Netflix night, December 26th. When my wife first suggested this, I wasn't interested. What do I care about wine? Then she pointed out that it was more of a true crime documentary, that changed things. The film follows the exploits of Rudy Kurniawan, an Indonesian national who burst on to the wine auction scene in the early 2000s by selling vintage wines. Rich people lost their shit.
Due to his access to vintage wine, Rudy became a hot commodity with the wealthy, snobby wine crowd. They bought his wines at auction, they partied with him and fawned all over him. They didn't seem to know much about him or how he could even get his hands on these rare vintages, they only cared that he supplied the rare vintages. This went on for a few years, until two things happened: 1) a sales of some rare vintages from the Ponsot Winery in Burgundy, France caught the eye of the owner, Domaine Ponsot. Ponsot was curious as to how Rudy got his hands on these vintages. 2) Bill Koch purchased some vintages that Thomas Jefferson from Rudy through an auction and it turned out they were counterfeit. In case the name Koch sounds familiar, Bill Koch is one half of of the Koch Brothers...
Oh, those Koch Brothers.
If there's one thing really extremely wealthy people like Mr. Koch hate more than paying taxes, it's being swindled. Mr. Koch used his considerable influence to get an investigation started on Rudy. That and Mr. Ponsot's own work started to tighten the noose around Rudy's neck. Eventually, it all came to an end in 2012 when the FBI raided Rudy's home in LA and found an orgy of evidence. All the materials you would need to counterfeit vintage wine, they seized. Rudy would be convicted in Federal Court and sentenced to 10 years in federal prison.
On of the few things I took away from this was the old proverb, "a fool and his money are soon parted." It seemed clear the Rudy was a con-artist. Keeping only a few steps ahead of creditors and receiving advances from auction houses on future sales. Rudy's victims were pretty much repulsive wealthy snobs. Some were in denial that they had been swindled. Apparently, none of them ever saw The Grifters or Matchstick Men. It's called a "long con." One of the questions the movie raises is how a did all this happen and no one found out? The main reason was that the auction house (in this case, Acker, Merral & Condit) received a high commission. Giving them no incentive to truly authenticate any of the vintages (eery parallel to the housing bubble bursting in 2007, the mortgage rating companies that gave handed out "A" credit ratings to toxic mortgages. The film The Big Short explains it much better than I ever could). Why mess with the golden goose. Screw integrity when there's too much money and prestige at stake. The last thing I realized was that you can swindle people but when you swindle the wrong person, then you're screwed. In this case it was Bill Koch. Bernie Madoff was scamming people for years until he screwed over the wrong wealthy person. Someone with influence.
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