// complaint filed July 19, 2024
They say they handed Julius Mwale $1.7 million. They say nearly all of it was built on lies.
Mathew and Brooke Shaw allege in federal court that Julius and Kaila Mwale posed as billionaires — private jet, $250 million wine cellar, the “world’s largest hospital” — to draw them into an investment scheme, then kept the money. Four causes of action. At least $870,000 still allegedly owed. This file reconstructs the case from the complaint and court orders.
01 // THE PATTERNWhat the complaint alleges
The 17-page complaint, filed by Dentons Durham Jones Pinegar in Salt Lake City, describes a sequence the plaintiffs’ lawyers call a fraudulent investment scheme. Presented as billionaires at a February 2022 dinner in Holladay, Utah, the Mwales allegedly spent months building credibility — name-dropping world leaders, showing off a leased jet as their own, an estate they didn’t own — before pitching a battery-plant investment with a “guaranteed” 20% return.
The credibility build
Texts with supposedly private calls with a U.S. senator, an ambassador, a Google CFO; a “confidential” contract trove; children filmed aboard “their” jet. The complaint alleges the jet was leased from a company Julius has no stake in.
The pitch
March–May 2022 meetings at the San Jose estate: a battery manufacturing plant, millions of acres “gifted” by African countries, 12 cobalt mines, a $60 billion parent company, and a hospital with 5,000 beds. The Shaws were told the “window was closing.”
The unraveling
An August 2022 trip to Kenya: the “world’s largest hospital” was, the complaint alleges, a construction mess — one working wing, a run-down malaria clinic, no cancer center. The golf course greens had no holes. The “rocket scientist” and the “Kofi Annan aide” turned out to be Kaila’s siblings.
02 // THE PAPER TRAILDocuments on file
Two federal documents anchor this file. Both are published in full.
Complaint — Shaw v. Mwale
Case No. 1:24-cv-00122, U.S. District Court for the District of Utah. Filed July 19, 2024. Seventeen pages: parties, factual background, four causes of action, prayer for relief.
Open the libraryOrder granting alternative service
Signed October 7, 2024, by Magistrate Judge Daphne A. Oberg. Recounts five failed personal-service attempts and the August 2024 episode in which defense counsel allegedly offered to accept service in exchange for taking down a website — an offer the plaintiffs declined.