How the private equity firm buying Everton built its business (2024)

But in the grueling aftermath of each surgery, she relied on painkillers, and she entered adulthood with an opioid addiction. By 2015, she was spending so much money on heroin that her annuity checks no longer covered her needs, said her mother, Lori Goney.

On the television, a company offered to pay a lump sum in exchange for future annuities. Noell called the number and soon signed a contract trading $42,000 in future annuity for $20,000 in cash.

After the transaction was recorded in public court records, other companies started contacting Noell, offering similar deals. Over the next four months, she signed four more deals with four different companies, exchanging a total of around $273,000 from her annuity for $74,000 in cash, according to court records. Each contract was submitted to a court for review and approved by a judge. Each transaction involved less than $100,000 of Noell’s annuity.

Then, in late 2015, she received a Facebook message from a representative of Liberty Settlement Funding, which was then a subsidiary of a Miami-based private equity firm called 777 Partners.

Today, 777 Partners and its founder, Josh Wander, are better known for their ownership of professional soccer clubs across the globe and for their pending purchase of one of the Premier League’s most iconic institutions: Everton. But Wander and his firm made their mark — and their money — as one of the biggest buyers of structured settlement annuities, among other financial dealings that their critics have called exploitative.

Weeks after that initial Facebook message, the Liberty rep presented Noell with a contract that traded away the entirety of her remaining annuity, around $793,000, for $180,000, according to court records. In February 2016, she signed it, and a judge approved the deal.

Months later, though, Noell felt she had been “scammed out of the money,” she wrote in a letter to Edward Stone, a lawyer she hired. She had come to trust two Liberty representatives who befriended her in the weeks before she signed the contract, she wrote. She “felt like they cared about me” and appreciated that “they didn’t judge my drug addiction.” One of the men would pick her up from home and bring her to a hotel, she wrote, where he supplied her with heroin. One day, he handed her the contract for the annuity deal. She didn’t realize she was signing over the rest of her money, she wrote.

“I would get sick from withdrawal if I didn’t have drugs, and they would always be there either setting me up with their dealer or giving me their drugs,” Noell said in the letter, which was included in a lawsuit her parents later filed. “I would feel obligated to sign their papers when they picked me up.”

As Noell made her allegations, one of the Liberty reps threatened to expose her heroin use to her friends and family, according to a screenshot of their correspondence and the lawsuit her parents filed.

“In terms of the bad human component, it’s up there with the worst I’ve ever seen,” Stone said of the allegations about Liberty described in the parents’ lawsuit. “All they cared about was buying up all her annuity.”

In a statement, 777 Partners’ attorney, Joseph Lipchitz, said the contracts Noell signed were “approved by a judge who had to determine that the settlement is in the best interests of the beneficiary.” No court ever deemed Noell incompetent or otherwise incapable of agreeing to a financial transaction without a guardian, Lipchitz said. In legal filings, the company called the family’s allegations “outlandish.”

After Noell threatened to sue the company, the sides reached a settlement that gave Noell back some of the money on the condition she signed a nondisclosure agreement, said Stone, who declined to comment on the specifics of the case because of the confidentiality terms. Through Stone, Noell also declined to comment. Goney and her husband filed their own lawsuit, claiming that Liberty “manipulated” their daughter “by keeping Lyndsy in a drugged stupor,” their complaint stated. A judge dismissed that lawsuit, saying the parents didn’t have standing to sue.

With cash-advance deals at the core of its initial revenue streams, 777 Partners expanded its portfolio. The company is now one of the world’s most prolific buyers of professional soccer clubs.

Even as a rising number of rich Americans buy into the world’s most popular sport, Wander and 777 Partners stand out for their splashy entrance into a market dominated by old European money and Middle Eastern oil wealth. They started in 2018, buying a minority stake in Spanish La Liga club Sevilla. In 2021, they bought Italian Serie A club Genoa, the oldest team in the country. The next year, they became majority owners of Brazilian club Vasco da Gama, Belgian club Standard Liège, French third-division club Red Star and German club Hertha Berlin. They also bought a minority stake in the Australian club Melbourne Victory.

This month, 777 made its highest-profile purchase yet, signing a deal to take over Everton. Though the transaction awaits final approval from U.K. soccer authorities, adding Everton would mean 777’s soccer holdings span eight clubs across eight countries.

777 manages $10 billion in assets and around 60 subsidiaries across industries ranging from airlines to insurance, according to Lipchitz. The full scope of 777’s revenue streams remains unknown, but the company has financed several businesses that have been accused of profiting from what critics deem predatory financial practices that target economically vulnerable people, according to interviews and court records reviewed by The Washington Post.

A class-action lawsuit accuses 777 of operating a payday lending scheme that contracted with a Native American tribe to bypass state laws limiting interest rates on short-term loans. Another lawsuit claims that a 777 subsidiary obtained the $2.2 million annuity of a St. Louis woman with a severe mental illness for $500,000. Attorneys general in seven states have sued a real estate firm financed by 777 for allegedly deceiving homeowners into signing deals granting the company exclusive rights to serve as their real estate agent.

777, which is not listed as a defendant in the real estate cases and no longer invests in the real estate company, has denied the other two lawsuits’ claims in court and declined to comment on ongoing litigation. The cases are pending.

“They prey on individuals who are very young or very naive or drug addicts or people with problems,” said Farva Jafri, a former executive at a 777 subsidiary who sued the firm in 2019, alleging gender discrimination in a case that was dismissed because a judge ruled she couldn’t prove she was underpaid. Jafri, an attorney, has since represented Goney in her lawsuit against 777.

Wander, the firm’s co-founder and managing partner, declined interview requests. Marc Hermes, president of Liberty, called the lawsuits involving his company “frivolous” and a result of “buyer’s remorse.” A spokesman for 777, Jeff Heckelman, said the company hasn’t violated any laws.

“They’ve never been convicted of anything,” he said. “Anyone can file allegations. That doesn't make it true.”

Besides, Heckelman said, it’s only Wander’s investment in soccer that has thrown him into the spotlight.

“Before he started buying football clubs,” Heckelman said, “nothing he ever did really drew much attention.”

Wander grew up in Miami and attended the University of Florida, where an early misstep threatened his career prospects. He was charged with drug trafficking after receiving and opening a package containing 31.2 grams of cocaine that law enforcement officers were tracking. Officers also accused him of possessing more than 20 grams of cannabis.

He pleaded no contest, avoided prison time and was sentenced to 15 years’ probation on the condition that he cooperate on a related case. In early 2014, he successfully petitioned the court to end his probation early.

“Mr. Wander made a mistake more than 20 years ago when he was in his early 20s,” said Lipchitz, the attorney for 777. “Since then, he has worked tirelessly to build his career.”

That career started at Structured Asset Funding, a cash-for-annuity company. After the 2008 financial crash, Wander left for another company in the same industry, SuttonPark.

On his LinkedIn page, Wander lists himself as a founder of SuttonPark. But within the company, he took a behind-the-scenes role while his business partner, Steve Pasko, a Wall Street veteran, served as its CEO.

Leaving for SuttonPark, Wander recruited colleague Rhonda Bentzen to join him and tasked her with bringing in new business. SuttonPark itself didn’t sign clients to annuity deals but bought those contracts from “originators,” as the industry calls them, such as Bentzen and Liberty. With SuttonPark funding the cash advances, Bentzen found potential clients, signed them to structured settlement agreements, guided them through the judicial approval process and sold the contracts to SuttonPark. Her income was entirely based on the deals she was able to secure for the company.

“I eat what I kill,” she said of her time working with SuttonPark. “I get the court orders, and they buy the asset.”

SuttonPark quickly became a major player — “the largest buyer in the secondary market for structured settlements at that time‚ to my knowledge,” said Hasham Malik, who from 2007 to 2011 was head of capital markets for Peachtree, one of the major originators in the industry. “And given the margins at that time, it’s likely they were producing a lot of cash.”

Wander, meanwhile, developed a reputation as an aggressive and ambitious operator striving to rise through the ranks of Miami’s financial scene.

“He made sure he was in the right place to get into that level of society that he was so yearning to be a part of,” Bentzen said. “He’s all business. When he came out of the womb, I’m pretty sure he said, ‘Where’s my money?’ ”

He prowled the city’s nightlife circuit in search of connections and opportunities, Bentzen said. She recounted one period when Wander “would follow LeBron James around,” finding out the NBA star’s favorite local spots, hoping to enter his orbit. His persistence paid off. On the night the Miami Heat won the 2012 NBA championship, Wander appeared in a photo beside James and his teammates as they partied at a Miami nightclub. Wander told colleagues that he made his way into a poker game with James.

Wander’s exploits and confidence made him popular among many of his male colleagues. “They bloody worshiped him,” Bentzen said. He drove a Porsche and “walked around like a king,” Bentzen said. “He’s a bit of a legend in his own mind.”

Bentzen recalled going to a Las Vegas casino with Wander during a work trip and watching him gamble away thousands of dollars in a slot machine. “He doesn’t even think twice about it,” she said. Court records offer a glimpse of Wander’s spending habits. Bellagio sued him in 2012 for failing to pay back $54,500 of a cash advance at the casino. American Express sued him in 2013 for missing payments on a credit card that had racked up a balance of around $245,000. He repaid those debts “years ago,” Lipchitz said.

In 2015, the year after a judge ended his probation, Wander and Pasko co-founded 777 Partners, which acquired SuttonPark and Liberty Settlement Funding, one of the originators from which SuttonPark sourced many of its deals.

Jafri, the former executive, was hired in 2016 to serve as chief operating officer of another of 777’s cash-advance subsidiaries, Signal Funding, which specialized in providing loans to borrowers pursuing legal claims that may lead to a settlement. Though Signal was based in Illinois, Wander asked whether she was interested in moving to Miami. She accepted.

What she encountered at 777’s headquarters shocked her, she said. Jafri was the only woman in management, she said, and she found the workplace culture “hostile.” In a lawsuit she later filed against the firm, she said that she “routinely heard jokes that the women were there to be ‘seen, not heard.’ ”

At a dinner with a small group of colleagues, Wander told Jafri that she “needed to hire ‘hot girls’ for sales roles,” she alleged in the lawsuit. During a meeting to discuss a job applicant, Wander remarked on the candidate’s appearance, saying, “The big tit* thing in Miami is out of control!” according to the lawsuit. During a discussion about another job candidate, Jafri recalled Wander pointing out that the woman was “a lesbian” before adding, “She checks a variety of boxes for us.” Jafri said that she occasionally overheard Wander in the office asking male colleagues about sexual relations they had with women.

“It was a very chauvinistic, very misogynistic environment,” she said. “Very toxic.”

Two other former employees at subsidiaries, who attended meetings with Wander in Miami and spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, also described a jocular, male-dominated atmosphere that left them feeling uncomfortable.

In 2017, Jafri resigned. When she started her own pre-settlement cash advance company, Signal sued her, accusing her of stealing trade secrets. Jafri disputed that claim, stating in court that there were no trade secrets to steal because practices are similar across the industry. She then filed her lawsuit against Signal and 777 Partners, alleging that she experienced a hostile work environment and was paid less than male colleagues with similar job responsibilities. 777 denied her allegations, arguing they were aimed at “retaliation,” and a judge dismissed Jafri’s lawsuit, ruling that she didn’t prove her duties resembled those of higher-paid male colleagues. Signal’s suit against Jafri remains pending.

“Ms. Jafri has a clear animus and bias against 777 Partners,” Lipchitz said. “Suffice to say, 777 Partners does not credit Ms. Jafri’s allegations.”

Under Wander’s leadership, Liberty continued to identify new clients. One was Tierra Douglas, who received a multimillion dollar settlement in 2007 when she was 14 after her dad died in a car accident.

A decade later, in March 2017, she received a pamphlet in the mail from Liberty pitching lump-sum cash. She called, and a representative showed up at her home, offering $500,000 in exchange for the $2.2 million she had remaining on her annuity, according to a lawsuit she later filed against Liberty. Douglas, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and a disorder that causes delusions, agreed on the spot, signing the paperwork on the trunk of a car parked in front of her St. Louis home, according to the lawsuit and Stone, her attorney.

In a St. Louis courtroom, according to a transcript of the hearing, a judge asked Douglas whether she was aware the money she was getting would be “a substantial discount over the amount you would receive if you waited 30 some years to receive all of your future payments?”

Douglas said yes. The judge approved the transaction.

Douglas’s lawsuit claims that she didn’t have “the legal capacity to consent” to the cash advance deal. Her mental illness was severe enough that she has since been appointed a conservator and now lives in a care facility, Stone said.

In a statement, 777 declined to comment on pending litigation, other than to note that “anyone can make unfounded allegations in a complaint. It does not make them true.”

While 777’s core business centered on cash-for-annuity deals, the firm’s financial services offerings expanded at a “rapid-fire” pace, said Gary Chodes, who ran 777’s Signal subsidiary until 2017.

The firm used a model similar to its annuities business, supplying the cash advances that smaller companies offered clients in exchange for future income streams. 777 could then refinance those contracts for access to more capital, a strategy that benefited from the low interest rates of the mid-2010s.

One start-up 777 contracted with was ZocaLoans, a payday lending company officially owned by South Dakota’s Rosebud Sioux Tribe; state laws curbing high-interest loans don’t apply to Native American businesses based on reservations. The tribe received a portion of the profits, but 777 and its subsidiaries handled the financial operations, according to a class-action lawsuit that described the partnership as a “rent-a-tribe scheme.” Plaintiffs claimed they had to pay back the loans at rates sometimes exceeding 600 percent. ZocaLoans and its parent company, Rosebud Lending LZO, didn’t respond to requests for comment but in court have broadly denied the lawsuit’s allegations. In its filings for the lawsuit, Rosebud Lending listed 777′s Miami office as its address.

In a statement, 777 noted that it doesn’t own the payday loan company but that one of its subsidiaries “provides services to ZocaLoans as a third-party contractor, including operating its call centers and underwriting.”

Through another deal, 777 funded a company that ended up in the crosshairs of seven attorneys general. From October 2018 to July 2020, 777 Partners was an investor in the real estate brokerage MV Realty’s “right to list” program, which offered $300 to $5,000 in cash to homeowners for the exclusive right to serve as their real estate agent if they were to ever sell their property, according to court records. MV Realty began promoting its “Homeowner Benefit Program” in 2019, registering for a trademark on the name and posting a video about the service on YouTube.

But MV Realty wasn’t upfront with clients about what exactly they were signing over, according to complaints filed in 2022 and 2023 by attorneys general in Florida, New Jersey, Ohio, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina. MV Realty didn’t inform homeowners that it would place a lien on their home to enforce the contract, the complaints allege, or that the deal would last 40 years and remain in place even after death, applying to inheritors sometimes unaware of it.

Homeowners who violated the terms owed MV Realty tens of thousands of dollars in fees, and state authorities estimate that MV Realty signed around 32,000 clients across the country.

These practices, North Carolina’s complaint alleged, “are particularly damaging and exploitative because they prey on, and take advantage of, vulnerable” people who are often “experiencing significant financial hardship.”

Lipchitz said that the lawsuits “have nothing to do with 777 Partners,” which is not listed as a defendant in any of them. He declined to comment on 777’s involvement with MV Realty. MV Realty didn’t respond to requests for comment but has denied in court the allegations of deceptive practices.

With interest rates rising and the structured settlement market increasingly crowded, 777 Partners continued to branch out, investing in an insurance firm, a streaming platform, a motorcycle leasing company and multiple airlines. The company grew so vast so quickly that some subsidiaries shared overlapping business aims, leading to conflicting interests, said Chodes, who recalled an executive at one subsidiary asking Wander, “Why are you backing another guy doing that?”

To Bentzen, the culture Wander established at 777 prioritized the company’s profits above all other concerns.

“I don’t think he cared who he mowed over,” Bentzen said. But while she was clear that she didn’t like Wander personally, she acknowledged that he was “very smart, very slick,” she said. “He knows how to sell.”

Those who have worked with Wander described a relentless pursuit of new moneymaking opportunities. As the NFL negotiated a settlement with retired players who suffered brain damage from playing the sport, Chodes recalled Wander assigning salespeople to try to sign some of them to cash advance deals.

The idea left Chodes feeling uncomfortable, he said.

“When you have people who are specifically cognitively impaired, they may not be competent to make that financial transaction,” he said. “That was a major concern.”

He informed Wander of his reservations, but Wander was “absolutely convinced this was going to be a huge thing,” Chodes said.

Wander’s plan went forward.

A 777 subsidiary called Justice Funds “provided some pre-settlement funding to American football players who would subsequently be covered by the NFL’s landmark concussion class action settlement,” Lipchitz said, noting that the transactions required a judge to approve them.

Chodes left the company not long after that. But the endeavor indicated to Chodes that Wander had discovered new territory to mine profits: It was the first sign of his interest in entering the lucrative world of sports.

In 2018, 777 Partners invested in its first European soccer club, buying a minority stake in Spain’s Sevilla.

One day last year, on the outskirts of Paris, Red Star, the fourth-oldest soccer team in France, was 37 minutes into a match when its supporters began throwing flares onto the pitch.

The object of their ire: the club’s new American owners. “777 not welcome,” a large sign in the stands read.

“How can we believe that a financial group based in Miami could show sincere interest in the sporting project of a Seine-Saint-Denis football club?” a collective of Red Star fan groups expressed in a joint statement. “Within a supposedly sporting galaxy, we would just be some vulgar variable of a multinational whose interests are not compatible with those that we defend: proximity, local roots, independence and transparency.”

Founded in 1897, Red Star had long been affiliated with labor movements and left-wing politics, in contrast with the city’s most successful club, Paris Saint-Germain, which is owned by a Qatari state investment fund that has spent lavishly on world-class superstars such as Lionel Messi, Neymar and Kylian Mbappé.

While PSG competes at the sport’s highest level, Red Star has crawled along in the sport’s lower tiers, one of hundreds of clubs across the globe little known outside their nations’ borders despite a storied tradition and loyal fan base. With a meager price tag but rich in potential, it was exactly the type of team 777 was looking for: “historic clubs which can be classified as distressed assets,” Lipchitz said.

Each of the clubs in 777’s portfolio was mired in financial turmoil when the company swooped in — bleeding money, soliciting former players for donations, gutting their rosters, drowning in debt. During the 2021-22 season, Hertha Berlin lost around 80 million euros, Genoa lost 60 million and Standard Liège lost more than 20 million. Vasco da Gama carries more than $100 million in debt. Everton has lost around $500 million since 2019.

“The majority of European and South American football clubs lose money at an operating profit level, which is very different to U.S. professional teams, which operate closed leagues with no financial and sporting jeopardy from potential relegation,” Lipchitz said. “777 Partners’ significant injections of capital have improved both the solvency and the sporting and commercial performance of these clubs.”

The bulk purchases reflect a business strategy 777 has executed for years, Heckelman said, calling it a “shared services model.”

“You can centralize a lot of functions,” he said. “You don’t need to staff up on HR and finance people because we have people who are experts in those areas, so you focus on building your company.”

777 provides its clubs access to data analytics to guide on-field tactics, training programs to improve players’ development and marketing opportunities to bolster budgets that “they never would have been able to on their own,” Heckelman said.

That vision has been far from unique in recent years. Over the past decade, a wave of American venture capitalists have purchased lower-level European soccer clubs, vowing to rocket them out of stagnancy with an infusion of financial investment and the sort of analytic-driven tactics that are popular in major U.S. leagues.

Some, such as 777, have invested in more than one team. Jordan Gardner, a tech entrepreneur, bought stakes in three. Pacific Media Group, led by investment banker Paul Conway, took control of six. Some teams have found immediate success: Burnley in England, Toulouse in France and FC Helsingor in Denmark each won promotion to a higher division within the first few years of American ownership. Under the stewardship of digital media executive John Textor, RWD Molenbeek won promotion to Belgium’s top league and Botafogo soared to the top of the table in Brazil’s top league.

But the Red Star supporters leading the protests against 777 considered the company’s collection of clubs a concern rather than a feature. In their statement opposing the new ownership, the supporters group expressed fear that the lower-tier Red Star’s “future talents will be completely siphoned off” to bolster the rosters of 777’s teams in top leagues elsewhere in Europe. “Our best young players,” the statement said, “will be uprooted pronto and sent to Italy or Belgium.”

In response to the Red Star protests, Wander told French newspaper L’Equipe that he was investing in the club’s long-term success.

“What is important in our eyes is not to build a club which generates profit just for the sake of profit,” he said. “We want clubs that are capable of living and developing over a number of decades.”

With 777 responsible for the fates of eight clubs, the company’s finances and motives are now a matter of public interest to legions of soccer fans around the world. Despite financial turmoil that has included heavy debt and late payments to creditors in recent years, Vasco da Gama, the Brazilian club, issued a $5 million loan in November 2022 to another 777 subsidiary without knowledge of the club’s board of directors, an act board president Carlos Fonseca called an “abuse of control power.”

Lipchitz, 777’s attorney, called the loan “standard business practice.”

“The loan was repaid on time and with interest above market rate, and 777 injected additional capital into the club shortly afterward,” he said.

In July, as the company’s interest in Everton became public, a soccer magazine in Norway raised questions about whether 777 earns enough revenue to meet its clubs’ collectively hefty financial obligations. More recently, newspapers in the U.K. have reported that 777 has been late on payments it owes from buying a 45 percent stake in the British Basketball League in 2021.

The Everton deal now hinges on the English Premier League’s review of 777, a process that could take months and requires approval from a range of U.K. authorities.

During the years 777 Partners was buying up soccer clubs, Lyndsy Noell and her family were adjusting their lives to a future without her full annuity. They sold their houses in Florida and left for Pennsylvania. Noell went to rehab, got clean and moved into a duplex with her parents. She is now studying to become a paralegal.

For years, her mother, Lori Goney, had sent letters to politicians and law enforcement officials, calling on them to investigate 777’s business practices.

“Nobody did anything about it,” she said. “Nobody helped me.”

In recent years, as its portfolio expanded, 777 has eased out of the structured settlement industry. 777 “terminated its business relationship with Liberty” in 2018, according to Lipchitz. John Darer, an industry watchdog; Bentzen, who now runs her own company; and a consultant in the structured settlement market who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve business relationships all said that they haven’t seen any 777 affiliates sign an annuity deal since 2022.

When Goney saw 777 Partners in the news for its latest purchase, she saw a new opportunity to speak out about what she considers the origins of the company’s wealth.

The day 777 announced it reached an agreement with Everton’s current owner, Goney sent a letter to Richard Masters, chief executive of the Premier League, to “warn you about 777 Partners, which owns a series of companies that profit from the misery of others.”