Сотрудник похитителя вин получил шесть лет тюрьмы за схему Ponzi на 97 млн долларов

News By Sarah Neish Following the earlier sentencing of James Wellesley for his involvement in a fine wine scheme that defrauded victims of more than US$97 million, co-conspirator Stephen Burton has received a six-year jail term for his part in the crime. But why so lenient? db reports. A second man has been jailed for a wine investment scam which convinced more than 140 victims to invest in a company called Bordeaux Cellars Ltd., which turned out to be an elaborate Ponzi scheme. As db reported, in April 2026 James Wellesley, also known as ‘Andrew Fuller and ‘Andrew Templar’, was sentenced in a Brooklyn federal court to ten years in prison for his part in the conspiracy which robbed victims of almost US$100 million. Last week (3 September 2026) saw the conclusion of the years-long case when Wellesley’s accomplice Stephen Burton was handed down his own sentence of six years in prison after pleading guilty to wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering. UK national Burton was caught and arrested in 2022 after police discovered him entering Morocco using a fake Zimbabwean passport, and eventually managed to extradite him to the US to await trial. The Bordeaux Cellars scam was not the first time that Burton has committed a financial crime, the court heard, with the accused having had multiple fraud convictions around the world including in New Zealand and Australia during the 1980s and Zurich in 1997. He was also convicted of fraud and impersonating a police officer in the UK in 1999, prosecutors said. Judge’s words Burton’s jailing draws a line underneath a case that has seen him file and retract a ‘not guilty’ plea, as well as turn on his former partner in crime by offering up information about Wellesley in order to reduce his own sentence. During last week’s hearing in the Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn), US District Judge Pamela Chen called the Bordeaux Cellars scam, which ran from 2017 to 2019, “a devastating financial crime”, and revealed that one of its victims was a 58-year-old woman who lost her life savings of US$200,000, which she had intended to use to care for her son, who is a quadriplegic. “These financial crimes are more severe, in a way, than physical violence,” said Judge Chen. The crime According to the case, between June 2017 and February 2019, Wellesley posed as the chief financial officer and operations manager of Bordeaux Cellars, while Burton claimed to be the firm’s CEO. The pair targeted investors at conferences, telling them that Bordeaux Cellars brokered loans, backed by valuable wine collections containing rare vintages of Romanee-Conti, Petrus, Château Lafite Rothschild and Chateau Latour, as collateral. Investors were promised regular interest payments, but the wines did not exist. Prosecutors confirmed that Bordeaux Cellars did not hold any wine assets, and instead used funds from new investors to pay earlier investors, while also diverting money for personal use. Lenient sentence Burton initially pleaded ‘not guilty’ on 16 December 2023, after being extradited to the US in connection with the fraud, but later changed his plea to ‘guilty’ in July 2025 ahead of his scheduled sentencing. His six-year jail term is considerably lower than the maximum penalty of 20 years imprisonment that his crimes carry, with the relatively lenient sentencing attributable to a number of factors. Firstly, Burton spent 13 months in a Moroccan prison following his arrest, while he fought against his extradition to the US. His defence attorney, John Wallenstein, successfully argued that the extreme environment of the Moroccan jail should count toward a reduced sentence, even telling the court that the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn, New York, where Burton was subsequently detailed since arriving in America was “a high-end Marriott in comparison” with the Moroccan jail. Additionally, his time spent in the Metropolitan Detention Centre (33 months), as well as ‘good behaviour’ during his stint, was also taken into consideration before his sentence was handed down. Finally, Wallenstein told the court that his client had cooperated with prosecutors by helping the government to trace some of the stolen money, as well as providing information about his co-defendant, Wellesley. Burton has allegedly agreed to pay back US$26 million of the stolen funds. However, according to a report by Californian newspaper The Mercury News, Burton may not serve the full six years and could be out of jail in just two years time. Following this, he will likely be returned to the UK to complete the final two years of a previous four-year sentence for conspiracy to acquire fire arms. Burton was released mid-sentence for this former crime due to the start of the Covid pandemic, at which point he fled to Spain and then Ireland before heading to Morocco to avoid returning to jail. Related news The db Wine Crime Files 2026: part 1 The db wine crime files 2025: part 2 The db wine crime files 2025: Part I