Wesley Edens, the co-founder of Fortress Investment Group and co-owner of the
Milwaukee Bucks, answered a LinkedIn message from a China-born entrepreneur in 2022 that blossomed into a correspondence. Changli “Sophia” Luo was a divorcée living in New York City who had founded One World Initiative Advocacy, a Manhattan-based nonprofit that said it worked to produce video interviews with economists and environmentalists. Edens, a billionaire who had divorced his longtime wife the previous year, built a reputation for making counterintuitive financial bets. He successfully invested in subprime loans after the 2008-09 financial crisis, spent billions to build a private passenger railway in Florida and, in 2018, bought a majority stake in the then-struggling English soccer club Aston Villa.
Over messages, he told her how fun it was to own a sports team. And on their third get-together, Edens and Luo had sex at her apartment in June 2023, according to federal prosecutors. The brief relationship spiraled into an alleged extortion plot.
Wall Street Journal
