LOS ANGELES - A San Fernando Valley man has agreed to plead guilty to a federal felony charge for swindling clients - many of them elderly church parishioners - in a long-running Ponzi scheme that took in more than $5.9 million in victim investor money, the Justice Department announced today.
Sylvein William Maximilian D'Habsburg XVII, 48, of West Hills, has agreed to plead guilty to one count of wire fraud.
D'Habsburg is expected to enter his guilty plea in the coming weeks in United States District Court in downtown Los Angeles.
According to his plea agreement filed today, from at least January 2018 to June 2023, D'Habsburg hired recruiters to identify potential investors for his two companies, Wild Rabbit Technologies LLC and BAI Intelligence LLC, targeting the local Filipino community, including elderly church parishioners.
At investment presentations, D'Habsburg claimed that he had an artificial intelligence (AI) technology that could predict the future and detect a COVID-19 infection based solely on a video recording, among other things. D'Habsburg also falsely claimed to investors that he had received approximately $500 million in investments for his companies from retired pro athletes and other noteworthy people, such as Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, and Steve Wozniak, and that he would use the investment funds to hire personnel and obtain patents.
But D'Habsburg did not use the victims' money to hire personnel or obtain patents. Instead, he used his victim investors' money to purchase luxury cars, such as a 1933 Rolls Royce Phantom II Continental Sedanca de Ville by Barker, and rare antiques, such as a pair of Italian carved Giltwood Thrones from the 1800s.
As a result of his fraudulent scheme, D'Habsburg caused his victim investors a total of approximately $5.9 million in losses.
Once D'Habsburg enters his guilty plea, he will face a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison.
The FBI is investigating this matter.
Assistant United States Attorneys Jason C. Pang of the General Crimes Section and Alexander Su of the Asset Forfeiture and Recovery Section are prosecuting this case.