The plea
Joshua Wander, who founded 777 Partners and ran it as chief executive, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of securities fraud before U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York said on October 15, 2026 [1]. Each count carries a maximum of 20 years in prison, and the judge will decide the actual sentence. Wander agreed to forfeit at least $500 million, and sentencing is scheduled for March 1, 2027 [1].
Wander was indicted in October 2025. The Securities and Exchange Commission brought a parallel civil case, and his co-founder, Damien Alfalla, had already pleaded guilty [2].
What prosecutors say happened
777 Partners began by buying and financing structured settlements, the streams of payments people receive from legal settlements over time. Prosecutors say the firm later invested in airlines and professional sports teams without enough money to pay for them [1].
According to the indictment and other filings described by prosecutors, Wander moved money that structured-settlement lenders had restricted to other uses, including acquisitions and expenses. He pledged hundreds of millions of dollars of structured-settlement assets that the firm had never bought or had already pledged to other lenders, and had employees digitally alter bank statements to show cash the firm did not have [1].
Prosecutors also say that in 2021 and 2022 he raised more than $200 million of preferred equity in 777 Partners and an affiliate while misrepresenting the firm's finances, and that in March 2022 he used doctored bank statements to get a $20 million loan that was spent on options trades. In March 2023 a lender raised concerns about assets pledged twice. Wander blamed a computer error and later called the double pledging inadvertent, and he resigned as chief executive in 2024 [1].
What is not settled
The guilty plea is a court fact. The detailed account of the scheme comes from the indictment and prosecutors' filings as summarized in the U.S. Attorney's release, and the sentence, the final forfeiture and any recovery for lenders and investors have not been decided [1].
What remains uncertain
The description of the scheme is prosecutors' account from the indictment and public filings; the court has not yet sentenced Wander or fixed restitution. The status of the parallel SEC case and the earlier co-founder plea come from a law-firm summary of the 2025 charges, not from the October 15 release.