A British businessman who spent two years posing as a high-end wine investment broker — changing his surname to evoke the Duke of Wellington and socialising in elite circles across the world — has been sentenced to ten years in prison by a New York court after swindling more than 190 investors out of £71 million in a sophisticated Ponzi-style fraud.
James Wellesley, 59, was sentenced on Monday for wire fraud conspiracy and ordered to pay £740,000 in forfeiture. He had been extradited from Tunbridge Wells last year, having originally been arrested by Scotland Yard five months earlier.
Wellesley operated alongside Stephen Burton, 61, between June 2017 and February 2019 under the trading name Bordeaux Cellars, presenting themselves as brokers acting on behalf of a group of fine wine collectors. Burton was already a recognised name in wine investment circles, lending the operation an air of credibility, while Wellesley portrayed himself as the company’s chief financial officer and operations manager, telling prospective investors at conferences that the firm maintained offices in London and Hong Kong.
The pair persuaded wealthy clients to make loans secured against a purported stockpile of some of the world’s most valuable wines, including Domaine de la Romanée-Conti from Burgundy — which can fetch up to £12,500 per bottle — and Château Lafleur from Bordeaux, valued at as much as £3,700 a bottle. The wine did not exist. Money received from investors was instead recycled to make fraudulent interest payments to earlier victims and to fund the pair’s personal expenditure.
Wellesley had gone to considerable lengths to manufacture legitimacy. He altered his surname to one associated with British aristocracy, though he also operated under the aliases Andrew Fuller and Andrew Templar. When police arrested Burton in 2019, officers discovered two fake passports, bars of precious metals, £1 million in cash and a collection of expensive watches. He was arrested again in 2022 while attempting to enter Morocco on a fraudulent Zimbabwean passport and extradited to the United States in December 2023. Burton pleaded guilty last July to wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy and is still awaiting sentencing.
Joseph Nocella Jr, the US attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said the sentence delivered a clear message to fraudsters. “Unlike a fine vintage that improves over time, the defendant will spend years in prison to reflect on his fraudulent wine scheme,” he said. FBI operations head James Barnacle Jr added that Wellesley had “spoiled the reputation of a prestigious industry as well as his clients’ trust.”
