West Hills man to plead guilty in $5.9M Ponzi scheme targeting elderly churchgoers

A San Fernando Valley man who uses the surname of a dynasty that once ruled Austria agreed Tuesday to plead guilty to a federal charge for swindling elderly church parishioners and others in a Ponzi scheme that took in more than $5.9 million and falsely claimed Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan among investors.

Sylvein William Maximilian D’Habsburg XVII, 48, of West Hills is expected to plead guilty in the coming weeks to one count of wire fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

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, according to his plea agreement filed Tuesday in Los Angeles federal court.

D’Habsburg had his name legally changed to resemble that of the famous European family and he is not a descendant of nobility, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office told City News Service.

At investment presentations, D’Habsburg claimed that he had an artificial intelligence technology that could predict the future and detect a COVID-19 infection based solely on a video recording, among other things, court papers show.

Prosecutors say he also falsely claimed to potential investors that he had received about $500 million in investments for his companies from retired pro athletes and other well-known people, including Bryant, Jordan and Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak, and that he would use the funds to hire personnel and obtain patents.

However, D’Habsburg used the victims’ 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, prosecutors said.

As a result of his scheme, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said, D’Habsburg caused his victims a total of about $5.9 million in losses.

Once D’Habsburg enters his guilty plea, he will face a sentence of up to 20 years in federal prison, prosecutors noted.

The House of Habsburg-Lorraine is the former royal house of the defunct Austro-Hungarian thrones.