(CBSSF) — The owner of a bankrupt Berkeley wine shop admitted during a guilty plea in federal court in San Francisco today to carrying out a two-decades-long scheme that defrauded customers of at least $45 million.

John Fox, 66, owner of the now-closed Premier Cru retailer of rare and expensive wines, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge James Donato to one count of wire fraud.

That fraud was the electronic transfer of $100,271 from an unnamed customer in Hong Kong to a Premier Cru bank account in Northern California in 2013.

But in an 11-page written plea agreement filed later today, Fox admitted that his scheme began by 1994 and included false inventories of $20 million worth of “phantom wine,” buying wines for some customers with money provided by later customers, embezzlement to pay his personal expenses, and a total customer loss of at least $45 million.

“I agree that, at the time of Premier Cru’s bankruptcy, customers paid at least $45 million for wine they had not received,” Fox said in the signed agreement.

The company declared bankruptcy in federal court in Oakland in January.

The embezzled funds went to pay the mortgage of Fox’s former home in Alamo, expensive cars, his and his wife’s credit card bills, golf club memberships, his daughter’s college tuition and the spending through PayPal of “more than $900,000 on women I met online,” Fox said in the agreement.

Fox will be sentenced by Donato on Dec. 14.

Under the plea bargain, prosecutors and Fox’s lawyers will both recommend a sentence of six and one-half years in federal prison, plus restitution of at least $45 million to customers and at least $6.5 million to creditors.