Seven clubs built on borrowed money
777 Partners was a Miami investment firm, founded in 2015 by Joshua Wander and Steven Pasko, that assembled a seven-club football portfolio — Genoa, Standard Liège, Red Star, Vasco da Gama, Hertha Berlin, Melbourne Victory and a Sevilla stake — and agreed but never completed a takeover of Everton. It collapsed in 2024–25 into fraud litigation and criminal indictments.
The model was hollow rather than merely mismanaged: clubs were bought with insurer (A-CAP) and lender money collateralised by assets that were, prosecutors allege, double-pledged or fictional. The multi-club group was a leverage story dressed as a sports thesis, and its unwinding became a two-layer failure as A-CAP, the principal funder, was itself declared insolvent.
The collapse and the portfolio
How the collapse actually unfolded
777 bought clubs with insurer and lender money collateralised by assets that were, per the litigation, double-pledged or fictional — a structure that worked only while fresh capital kept arriving. When the Leadenhall suit exposed the collateral problem, the funding stopped and the portfolio unravelled.
Creditor seizure was no soft landing. When A-CAP took ownership of assets in 2024 it inherited clubs it could not capitalise because A-CAP itself was being declared insolvent — so clubs became casualties of a fund and its funder failing at once. The clubs that escaped cleanest exited fastest through local buyers or their own boards; those left in limbo are where the A-CAP and regulator tangle never resolved.
Direction in 2026
777 is defunct and in litigation, with its founders facing federal criminal trial and its clubs sold or seized. The open questions are jurisdictional and legal: who actually controls the still-stranded clubs (Red Star, Hertha) in mid-2026, whether the A-CAP and regulator mediation produced a binding resolution or only a pause, and whether the funder faces criminal as well as civil exposure. As a Ledger reference, it is the canonical leveraged-MCO collapse.
- SEC Litigation Release 26419; DOJ/FBI indictment release
- FT, Artemis (Leadenhall / double-pledging); Josimar (A-CAP)
- ESPN (Everton, Genoa); Sportcal (Standard Liège)
- Note: Wander indicted not convicted; current control of Hertha/Red Star unresolved