There is a particular type of hubris that precedes spectacular collapse. It is the hubris of the dealmaker who has stretched his capital so thin, pledged his assets so many times over, and told his lies to so many creditors that the only possible course is to make one more deal — a deal grand enough, visible enough, and prestigious enough to recapitalize the entire edifice through its sheer momentum. In the autumn of 2023, that deal was Everton Football Club.

Everton, established in 1878 in the city of Liverpool, is one of the foundational institutions of English football. It has won nine league titles, five FA Cups, and a European trophy. It has produced generational talents. It sits deep in the identity of an entire city. For a global investor seeking both legitimacy and visibility, there is no more powerful signal than ownership of a Premier League club — and 777 Partners, then deep in its unraveling, reached for it anyway.

The Anatomy of the Bid

Everton's owner, British-Iranian billionaire Farhad Moshiri, had turned the club into a financial catastrophe despite his best intentions. He had spent lavishly on players, made repeated managerial changes, and committed the club to a breathtakingly ambitious new waterfront stadium project at Bramley-Moore Dock. The 2022-23 season ended with a £112.5 million loss — nearly double the prior year. The club was bleeding, the stadium was over budget, and Moshiri was desperate for an exit.

777 Partners arrived in September 2023 with a deal reportedly worth more than $685 million for Moshiri's 94.1% stake. The deal was approved — unusually — by both the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority and the Football Association. But the Premier League, which governs the financial fitness of its member clubs with its own "Owners' and Directors' Test," was not satisfied. In March 2024, the league formally requested that 777 provide documented proof that it actually possessed the funds required to purchase the club, complete the stadium, and meet operating costs.

777 Partners never publicly responded. The silence was deafening.

Dominos: Bonza Falls, Then Everything Else

The specific catalyst for the public unraveling was not a soccer club — it was an airline. On April 30, 2024, Bonza Aviation, a budget Australian carrier wholly owned by 777 Partners, entered voluntary administration after its fleet of Boeing 737 Max planes was repossessed by AIP Capital, which had been providing financing to the 777 enterprise. All flights were canceled. Thousands of passengers were stranded. The airline, which had been positioned as a disruptor for regional Australian routes, ceased to exist.

The symbolism was perfect and devastating. Bonza's collapse exposed, in the most concrete and visceral terms possible, exactly what the Premier League had been suspicious of: 777 Partners did not have the money it claimed to have. An investor group that had committed to purchasing one of England's most legendary football clubs while promising to simultaneously fund a new billion-dollar stadium had allowed its wholly owned airline to run out of cash so completely that creditors had physically come and taken back the planes.

Within days, Everton called in restructuring and insolvency advisors. The Everton Shareholders' Association issued a public statement demanding that Moshiri terminate the deal immediately, calling the process a "farce." Fan protests erupted outside Goodison Park. The stadium development stalled. And in May 2024, Joshua Craig Wander and Steven Pasko formally resigned as managing partners of 777 Partners, stepping back from the firm they had built over nine years.

Leadenhall's Nuclear Lawsuit: "A Giant Shell Game"

The most devastating public accounting of 777's alleged fraud came not from regulators but from one of its own lenders. Leadenhall Capital Partners, an asset management firm that had extended more than $600 million in financing to 777, filed suit in New York federal court in May 2024. The complaint was extraordinary in its specificity and its fury.

Leadenhall alleged that approximately $350 million in collateral that 777 had pledged to secure its loans either did not exist, was not actually in 777's control, or had already been simultaneously pledged to other lenders as security for other debts. The practice of pledging the same asset as collateral to multiple lenders — "double-pledging" or even "triple-pledging" — is not merely unethical; it is fraud.

The lawsuit described 777 as operating "in a seemingly never-ending cycle of 'robbing Peter to pay Paul,'" taking money from investors and lenders and shuffling it among various loss-making entities to disguise the firm's true financial condition. Leadenhall alleged that the real power behind the throne was A-CAP, a New York-based insurance holding company that had senior rights to all of 777's collateral — meaning that by the time Leadenhall and other junior lenders tried to collect, there was nothing left.

"Operating a giant shell game at best, and an outright Ponzi scheme at worst," the filing stated.

The Ethics of Spectacle: When Prestige Becomes Camouflage

The Everton chapter of the 777 Partners saga raises a question that deserves serious examination in any business ethics curriculum: at what point does bold, high-profile deal-making cross from legitimate capital-raising strategy into deliberate fraud by spectacle?

Prestigious acquisitions generate press coverage, access to new lenders, and a perception of success that can itself temporarily attract capital. An investor who reads that 777 Partners has acquired Everton FC may reasonably conclude that 777 must be creditworthy — that the Premier League and the Financial Conduct Authority have done their due diligence. The prestige of the target becomes a form of social proof, a shortcut past the hard questions of balance sheets and collateral.

It is possible — and the evidence suggests — that this was not an accidental byproduct of Wander's strategy but a feature of it. Each new acquisition created a fresh headline, a new story of momentum, and a new reason for the next lender to extend the next credit line. The empire was real enough to be photographed but hollow enough to collapse the moment the music stopped.

Everton ultimately survived — it was purchased by a new ownership group led by Dan Friedkin and is currently completing its new waterfront stadium. But the human cost of the 777 debacle — the fans who lived in uncertainty for months, the club employees whose livelihoods were in jeopardy, the smaller businesses in the 777 ecosystem that went unpaid — was entirely real, and entirely foreseeable.

Someone had to pay for Joshua Wander's ambition. It was never going to be Joshua Wander.

This is Part 3 of The Ethics Reporter's multi-part investigative series: "The Rise and Fall of Joshua Craig Wander." Read Part 2 here.