Stephen Burton, a citizen of the United Kingdom, was extradited yesterday to the Eastern District of New York from Morocco where he was arrested in 2022 after entering the country using a false Zimbabwean passport, announced the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York on Saturday.
Burton was arraigned in federal court in Brooklyn before United States Magistrate Judge Taryn A. Merkl for wire fraud conspiracy, wire fraud, and money laundering conspiracy in connection with a scheme perpetrated through Bordeaux Cellars, a company that he operated.
The arrested individual’s business partner, James Wellesley, remains in extradition proceedings in the United Kingdom.
Breon Peace, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and James Smith, Assistant Director-in-Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office (FBI), announced the extradition and arraignment.
United States Attorney Peace thanked Moroccan authorities for their assistance. The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs also provided significant assistance in securing the arrest and extradition of the defendant from Morocco.
The indictment claims that starting in June 2017 and continuing until February 2019, the defendants pretended to be executives at a company called Bordeaux Cellars. They sought investors, including those in the Eastern District of New York, by attending investor conferences in the United States and abroad.
The defendants told investors that Bordeaux Cellars facilitated loans between investors and well-to-do wine collectors, with the loans being fully secured by valuable wine collections. More specifically, they provided assurances to these investors that they would receive regular interest payments and that Bordeaux Cellars would retain the wine as collateral.
In actuality, the supposed “high-net-worth wine collectors” did not exist, and Bordeaux Cellars did not maintain custody of the wine supposedly securing the loans. Instead, the defendants utilized the loan money to make fake interest payments to investors and for their own personal expenses.
If convicted, the defendants each face up to 20 years in prison.