Wine Crime
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Hey, Sachi. Okay, so I know you don't drink, so I'm kind of curious what you think about, like, fancy people who really care about their fancy wine. Woof. I mean, you and I share a mutual friend who's, like, a very fancy wine person. Yeah. And, you know, she often tells me things and my eyes just kind of glaze over and I'm like, okay. Yeah, yeah.

It's just like not my world. I don't care. Right. As you know, I love wine. I drink a lot of wine. I'm real like wine mom energy, unfortunately. But I don't think I'd be able to determine the difference between a $30 bottle and a $70 bottle.

But also, if you're at home and listening to this, please feel free to give me a $70 bottle of wine. I'll take it. That's how much wine costs. Sarah, it can cost any amount of money. Whatever happens in this episode, pretend you're talking to an alien. Okay.

Sure. Well, this week's story is all about the richie-richies who think they know what makes delicious, expensive wine worth its exorbitant cost. But, surprise, surprise, turns out some of them were just getting a little tipsy and super scammed.

Sarah, let's go back to April 2008. It's the Great Recession, which is a dark time for most people. But the 1% are still living large, especially at Crew, a basement restaurant in New York's Greenwich Village. It's covered in dark wood and oil paintings. But Crew's clientele are not there for the decor. They're there for the incredible wine cellar of more than 100,000 bottles.

Freelance journalist Peter Hellman is here to cover an elite wine auction. It's part of his beat. He writes the weekly Urban Vintage column for the New York Sun. Peter's trim, balding, and has the journalistic ability to fade into the background in a crowded room. All the better to observe. And tonight, Peter is witnessing quite the scene. Crew is packed, and it's a full-on bro-y bacchanal. Guys with seven-figure paychecks sip, swirl, and bid on wines that cost as much as a car.

Two bottles of Dom Perignon from 1959, once owned by the Shah of Iran, sell for $42,000 each. One wine collector wearing a checkered cashmere jacket slices the top off a 1945 Paul Roger bottle with a curved sword. Sarah, we actually spoke with Peter for this episode, and he says that people were beyond tipsy.

They were straight up messy drunk. I noticed one guy who was in a banquette and he kept sliding down in his seat, but

But he had his paddle in one hand, and even after he slid down literally under the table, he would still hold his paddle up to bid unwind. He looked like a drowning man in the ocean, you know, just holding up one hand. The auctioneer for this evening is John Capon. John's in his mid-30s with close-cropped hair, glasses, and a patchy beard.

He's a rising star in the wine world, and he's one of the first people to transform stuffy wine auctions into wild blowout parties. He holds the gavel in one hand and a glass in the other. John's a natural hype man who loves cracking jokes, teasing people, and getting wicked buzzed along with the crowd.

But in the middle of the auction, John pauses to announce that he's withdrawing the next 97 bottles of Domaine Ponceau wines from the auction block. He says it's due to inconsistencies. But the thing is, it's super unusual for wines to be withdrawn at the last minute of an auction. And Peter's reporter instincts are kicking in. He wants to talk to the seller, the guy responsible for putting those wines up for auction in the first place. And he spots him standing in the corner of the room.

He's a young Chinese man in a custom Hermes suit and rectangular glasses. His name is Rudy Kurniawan, and Peter recalls asking Rudy, hey, what happened to all those bottles? It's a question that'll take years of sleuthing, a whole team of FBI agents, and one really pissed-off billionaire to answer. And when the truth finally comes out, it'll uncork one of the biggest wine scandals in history.

From Wondery, I'm Sachi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. And this is Scamfluencers. This story gets into the bougie and bizarre world of wine fraud. Essentially, dressing up cheap wine in fancy labels and selling it for thousands of dollars. And our scammer is the ultimate gentleman thief.

I should add, I would fall for this scam so fast and so easily. I probably wouldn't put my money in it, but I absolutely would brag about drinking fancy wine that was like, I don't know, bathroom juice. So crack open your nicest bottle of Josh as we take you through the story of someone who got drunk with power and made some very bad decisions. I'm calling this episode Wine Crime. ♪♪

This story starts back in 1999. Rudy Kurniawan is in his early 20s, and he's visiting San Francisco with his family. They're at a restaurant in a touristy part of town, Fisherman's Wharf, and they're here to celebrate Rudy's dad's birthday. Rudy and his mom live in the U.S., but his father is visiting from Indonesia. The family doesn't get to spend that much time together, so tonight they're balling out. They organize a party, and they're going to be having a party.

They order a bottle of 1996 Opus One, a Bordeaux blend from Napa. It was $125 when it was released, but it's probably way more than that at the restaurant because that's how restaurants work. Rudy has never had wine before, but when he tastes it, he has an almost orgasmic experience. With this one sip, his entire life changes. He's found his passion.

Yeah, I actually can relate to this. That's how I felt the first time I had Baja Blast at a Taco Bell. Okay, I am choosing not to address what you just said to me. It changed my life. Your veins run blue. I get it. Well, Rudy came to the U.S. on a student visa in the 1990s, and he studied accounting at Cal State Northridge. But accounting obviously isn't nearly as exciting as wine, and Rudy's passion for tasting and collecting it quickly turns into an obsession.

He starts collecting bottles, hundreds of them. And he's not just getting blasted on yummy reds. Rudy starts going to rare wine tastings around Los Angeles, where he lives. He's learning all about wine, the different varietals, and what makes some older wine taste more robust, complex, and delicious than younger, thinner wines. The more he learns about wine, the more he wants to drink the really good stuff. So

So Rudy starts spending serious money on older, rarer bottles. Luckily, Rudy's family seems to be loaded. He tells his friends that they give him a monthly allowance of a million dollars. Based on the enormous quantities of fine wine he's buying, it seems like it honestly could be true. Rudy's single-minded determination and his bottomless pockets get him immediate attention in West Coast wine circles.

In 2002, just a couple of years after Rudy tasted wine for the first time, he goes to a charity auction and bids on a barrel of red wine from the Sine Kwanon Winery. This winery has a cult following. It makes some of the most expensive and collectible bottles of California wine in history.

And during the auction, Rudy simply lifts his paddle up and he doesn't put it down until he wins. It is always funny when like a rich person gets an interest and they're like, I'm going to be the most important person in this because I have money. Well, rich people really know how to commodify a hobby. Like the rest of us are just like, I like to paint. And they're like, all I do is paint.

Yeah, it's just kind of like, wait a second, I like this and I have the money, therefore this is what I am now. Well, there's also some sense of community wrapped up in this for Rudy because he's been an outsider his entire life.

He was born to Chinese parents and raised Christian in Indonesia, which is a majority Muslim country. And so, though his family is wealthy and they adopt an Indonesian last name, they don't really fit in. And now, after spending his life looking for somewhere to belong, Rudy has finally found it, the world of fine wine. He's making a name for himself. And soon, he'll skyrocket to notoriety as one of the wine world's most influential players.

In the early 2000s, Rudy and the rest of the U.S. wine world are becoming obsessed with wine from the Burgundy region of France. It's considered the holy grail of grape varietals because of its complexity and the fact that it's made in such small quantities. Wine lovers are really into the older vintages, like Burgundy from the 1940s, which is considered to have aged super well, tasting really robust and full of flavor.

Rudy buys a lot of Burgundy from Woodland Hills Wine Company, a family-owned store in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley. And the owner actually invites Rudy to sit in with his Burgundy tasting group.

Sarah, they call themselves the Bergwhores. Oh my God, get a life, people. And the Bergwhores very quickly realize that Rudy has a special gift. His palate is so good, he's actually considered by some to be a super taster. For example, at blind tastings, people see a list of wines and then they try to guess which ones are which. At a double blind tasting, there's no list.

People guess what the wine is with no clues at all. And Rudy crushes it at double-blind wine tastings. He's like a walking library of all the wine he's ever tasted. Rudy is also making money off of his expertise. He searches all over the U.S. and Europe for rare, collectible bottles, and then he sells them at auctions and in private sales, making a pretty penny.

Rudy's raking it in and he's living a jet-setting lifestyle. But behind the scenes, he's also dealing with the not-so-glamorous bureaucracy of the U.S. immigration system. His application for political asylum is denied, and in 2003, he's ordered to leave the country voluntarily. But instead, Rudy decides to stay. And he doesn't exactly keep a low profile. His star in the wine world is taking off, and he's just getting started —

In October of that year, he hosts a wine dinner at Melisse, an upscale Michelin-starred French restaurant in Santa Monica. It's a big chandelier, white linen tablecloths and cushy chair kind of spot. On the menu are a bunch of Petrusse wines in extremely rare vintages, some as old as 1921.

And the price tag for this dinner? It's almost $5,000 a person. If you're super rich, that's just kind of like, you know, a drop in the bucket, right? Yeah, it's a joke. And one of the guests at this dinner is Paul Wasserman, who's a member of the Burghors. Paul actually grew up in Burgundy, France. His mother is a famed wine exporter, and he's been drinking this stuff practically since birth.

Paul's only ever had a Petrus bottle from 1975, so he's over the moon to try these bottles. He's particularly stoked about the 1947 vintage. A good wine from the 40s should be exploding with complex flavor. But when he swirls the glass and takes a sip, he's confused. It tastes young, light-bodied, and then he tries a 1961 bottle, and it also tastes off.

It occurs to him that this very fancy wine might be fake, which basically just means that the label doesn't match what's inside the bottle. This is such a bold way to lie, especially if you're in the company of people who are obsessed with this thing. Like, this isn't just like a nobody event. Well, Sarah, I've had a lot of wine where I didn't like it, but everybody else did. So I was like, I'm just going to keep my mouth shut because I don't want to look stupid today. And I suspect a lot of people are doing that.

Also, like, fake rare wine isn't anything new. Wine merchants want to sell fancy wines for big bucks, and wealthy collectors want to believe that they're tasting the real thing. So a fake here and there is kind of accepted as the price of doing business. But Paul is suspicious, and he's hesitant to say anything, much like I would be. Rudy has supplied all the wines for this dinner, and he's become a close friend.

Accusing him of pouring counterfeit wine would be rude and embarrassing. But Paul records his doubts in private tasting notes. And his gut instincts are on point. There is something fishy about Rudy's miraculous rise in the wine world. And though Paul might be suspicious, Rudy shows no signs of slowing down.

A year later, in the fall of 2004, Rudy joins a handful of friends for a four-day drinking binge at Crew, the New York City restaurant that is the hang for wealthy wine lovers. This group of fine wine superfans call themselves the 12 Angry Men. And all these guys are in their 30s. They have seemingly endless cash and an appetite for the best wine in the biz. Rudy fits right in. He wears real crocodile boots and Patek Philippe watches.

But Rudy is quirky. He's always late, and he has a habit of straight up falling asleep at the table, holding his wine glass without ever spilling a drop. But his friends don't question his odd behavior because they're benefiting from his massive cellar and his generous pours. It seems impossible that someone could keep finding so many hard-to-find wines, but Rudy keeps doing it. On the last night of this bender, the gang is racking up a $250,000 bill,

Rudy throws down his black Amex, but he does something else behind the scenes. He asks the staff at Crew to ship all the empty bottles back to his house, clear on the other side of the country. Actually, Rudy has started to do this every time he drinks fine wine at a restaurant, eventually collecting hundreds of empty bottles. If no one questioned him about this, I'm guessing people were kind of like,

chalked it down to, well, Rudy's a bit of a weirdo. Yeah. You know, maybe he just wants to collect the bottles of his good times. And Rudy does other strange things, too. On the DL, he buys large stocks of old Negociant Burgundies. Now, that's a wine made by a merchant who doesn't own a vineyard. So they buy wines from other vineyards, sometimes blending them together and sell them under their own name.

Some of these wines taste fine, but they're nothing like the high-end stuff that Rudy regularly drinks and sells. Rudy's keeping this strange behavior under wraps. But soon, even his drinking buddies will start to suspect that he's not who he claims to be. And neither is his precious wine.

Two years after the crew bender, John Capon is holding a blockbuster auction at Cafe Gray. It's a midtown Manhattan restaurant with mirrored walls and custom leather banquette seating. Sarah, do you remember him? Yeah, I remember John Capon. He's the auctioneer who set this all in motion in the first place, right? Yes, exactly right. John runs auctions for his family's company, Acker, Merrill & Condit, a small wine shop on the Upper West Side. The company has been around for almost two centuries.

Its website claims it's the oldest wine merchant in the country.

And at first, John wanted nothing to do with the family business. He was a wrestling star in high school, and after college, he tried to start a career as a hip-hop producer. But eventually, he came back to Acker. Now, he's revolutionizing wine auctions and turning Acker into one of the biggest wine auction houses in the world, thanks in large part to his friendship with Rudy. John's a bundle of nerves and excitement because today could totally change his life.

The auction at Café Grey is made up exclusively of wine from Rudy's cellar. And at a previous auction of bottles from Rudy's cellar, John sold more than $10.6 million worth of wine. John and Acker get a commission of about 20% on all sales. This auction is extra special because Rudy is selling ultra-rare bottles of Romani Conti from the early 1900s for $100,000 a pop.

It's a ton of money, even in this flashy world. But people are ready to pay up. John can barely keep up with the bidding. By the end of the day, John has sold $24.7 million worth of wine, breaking the record of wine sold at a single auction by $10 million. This windfall is life-changing for John and his family's business. Well, here's my question, right?

Did a lot of this obvious scam work because people don't consume these bottles right away? Like, I'm guessing you're not buying a $100,000 bottle of wine because you're going to drink it within the year. Like, maybe it's something that you'll have in your cellar for forever and therefore you'll never know what's in the bottle. I mean, I think like with art, it's like an investment. But it's only an investment if you believe in the value. That's kind of...

subjective. Yeah, I think that's kind of what I'm getting here. Well, Rudy is helping John level up. And John is also helping Rudy out of a tight spot. Not long after the event, John's company loans Rudy $1 million. Because even though Rudy is selling millions of dollars worth of rare wine, he's spending even more.

He's cruising around L.A. in his Bentley, his Lamborghini, and his Land Rover, and he buys an $8 million mansion in Bel Air. Rudy lives with his mom in a suburb called Arcadia while his mansion gets a massive remodel. It includes transforming the 12-car garage into a cellar just for champagne and building a special display for his mom's collection of Birkin bags. ♪

Oh, and he's decided to collect art as well, including works by Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst, and Ed Ruscha. I mean, he's making the classic scammer mistake, which is spending more than you have. This is a mistake for anybody, anywhere, even if they're not a scam artist. Don't spend more money than you have. It's a bad idea. Don't spend more money than you have generally, but if you're scamming people, you know, play the long game, buddy. Well, the bills are very clearly starting to rack up.

And Acker's million-dollar loan turns out to be the first of several. Over the next year, Acker loans Rudy more than $8 million. John wants to keep doing business with Rudy, his most prolific client. But he's starting to get concerned. And he isn't the only one noticing that there's something rotten in Denmark. Some wine aficionados are getting curious about Rudy's selling habits. And what they find will spell the end for the wine world's wunderkind.

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While John and Rudy are living it up, one of the world's biggest wine collectors is taking up a new hobby, systematically hunting down people who have screwed him over. Bill Koch is in his 60s. He's tall with a mop of white hair and big round glasses. And yes, Sarah, he is one of the infamous Koch brothers, the billionaire heirs to international megacorporation Koch Industries. Yeah.

You know, this is just something else. To have a Koch brother in this story really is the icing on the fraud cake. Yeah. Well, Bill was actually fired from that company after he tried to take control of it. And then he sued his brothers, including his own twin, in a case that took nearly two decades to settle.

So now, with that lawsuit behind him, he has time to focus on the finer things in life, like his super valuable collections of art and Western memorabilia, and of course, wine. ♪

In 2005, a Boston museum asks to put on an exhibition of his old treasures, including the gem of his wine collection. Four bottles of French wine that supposedly belonged to Thomas Jefferson. They set him back a cool $400,000 when he bought them in the 1980s. So Bill decides to authenticate them before loaning them to the museum.

But when his staff reaches out to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation to verify that the wines are real, they get some bad news. Bill got played. Wow. Imagine thinking you have Thomas Jefferson's wine. I know. And it's like, no, this is actually just various liquids that taste like wine.

Yeah, everything in the story is so embarrassing. But Bill is a billionaire with a petty streak, so he goes nuclear. He hires wine experts, former FBI, CIA, and MI6 agents, and a barn full of lawyers to root out fake wine and the people and auction houses that knowingly sell it.

Bill starts by examining his own collection. Of the 43,000 bottles in his cellar, he finds that more than 400 bottles are fake. These are bottles that he paid a total of $4.4 million for. So he brings in experts in glass, adhesives, and corks — all the materials used to bottle and package wines —

And when one of these experts analyzes a bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild that's supposedly from 1870, he discovers that the label was stuck to the bottle using Elmer's glue, which obviously did not exist in 1870. So something is seriously up. But Sarah, several of the fakes are bottles that Acker sold for Rudy. So now Rudy is in Bill's crosshairs. And that's somewhere you really don't want to be.

But Bill isn't the only person privately investigating Rudy. Halfway across the world, in the south of France, another man is getting furious. And he's not afraid to call Rudy out and start a scandal that will rock the wine world.

In 2008, Laurent Ponceau is at home, a stone building tucked into a hillside on his family's vineyard in Burgundy. He's a fourth-generation winemaker in his 50s. He has what he calls Jesus-length salt-and-pepper hair and a bit of a wild side. As a young man, he climbed mountains, got an acrobatic flying license, and crossed America on a Harley Davidson. But in the early 80s, he returned home to head up his family's winery.

He's going through his email and opens one from a wine collector in the U.S. The collector alerts him that Acker is selling a 1929 vintage from his family's winery. But Laurent's family didn't start making that varietal of wine until 1934, a full five years later. Laurent is livid. Hearing that someone is selling forgeries of his wine makes him, as the French would say, pissed as hell.

He emails John at Acker and demands that he pull all 97 bottles of ponzo wine from the auction. Laurent wants to be 1,000% sure that these fakes aren't sold. So he gets on a plane to New York and takes a taxi from JFK directly to Crewe, where the 12 angry men hold court. And inside, he finds a sweaty rager in full swing. An auction where people are losing their minds and their shirts over old champagnes.

Sarah, do you remember this scene? Yeah, this disgusting scene from the beginning of this episode. Yes. And Laurent sits in the back, watching as John tells everyone that the Domaine Ponceau is no longer for sale. And afterward, Laurent demands that John tell him who owns the bottles. And turns out, it's Rudy. But there's a chance that Rudy himself was duped. So Laurent decides to give him the benefit of the doubt.

The next day, Laurent has lunch with Rudy and John at a bougie restaurant in the Trump International Hotel and Tower. And Laurent asks Rudy where he got the wines. And Rudy avoids eye contact, shoves food around his plate, and he says, actually, he doesn't remember. But a few weeks after that, Rudy sends Laurent the name and information of the person who sold him the wine. He says he got it from Pakhendra in Asia. That's it.

Well, that's not enough information for Laurent. So he flies to L.A. to have dinner with Rudy again and presses for more details. Rudy gives him two Indonesian phone numbers. When he gets back to France, Laurent tries the phone numbers. And one is for a regional Indonesian airline. And the other one is for a shopping mall in Jakarta.

And then Laurent's friends tell him that the name Rudy gave him, Pak Hendra, is basically the Indonesian equivalent of John Smith. So Laurent is now convinced that Rudy hasn't been duped into selling fake wine. It seems to him that Rudy knew it was counterfeit all along. But at this point, Rudy is collecting more than just wine. He's collecting enemies.

Laurent is hot on his tail. John wants his money back after loaning Rudy millions of dollars. And soon, law enforcement will be after Rudy as well. His wealth, his reputation, and his livelihood all hang in the balance.

In 2010, an unlikely buddy cop duo are driving from Brooklyn to Manhattan. There's Jason Hernandez, a young prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney's Office. Jason's in his early 30s, Cuban-American, a clean-shaven and poised prosecutor. And with him is FBI agent James Wynn. He's in his 50s, with close-cropped gray hair, black framed glasses, and a hard-boiled Bronx attitude. ♪

He's been in the FBI for 27 years. Almost all of that focused on art fraud. One former art forger called James the best art cop in the country. The two met up today to work on an art fraud case. After examining a couple of forged pieces, they're stuck in traffic, so they start shooting the shit. And on a lark, Jason asks if James has heard anything about this wine fraud case involving Bill Coke and the Thomas Jefferson bottles. And he says,

And to his shock, James says, yeah, that's my case. James had brought the case to the U.S. Attorney's Office, but lawyer after lawyer dropped it. Nobody was interested in wine fraud, so it lingered in limbo. According to Peter, the journalist, it's actually pretty unusual for law enforcement to pursue fraud in the wine world. He told us that... The basic view, reaction of law enforcement was, you know what?

I make $50,000 a year. You make $50 million a year. If you can't hire consultants to check the wine before you buy it, tough shit. But Jason's attitude is totally different. He's a hungry young prosecutor who happens to be a total wine nerd. And he's desperate to work this case. It feels like fate.

The two of them eventually decide to team up. And the first thing they find is that the statute of limitations has actually run out on prosecuting the Thomas Jefferson wines. But Bill Koch has made other allegations against our old friend Rudy Kurniawan. Now, Jason and James need to find out if Rudy himself is the counterfeiter or simply a victim of accidentally buying fake wine.

They get a warrant to search Rudy's bank records and emails, and they find everything you'd expect. Big spending on cars, restaurants, and vino. But other purchases raise eyebrows. Like, why is Rudy buying ink pads, custom stamps, and French sealing wax? And why did Rudy get 17 shipments of empty wine bottles from Crewe to his home in Arcadia? And then there's Rudy's splurge on nearly a thousand bottles of Negociant Burgundies.

These wines are drinkable, sure, but they're nothing close to the quality Rudy sells at auction.

But Sarah, if you mix those old burgundies with high-quality newer wines, guess what happens? Oh gosh, I truly have no idea. Well, the blend could basically pass for an expensive collectible burgundy. Oh my god, that's pretty funny. See? So, within the next two years, Jason and James gather enough evidence, including from Bill Koch and his army of investigators, to get an arrest warrant for Rudy.

And this investigation will become a career high for them. And it'll upend the entire fine wine market. They're about to blow the cork off one of the biggest wine fraud cases in history. In March 2012, a group of FBI agents huddle at a strip mall in Arcadia, a suburb east of Los Angeles. James has gathered a whole team of agents wearing bulletproof vests for the pre-dawn meeting. They're going over the plan to arrest Rudy for selling counterfeit wine.

James tells the agents that they're going to surround the perimeter of Rudy's house, knock and announce, and then bring Rudy in for questioning. James and the team roll up to the house where Rudy lives with his mom. The agents take their positions as James watches from the sidelines. At exactly 6 a.m., an agent walks up to Rudy's door and knocks loud. The agent yells, FBI, open up. Nothing. The agent tries again. Still, no dice.

So, the agent says it's time to get the RAM and break the door down. But right before they come crashing in, Rudy opens the door. He's sleepy and confused, wearing pajamas. His mom comes out after him and watches as an agent puts Rudy in handcuffs. He's charged with mail fraud and wire fraud. The rest of the agents run a protective sweep of the house. And what they find inside is shocking. Sarah, can you describe what you see in these photos?

It's like a very normal looking kitchen. Yeah. Except for the fact that there are bottles of wine everywhere. There's foil on the windows. And it is kind of funny because it's like, you know, this super high end fraud of like millions of dollars of wine money and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like,

Just taking place in this kitchen with, like, a portable dishwasher in it? Yeah, this house looks like Breaking Bad for counterfeit wine. And the feds have hit the jackpot, clearly. They find thousands of fancy wine labels, hundreds of empty bottles scattered throughout the house, and a handful of bottles soaking in the sink to loosen the labels. There's bags of corks, a recorking device, and French sealing wax.

James was interviewed for a documentary called Sour Grapes, and in it, he describes the scene as a detective's dream. As an FBI agent, if I had listed the 10 things that I would have liked to have obtained from a search, this was 10 times 10 times 10 times 10 times 10 to infinity. And the real smoking gun is the mixing station. This is where Rudy has handwritten notes for how to mix old Burgundy Negociant wines with newer wines —

This way, he can make blends that mimic 1940s Domaine Romani Conti or 1950s Petrus. Thanks to his super taster palette, Rudy made fake blends that even fooled some of the best wine tasters in the world. He put those blends in old bottles, slapped on convincing-looking labels, added a cork and some wax, and voila! It was a factory for some very convincing fakes. I...

wasn't sure if he really did have the super palate or whatever. Yeah. But it's really funny that he used that to, like, engineer a wine that tastes just as good as really expensive wine. He used his gift for evil. Well, Rudy's arrest sends shockwaves through the fine wine world. And with this mountain of evidence against him, even Rudy's most loyal friends have to doubt all the glorious wine he poured for them.

And now Rudy, who is still in the U.S. illegally, is about to go to trial for the biggest wine scam in American history. And no amount of money or support from fancy friends will save him.

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Rudy's trial begins on a cold December day in New York in 2013, and it's a blockbuster trial for the wine community. There's so much physical evidence that Jason Hernandez, the prosecutor, literally needs a long table to lay out the thousands of fake wine labels, the bottles, and all the other DIY wine forging materials.

The government estimates that Rudy sold more than 20 million in fake wine. But it's impossible to give an exact number because some of his customers didn't cooperate with the investigation. A lot of them are hotshot businessmen who don't want to be publicly cucked. Bill Koch takes the stand talking about how he has a bathroom covered in corks and labels from fancy wine he's had with his friends. And Laurent and two other top-tier winemakers from Burgundy come all the way from France to testify —

Peter Hellman, the journalist who wrote about the auction scene, covered the whole thing for Wine Spectator magazine. He told us it was kind of momentous. I can safely say, I think, that never again will three top winemakers from Burgundy appear in a New York City federal courthouse to testify. But they all testified in one day that these wines just couldn't exist.

Notably absent from the witness list, John, whose company Acker sold many of Rudy's counterfeit wines. When Bill Koch sued him, John lawyered all the way up. And he likely would have pleaded the fifth throughout all of this drama, so he wasn't called to testify. And for the record, he was never legally implicated in Rudy's wine fraud.

The jury deliberates for less than two hours before finding Rudy guilty on all counts. And in July 2014, less than a year after the trial, Bill Koch settles a six-year lawsuit against Acker over the fake wines he bought from them, nearly all of which were provided by Rudy. Peter reported at the time that the settlement includes a, quote, substantial cash payment and a policy change from Acker.

Now, any wine that customers suspect of being fake or not as advertised on its label can be returned.

A week later, Bill also settles a separate case with Rudy for $3 million. As part of the settlement, Rudy reportedly agrees to share all of his wine counterfeiting intel with Bill. A couple weeks after that, Rudy is sentenced to 10 years in a Texas prison. He's ordered to pay more than $28 million to his victims. He is officially the first person to go to jail in the U.S. for wine fraud.

Peter tells us that Rudy has left a sad legacy in the wine world. It shut down the so-called mythical vintage wine business. You can no longer really expect to find offerings of 1937 Romany Conti or 1945 Bordeaux. Those wines are all assumed to be guilty until proven innocent.

Wow, he changed a whole industry. Well, not only that, Sarah, super expensive wines now have high-level anti-fraud protection, from DNA labels to blockchain authentication. So it's harder than ever to trick people on high-priced wine.

But in 2020, Rudy was released from prison early. ICE agents escorted him back to Indonesia. But his story may not be all the way over. In late 2022, Financial Times wine columnist Jancis Robinson tweeted that she'd heard Rudy was in Singapore and that he was back in the wine game. Meanwhile, Laurent has left his family's legendary winery to start his own wine business with his son. He is now selling Negociants.

He is also busy writing a novel inspired by this whole Rudy debacle. I don't know, Sarah, I guess the only way to protect yourself is to drink beer and cocktails? Or you can do what I do and just order the second cheapest bottle of wine because then you don't really have to worry about if it's real or not and it tastes fine. Problem solved. Cheers! All right, Sarah.

That's our wine fraud. Does it make you want to start drinking? Because it makes me want to start drinking. No, it makes me want to be even further away from alcohol. You know, the story is very rich to me because it deals with

the one thing people want the most in life, and it's to seem like they're doing something exclusive and to have access to something that the upper echelon of society has. I suspect a lot of Rudy's scam is, like, more social. Like, I'm sure there were lots of times where people, like, picked up really expensive tabs because Rudy brought the wine, right? So maybe somebody else pays that $5,000 a person, right?

meal at that restaurant and they pay for Rudy because, oh, well, Rudy brought six bottles of wine and each of them is like a six figure dollar bottle of wine. And so I suspect the scam isn't just like, oh, he tricked me into thinking that this like kind of mediocre wine is actually amazing wine. But it's also like this man was my friend. I let this man into my life.

Yeah, and, you know, he gave these people what they wanted, which is to be a part of a boys club where they could, you know, be, like, super drunk and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in a night. I would also add, if you're getting so fucked up that you're, like, falling asleep at a table and you're ripping your shirt off, which, listen, whomst am I to judge? But if you're drinking that much and you're getting that wasted...

there's no way you're, like, tasting subtle notes of berry and, like, butthole or whatever else people talk about in these wine tastings. Like, you are just getting trashed. And that's fine. I don't care. But it just seems unlikely that they're really having these, like, elegant, nuanced conversations about flavor and palate if they're just getting fucking loaded. And Rudy played on, like, you know, you mentioned before that the reason why people

people didn't want to rock the boat instantly was because it is a tight-knit community where people trust each other. And, you know, a rift can be a huge problem. Well, you don't want to be the guy at, like, in your club that's like, hey, I think so-and-so's full of shit because they might kick you out instead. I don't know. I guess he just kind of really played into this

that you walk into a room like you belong there and people will trust you. And that's like, I feel like the number one thing scammers have is that they have this amazing ability to act like they belong, even if they're a total weirdo. Sarah, I feel like the lesson here is that if you just act aggressively like you belong, any group will have you. You just have to be

confident in your weirdoness. And you can join any club. Yeah, I mean, every friend group has that one person who you're like, I guess they're here. I have gotten by on mild tolerance my whole life. It works. Hey, you know what? I'm more than just mildly tolerate you. Aw, that's sweet.

This is Wine Crime. I'm Sachi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. We use many sources in our research. A few that were particularly helpful were the Vanity Fair article, A Vintage Crime by Michael Steinberger, the New York Mag article, Chateau Sucker by Benjamin Wallace, and the book, In Vino Duplicitas, The Rise and Fall of a Wine Forger Extraordinaire by Peter Hellman. Special thanks to Peter for speaking to us for this episode.

Rose Cerno wrote this episode. Additional writing by us, Sachi Cole and Sarah Hagee. Our senior producer is Jen Swan. Our producer is John Reed. Our associate producers are Charlotte Miller and Lexi Peary. Our story editor and producer is Sarah Enney. Allison Weintraub is our story editor. Sound design is by Sam Ada. Additional audio assistance provided by Adrian Tapia. Fact-checking is by Sonia Maynard. Our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Freeze On Sync.

Our managing producer is Matt Gant, and our senior managing producer is Tanja Thigpen. Kate Young and Olivia Richard are our series producers. Our senior story editor is Rachel B. Doyle. Our senior producer is Ginny Bloom. Our executive producers are Janine Cornelow, Stephanie Jens, Jenny Lauer Beckman, and Marshall Louis for Wondery. Wondery.

If you like Scamfluencers, you can listen to every episode early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.