Vintage Fraud: FBI Tells Of Rare Wine Dealer's Counterfeit Scheme

The FBI web site offers a piece on a counterfeit wine scheme.

The same old wine in a brand new bottle” is a phrase that aptly describes how fraudsters deceive the public in ever-changing ways. It applies perfectly to Rudy Kurniawan’s profitable and long-running counterfeiting scam—except that Kurniawan was putting new wine in old bottles.

Earlier this month, a New York federal judge sentenced Kurniawan to a 10-year prison term for his elaborate counterfeiting scheme in which he mixed newer, cheaper wines together and poured them into old bottles with forged labels.

When FBI agents executed a search warrant at Kurniawan’s California home in 2012, they found wine-making materials everywhere in plain sight. “Essentially, the entire house was a fake wine-making laboratory,” said Special Agent Adam Roeser, who helped investigate the case out of our New York Division.

“There were old bottles soaking in the sink. There was fresh wax dripping off bottles in another room,” Roeser said. “There were piles and piles of corks, and on the kitchen counter there were 30 to 50 open bottles with a funnel and re-corker next to them. We found fake labels going back to 1899. He could make any label going back to the end of the 1800s.”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2014/september/rare-wine-dealer-sentenced-in-counterfeiting-scheme