(Wine-Searcher) - Not delivering on wine promises proves expensive – on both sides of the Atlantic.

Failed wine merchant John Fox's year just keeps getting worse: first his business folded, then he filed for personal bankruptcy – and now the bank is after his car.

The co-owner of Berkeley-based Premier Cru, which spectacularly imploded in January, owing $70 million to customers, filed for bankruptcy himself four weeks after his company – although he managed to sell his multi-million dollar Alamo home between the two events.

As well as collecting wine, Fox also had an appetite for automobiles, at various times owning a couple of Mercedes, a Dodge Viper and a brand, spanking new Corvette, which he bought this year, as his world was collapsing around him.

According to Wine Industry Insight, the 2016 Corvette Coupe Z06 was worth $100,000 and packed with added extras, but financial services company Wells Fargo – who financed the deal – has now gone to court to reclaim the car.

The news that Fox has been auto shopping is likely to rile creditors of Premier Cru, many of whom confronted Fox last week at a creditors' hearing. Not that they heard much, with Fox invoking his Fifth Amendment right to silence more than 50 times during the 90-minute session. The only words he uttered throughout the hearing were: "On the advice of counsel I invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment not to answer on the grounds it might incriminate myself."

Meanwhile, the FBI is investigating Premier Cru's finances to find out whether the business was merely a Ponzi scheme.

The repossession of the car has echoes of Rudy Kurniawan, too – the California resident convicted of the highest-profile wine fraud on record had his cars seized by the court and sold off last year in order to pay off some of his $28 million reparations to his victims.

A practically new, black 2008 Lamborghini Murcielago roadster – which had just 938 miles on it – was sold for $195,000; Kurniawan's 2011 Mercedes Benz G-Class SUV raised $85,000, and his 2008 Land Rover Range Rover fetched $30,000.

Wine rackets are not just an American phenomenon, however. In Britain, 36-year-old Jeff Berrill has been banned from directing a company for 12 years after an insolvency investigation into his company, which conned more than $450,000 out of prospective wine buyers and earned Berrill a suspended prison sentence.