777 Partners co-founder pleads guilty in $500m lender fraud

The record

Josh Wander, co-founder and former chief executive of the Miami investment firm 777 Partners, pleaded guilty on 15 October 2026 to one count of wire fraud and one count of securities fraud, as reported by Bloomberg and the Associated Press. He entered the plea before US District Judge J. Paul Oetken in Manhattan.

According to the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, Wander agreed to forfeit at least $500 million in proceeds of the scheme. The Associated Press reported that he also agreed to pay $500 million in restitution to investors. He remains free on bail until sentencing on 1 March 2027.

From structured settlements to football clubs

777 Partners began by buying and financing structured settlements: streams of future payments, often arising from legal claims, that are sold for a lump sum. Prosecutors say Wander later moved into airlines and professional sport without the money to pay for those acquisitions, and directed that restricted funds from the firm’s structured-settlement lenders be used instead.

From 2021 the firm took stakes in clubs including Hertha Berlin in Germany, Genoa in Italy, Standard Liège in Belgium and Vasco da Gama in Brazil, according to the Associated Press. Its attempt to buy the English club Everton collapsed in 2024.

Double-pledged and fictitious collateral

The prosecutors’ account, drawn from the indictment and other filings, is that Wander pledged to lenders hundreds of millions of dollars of structured-settlement assets that 777 Partners had never bought or had already pledged to other lenders. To hide the gap, he directed employees to alter bank statements digitally so that they showed cash the firm did not have.

In 2021 and 2022 he raised more than $200 million from outside investors by selling preferred equity in 777 Partners and an affiliate, while misrepresenting the firm’s financial condition. In March 2022 he obtained a $20 million loan after handing the lender dozens of doctored statements; prosecutors say he had spent millions of dollars of misappropriated money on options trading.

The scheme began to unravel in March 2023, when a lender confronted him about double-pledged assets. According to prosecutors, he blamed an antiquated computer system and later insisted the double-pledging had been inadvertent. He resigned as chief executive in 2024.

A parallel civil case

On 16 October 2025, the day the criminal charges were announced, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil complaint against Wander, co-founder Steven Pasko, former finance chief Damien Alfalla, 777 Partners and 600 Partners. The SEC alleges that investors in a $237 million preferred equity offering were told the companies could pay a 10% annual dividend while they were in a worsening liquidity crisis, and that about $33 million of investor money was diverted to Wander and Pasko personally. The SEC’s litigation release does not record an outcome of those claims.

The responses

In court, Wander told the judge he had known at the time that what he was doing was wrong and that he was “deeply sorry for my conduct”, the Associated Press reported. US Attorney Jamie McDonald said Wander had used his company “to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from private creditors and investors”, including to pay for its football teams.

Luca Albertini, chief executive of Leadenhall Capital Partners, a lender that sued 777 Partners in 2024, said the plea “reinforces the claims” his firm had raised and that it would keep pursuing recovery through the courts, according to the trade publication Artemis. That civil case is still pending.

Questions that remain unanswered

How much of the $500 million can actually be recovered, and from which assets? How much lender money reached each of the football clubs, and did any of them know where it came from? And how will the SEC’s separate claims against the other defendants be resolved?

Wander has admitted two counts, each carrying a maximum sentence of 20 years; the sentence will be set by the judge. The description of the scheme summarised here comes from the prosecutors’ account and the SEC’s complaint. The other people named in the civil case have not been found liable, and the claims against them remain unproven.

Based on reporting from: Bloomberg · 15 October 2026; Associated Press · 15 October 2026; Artemis · Leadenhall statement · October 2026; US Attorney’s Office SDNY · Wander guilty plea · 15 October 2026; US Securities and Exchange Commission · Litigation Release 26419.