In the business world, billionaire investor Wesley Edens has a reputation as a contrarian when it comes to where to put his money.
The American’s unlikely hunch on Aston Villa – which he bought with Egyptian billionaire Nassef Sawiris in 2018 – has certainly paid off handsomely.
The famous West Midlands football club – long supported by the Prince of Wales as well as film stars Tom Hanks and Brendan Gleeson – was badly struggling at the time but has since scaled the heights of English football, currently sitting fourth in the Premier League and competing in last night’s Europa League final in Istanbul.
But when it came to his decision to reply to a LinkedIn message from an unknown Chinese-born divorcee shortly after he left his wife – well, that didn’t go so well.
Quite how badly it turned out will be revealed later this year when the woman, Changli ‘Sophia’ Luo, goes on trial in New York over what has been described as a more than $1billion ‘sextortion’ scheme.
According to Manhattan federal court documents seen by the Daily Mail, 46-year-old Luo threatened Edens, 64, for months after they had a fling. She even confronted Edens’ doctor girlfriend – now his second wife – in the latter’s office.
Luo denies four charges, including blackmail, extortion and destruction of records. She was arrested in June last year at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport while trying to board a flight to China with a one-way ticket after she discovered the authorities were after her. (Her lawyer claims she was flying to see her sick father.)
Since her capture Luo, who is free on $500,000 bail, has been placed under home detention in her apartment in Park Avenue, Manhattan, because she is considered a ‘significant flight risk’ due to her Chinese links.
Billionaire investor Wesley Edens, co-founder of Fortress Investment Group, with his second wife Dr Elizabeth Sharp
But is this a straightforward case of a younger woman allegedly trying to blackmail a rich, older man with sex – or was it something rather more coordinated?
One of the senior prosecutors involved, Brandon Thompson, admitted in court that further charges may be brought against additional people.
Some of the details of the case have raised suspicions, too – that Luo may have been working for the Chinese government, which has long been accused of using attractive women as agents of ‘sex warfare’ to seduce prominent American men.
These ‘honeytrap’ spies are known to make first contact on professional networking platform LinkedIn – one of the few Western social media sites permitted by the Chinese Communist Party.
Fuelling claims that Luo may be one of them, court papers reveal that her substantial bail was paid by Robin Mui, the Chinese chief executive of the US Sing Tao newspaper, a pro-Chinese Communist Party newspaper group based in Hong Kong. Under pressure from the US government, in 2021 Mui registered his news organisation as a ‘foreign agent’, acting on behalf of the parent company in China.
According to finance records, his company donated to the campaign of a California mayor, Eileen Wang, who recently admitted spying for China and faces up to ten years in prison. Mui denies that the donation was ever made.
Changli Luo allegedly first contacted Wes Edens in 2022, initially discussing professional matters.
She introduced herself as a New York-based divorcee who ran from Manhattan an eco-charity named One World Initiative Advocacy, which interviewed economists and environmentalists.
Changli Luo is accused of trying to blackmail Edens, who is also the co-owner of Aston Villa
He duly replied and they began to chat online, the conversation turning more personal as they discussed such subjects as Eden’s love of sports (as well as Aston Villa, he co-owns a top basketball team, the Milwaukee Bucks).
They soon met up in person – starting around November 2022 – and, on the third occasion in June 2023, he went to her apartment and they had sex.
Prosecutors say she sent him a letter immediately after that first tryst in which she ‘repeatedly professed her love’ for him. ‘I never told you I love you, and tonight I want to tell you that, I have been restraining my feeling for you, as I do love you from the bottom of my heart!’ she gushed in an excerpt cited by prosecutors.
Edens didn’t reply to that or to a text message she allegedly sent five months later.
Her communications and conduct towards the billionaire ‘then turned from flattering to threatening’, say prosecutors.
A few weeks after he ignored her message, Luo allegedly used a fake name to gain access to the New York office of his then girlfriend and now wife, Dr Elizabeth Sharp, a physician and part-time yoga teacher. Luo allegedly told her that Edens was a ‘terrible’ man who’d got her pregnant and ‘forced’ her to have an abortion, adding colourfully that he ‘was like Jeffrey Epstein’.
It’s also alleged that Luo anonymously rang Edens’ ex-wife, Lynn, and told her that he had sexually assaulted her and she should ‘protect’ their children.
Months later, she wrote to Edens claiming that he ‘misled’ her into having sex with him and that she had done so while she was ‘mentally incapacitated’. She allegedly warned him her ‘home has cameras’ and that ‘everything you did was caught on camera’ and would, along with his ‘sex crime’ and ‘bribery’, be exposed to the ‘mass media’ unless he ‘apologised’.
Edens' daughter Mallory, an underwear model who, in 2021, was briefly connected to England footballer (and ex-Aston Villa player) Jack Grealish
She told him: ‘I am sure your family and business partners will learn about you and your misdeeds from these interviews and will provide exposure that will taint your record forever.’
Prosecutors claim that the compromising photos and videos she threatened to expose never existed. They say that while Edens denied her allegations, he wanted to avoid harassment of his family and ‘potential public embarrassment’, so he agreed to a settlement of $6.5million (£4.7million), giving her $1million as an initial payment.
But Luo’s lawyers then allegedly got back in touch in January 2025 to make more ‘demands and threats’ because she claimed she’d discovered Edens had given her HPV-16, a sexually transmissible viral infection that can cause cancer. She demanded hundreds of millions of dollars more, her claim at one point rising to $1.2billion before settling on $50million, prosecutors allege. Luo reportedly told her lawyers to tell Edens she intended to ‘destroy’ him if he didn’t take ‘responsibility’ for what he’d done. Early last year, Edens reportedly alerted the authorities because he says he became worried for his safety.
That April, someone identifying themselves as ‘Sophia L’ tipped off the FBI that Edens had bribed government officials. They used an email account associated with Luo, say prosecutors.
The following month, the FBI searched her home and allegedly found a hidden mobile phone, two USB drives hidden in a packet of sanitary pads and another phone stashed underneath a ‘mountain of dirty clothes’ in a hamper in the bathroom. The agents reportedly seized 18 electronic devices, including three phones and eight computer hard drives.
On two of the phones, they found various pornographic images on which Luo had allegedly used a digital editing programme to superimpose Edens’ face on top. One of the phones also revealed that Luo had searched online: ‘How much money does a person need in China to be considered rich?’
Two weeks after the FBI raid, Luo booked her one-way ticket to China but never got beyond the airport, say prosecutors.
Her lawyers have asked a judge to dismiss the charges against her, saying she was simply seeking justice and compensation for ‘an inappropriate and aggressive sexual encounter’. They also say that Edens agreed in writing to pay her a large sum – they put the agreed figure at $8million – demonstrating that he ‘voluntarily acknowledged liability’.
In 2022, Edens was ranked by Forbes as the 171st richest person in the US with a fortune valued at $5.5billion
Her counsel has also claimed Luo is being ‘unfairly prosecuted’ because her previous lawyer, Tyrone Blackburn, should have warned her that the threats she was making could be considered extortion. Blackburn strenuously denies those claims.
Compounding the mystery hanging over the case, he told Fox News that the most damaging evidence against Luo included ‘fabricated AI videos, fake medical records, fake nonprofit claims, fake business websites, threats involving a person’s children and family’.
Strangely, very little information exists about Changli Luo. A thorough search of public records by the Daily Mail shows up nothing, despite her lawyer claiming she is a US citizen.
The same applies to her charity. Calls to the organisation’s New York number went unanswered yesterday, and government records show it has recorded income of less than $50,000 for the six years it has been in existence.
Of the three people listed as the charity’s directors, one is Luo and another is an American businessman with extensive ties to China.
Yet the cheapest apartments in Luo’s building cost nearly $6,000 per month. Further, according to court papers, she has been sending huge sums of money back to China, where her family live. Prosecutors say they believe she owns or has investments in ‘multiple’ properties as well as having ‘substantial liquid assets’ there.
Last October, James Mulvenon, the chief intelligence officer of Pamir Consulting, which advises US companies on the risks of investing in China, revealed he was one of many men being targeted with ‘an enormous number of very sophisticated LinkedIn requests from the same type of attractive young Chinese woman’.
Other China watchers told the Daily Mail that the women involved in these efforts are prepared to play the ‘long game’ and even marry their targets so they can spend years collecting valuable information for Beijing.
‘China’s agents target people with connections and work their way from there,’ said an analyst. ‘Whenever you have a prominent American man being contacted out of the blue on social media by an attractive Chinese woman he doesn’t know, you’d be an idiot not to be suspicious.’
Although Edens isn’t named anywhere in court documents relating to the case, he confirmed that he was the person identified as ‘Victim-1’ after the Wall Street Journal approached him.
‘Mr Edens will be making no comment on the case as the indictment speaks for itself with respect to the charges against the defendant,’ a spokesman told the newspaper. ‘Mr Edens expects to testify under oath at the upcoming trial.’
So it remains to be seen whether Edens – who grew up on a ranch in rural Montana, where he was a competitive skier in his teens – is the latest high-profile target of a malicious foreign plot.
Edens worked in finance before starting his own firm, Fortress Investment Group, in 1998. He became a billionaire when the company went public in 2007.
The £37billion company’s co-chief executive, Joshua Pack, was found dead in a locked bedroom at his home in St John’s Wood, London, last September, after an argument with his wife.
As well as his sports teams, Edens’ business empire includes a private railway line in Florida, a natural gas company, mortgage firms and a luxury tequila brand called Cincoro.
In 2022, Edens was ranked by Forbes as the 171st richest person in the US with a fortune valued at $5.5billion.
China analyst Jim Lewis told the Daily Mail that Edens may have had investments that might be of interest to Beijing, or the Chinese government would have just seen this as a way to ‘blackmail a rich operation’. ‘They have a huge influence operation not just here but in the UK as well and this seems part of it.’
If so, the news can only be alarming for Eden’s family. He shares four children with his former wife Lynn, including daughter Mallory, an underwear model who, in 2021, was briefly connected to England footballer (and ex-Aston Villa player) Jack Grealish after he ‘liked’ a string of snaps she posted on her Instagram page in which she was wearing a bikini.
Edens and Lynn were married for more than 30 years and owned a $20million triplex apartment in New York’s Chelsea neighbourhood and $18million of property in the ultra-wealthy rural New York town of North Salem.
Nobody else involved in this tawdry case – including the new Mrs Edens, who is also expected to testify – was willing to comment when contacted by the Daily Mail this week.
But what is clear is that many questions remain over a puzzling case that appears to be about rather more than the fury of a mysterious woman scorned.
- Additional reporting: DANIEL BATES