LOS ANGELES, California - A businessman who pretended to be a European nobleman to victimize Filipino-American senior citizens in a Ponzi scheme has agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges filed against him.

After allegedly gaining over $5.9 million from hoodwinked investors, most of them elderly Filipino-Americans, Sylveiin William Maximilian D’Habsburg XVII, 48, faces stiff prison sentences for operating the investment scam.

Reports revealed that D’Habsburg was able to victimize dozens of individuals whom he lured into investing in his two companies, Wild Rabbit Technologies LLC and BAI Intelligence LLC.

Many of them come from local Filipino community in California. Also victimized were elderly church parishioners, according to a plea agreement document filed on Tuesday (December 3) in a Los Angeles federal court.

According to the document, D’Habsburg had his name legally changed for him to appear as a member of a known European family.

A spokesperson for the US Attorney’s Office told the news media that D’Habsburg is not a part of nobility in Europe.

The plea bargaining document showed that D’Habsburg had misled investors into believing that he had developed an artificial intelligence technology capable of predicting the future and detecting COVID-19 infection based mainly on a video recording.

He also had falsely claimed to the victims that he had received $500 million in investments granted by retired professional athletes that included top basketball stars Michael Jordan and the late Kobe Bryant.

The prosecutors disclosed that D’Habsburg had been collecting money from potential investors for use in the hiring of personnel and application for patents.

It was later discovered that D’Habsburg used the collected investments in buying luxury items such as cars and rare antiques.

He reportedly owns a 1933 Rolls Royce Phantom II Continental Sedanca de Villeand a pair of Italian carved Giltwood Throanes from the 1800’s.