in losses of over 70.5 million euros. Burton had agreed in October 2025 to repay about 22 million euros from the fraud. The court confiscated around 850,000 euros from Wellesley and his entire wine collection. The prosecutor stated at the sentencing announcement: "Unlike a good wine that gets better with time, the defendant will spend years in prison reflecting on his fraudulent actions."
(al; Image: 123rf)
More on the topic:
Recognizing wine fraud: Everything is real – except the wine