In the last week, multiple sources, including Fortune magazine’s website, have reported that Andrew James Fuller, a/k/a James Wellesley, is a former UK solicitor who was disbarred. That is incorrect.
Quoting from paragraph 10 of the 2019 class action complaint which was filed in London SMPI BORDEAUX SPV 3 LLC v. STEPHEN BURTON et al:
On 8 September 1997, Mr Wellesley (under the name Andrew Fuller) was found by the Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal (“SDT”) to be guilty of “abus[ing] the trust placed in him by his employers” in committing the “cynical and calculated theft of clients’ funds”. The facts as contained within the SDT’s findings are, in summary, that between 1989 and 1995 whilst employed as a solicitors’ clerk, Mr. Wellesley made improper withdrawals from client accounts totaling £127,212.65 and paid the funds into various bank and building society accounts held in his own name and/or the name of his wife. The SDT ordered that Mr. Wellesley was not to be employed in connection with the practice of a solicitor in future without the permission of the Law Society, and made an order for costs against him in the fixed sum of £2,755.20.
I have a copy of the findings of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. Between 1989 and July 1995 Andrew Fuller was employed as a clerk in the probate and trust department of a London solicitors firm. The published opinion verifies that Fuller was not a solicitor himself. Fuller stole and concealed the theft of at least £127,212.65 from six different probate and trust clients of the law firm.
As previously reported in this thread in 2022, Andrew James Fuller was convicted in the UK in 2013 for defrauding a British bank out of 3.5 million Pounds ($4.65 million). Fuller obtained a £5.7 million loan from a UK bank, which was to be used to redevelop a piece of property into 18 luxury flats/condominiums. The project got into trouble, and Fuller absconded with £3.5 million of the loan proceeds and fled the country. He went to Singapore using a fake passport identifying him as “Andrew Templar.” He continued to live in Singapore, and apparently began participating in Bordeaux Cellars using the alias “James Anderson” in 2009.
Fuller was caught sneaking back to London to visit his wife Fiona Fuller at a home they owned in Bath in 2012. He was arrested, charged and pled guilty to three charges: (1) forgery – making a false instrument, with the intention to induce somebody to accept it as genuine; (2) fraud/attempted fraud; and (3) possession of false identity documents with improper intention. He was sentenced to six years and three months in prison. He was released from prison in 2016 and apparently resumed work with Bordeaux Cellars as its Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer.
In December of 2018, when the Bordeaux Cellars Ponzi scheme was disintegrating, Fuller once again fled the UK and went to live “in Asia”. According to the recent findings of the UK High Court which rejected his appeal of the extradition order, this time Fuller brought his family with him. Fuller and his family lived “in Asia for a few months” and then moved to Ireland. According to the High Court opinion, Fuller returned to the UK in February 2020. He arrested on February 4, 2022. The US immediately requested his extradition.