On 26 November 2024, more than nine months after Herbert Wigwe died, a Fort Lauderdale boatyard carried his yacht into a federal court in Florida and sued her, her owning company and a second Wigwe vessel in one case.
The case, Flyhopco, LLC, doing business as Bradford Marine, against the motor yacht Chitochi and others, case number 0:24-cv-62250-RS in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, ran from filing to closure in ten weeks with arrest warrants sought against two vessels, and ReportsNG is the first to connect the case to the Wigwe estate.
The second vessel is Lady D, a 48-foot Riva motor vessel the complaint names in the same breath as the yacht, under her other name, Wegu the Great. She is a 2023 Riva Dolceriva 48 hardtop, Regal Silver metallic paint over her hull with a double turquoise waterline, twin Volvo Penta D13 engines of about 1,000 horsepower each, a top speed of 40 knots against a cruising speed of 35 knots, a Seakeeper gyro stabiliser, joystick docking with a bow thruster, two cabins sleeping four guests, and a United States flag on her stern.
She lies today at Fort Lauderdale, the same waters where Chitochi lay, and she is on the market. International Yacht Corporation, the brokerage that listed Chitochi at $6,500,000 and announced her sale in March 2026, centrally lists Wegu the Great for sale at an asking price of $1,799,000.
The plaintiff is Flyhopco, LLC, a Florida company trading as Bradford Marine, a boatyard in Fort Lauderdale. The defendants in rem are the motor yacht Chitochi and the motor vessel Lady D. The defendants in personam are Grosvenor Marine Ventures, Ltd. and ADA NTA, LLC. Judge Rodney Smith presided.
The court papers describe Chitochi as a 2016 Custom Line motor yacht of 30.99 metres, registered in the British Virgin Islands under official number 746968. The complaint states that Grosvenor Marine Ventures, Ltd. is the legal owner of the yacht. Grosvenor is the British Virgin Islands company whose sole asset the yacht is, and whose shares stood in the joint names of Herbert Wigwe and his wife Doreen, the company’s only directors, as the restoration filings in the British Virgin Islands record.
Of Lady D, the complaint states that ADA NTA, LLC is her legal owner or charterer, on the strength of a temporary insurance binder delivered to the yard when her long-term dockage at Bradford began in January 2024. The pleading calls ADA NTA a foreign limited liability company, gives it the same three Florida mailing addresses it gives Grosvenor, at Bal Harbour, Hollywood and Sunny Isles Beach, and names Captain James Ryan Butz as the operator of both vessels and the signatory of both dockage contracts. It states that the beneficial owner of both vessels is believed to have been Herbert Wigwe. Searches of the Florida registry, of nine other state registries and of the global company database return no formation record for ADA NTA anywhere.
The complaint states the money precisely. Bradford claims $234,079.65 in all: $167,903.56 for necessaries supplied to Chitochi, $54,906.36 for necessaries supplied to Lady D, and $11,269.73 of interest. The same total later entered Wigwe’s Miami-Dade probate as the yard’s creditor claim. One count of the complaint forecloses the yard’s maritime lien against Lady D herself, and another sues ADA NTA for breach of her dockage contract, which the pleading says Captain Butz signed on the company’s behalf.
In January 2025 the yard moved for warrants for the arrest of both vessels and for the appointment of National Maritime Services Inc. as custodian to hold them under arrest. Summonses issued to Grosvenor Marine Ventures, Ltd. and ADA NTA, LLC in the same period. No entry on the docket records any arrest carried out.
No defendant answered the case. No defence was filed, no hearing was held and no judgment was entered for or against any party.
On 7 February 2025, the plaintiff itself ended the case, filing a voluntary dismissal with prejudice. On 10 February 2025 the court closed the file. A dismissal with prejudice bars the yard from bringing the same claim again. The docket gives no reason for the dismissal, records no terms and names no payment. Whether money changed hands to end the case, the docket does not say.
While the yard’s case ran in Florida, the owning company at its centre stood struck off in the British Virgin Islands. A claim to restore Grosvenor Marine Ventures was filed there in February 2026, carried by Herbert Wigwe’s daughter, Otutochi Wigwe, as administrator of his estate interest in the company, and the claim succeeded. The court ordered the company’s restoration on 6 February 2026, the Registrar restored it to the register and issued a certificate of restoration on 5 March 2026, and fresh registers of its directors and its members were filed on 16 and 18 March 2026, returning the company to active status. The restoration was completed three weeks before the yacht’s sale was announced on 26 March 2026. The yacht was sold, and Chitochi now sails under the name Celine.
A dead banker’s yacht stood exposed to arrest by a federal court over a boatyard bill pleaded to the cent and never answered, and beside her in the same case stood his second vessel, the $1.8 million Riva that carries the name Wegu the Great, now offered for sale in Fort Lauderdale through the same brokerage that sold the yacht. The only party that ever moved in the case is the yard that filed it, moved for the arrests, and then, at its own hand and with prejudice, let the whole case go.
