RUDY KURNIAWAN & GLOBAL WINE AUCTION FRAUD THREAD (MERGED)

WINE TALK
41

I just said it above, homeboy is still hanging out in LA. I just saw him on day after Christmas with an entourage of young peeps (and some older peeps for good measure :wink:). He still is part owner of Wine Hotel.

42

Is Paul Wasserman still flying wingman for Rudy?
If not, any informatioon of Paul’s whereabouts?

43

Don,

I apologize in advance, I only know you from your posts on wine boards and your white burgundy wiki…but I’m curious why do you think that you could “demand that Spectrum and Vanquish halt the sale of Mr. Kurniawan’s wines”??? Why do you think they’d even respond to you at all-let alone in writing??-they would have no upside to do so.

I don’t know enough about Rudy’s history, I do recall the Acker situation. I also recall reading that Acker had been lending/providing financing to Rudy for some time so I have no idea what the legal judgement related to. I do recall thinking that any auction house that provides someone with credit can get themselves into a compromised or seemingly compromised position rather easily.

Question for you-If Bill Koch was to consign wines via a representative would you “demand” that the sale be halted? Obviously we know that Koch has bought numerous counterfeit wines but in all likelihood the % of counterfeit wines in Koch’s collection are tiny.

That said I would think that anyone consigning a number of the wines shown in the catalog would be able to produce some documentation or history of how they acquired the wines.

thanks for your thoughts

-paul

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44

Paul is no longer working at Wine Hotel. He’s back in France right now, for pleasure and, I believe, to help his mother with the business as Peter has taken a hiatus to work on a film project on Burgundy.

45

Surely you jest. This is a large an influential board, and their reputation is being called into question.

PS I have no horse in this race.

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46

Settle down, everyone! After all, as long as they are really good fakes, is anyone really hurt?

newhere pileon neener

47

I think it’s a good idea to replace those ancient low alcohol wines with 17% Zins. I would have to drink less to get wasted.

48

I’ve always said that the best wine of my life was '47 Lafleur out of Magnum. Only problem was that Rudy was pouring it, so it was probably '70 Trotanoy!

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49

Paul:

The short answer to your question is no, because Mr. Koch has no history of selling wines that turned out to be fakes. I think you really answered your own question when you said that you “don’t know enough about Rudy’s history.” There is a well-documented history here of Rudy repeatedly selling or attempting to sell bottles which have turned out to be either counterfeit or strongly suspected to be counterfeit. it is one thing for an auction house to deal with an individual who has no history of selling wines that turn out to be counterfeit and quite another for an auction house to knowingly elect to deal with someone with Mr. Kurniawan with a history of having sold millions of dollars worth of wine which other people concluded were counterfeit or likely counterfeit without disclosing that fact to the public.

To the best of my knowledge, no one has reason to believe that Bill Koch is attempting to unload his prior purchases of counterfeit bottles into the market. To the contrary, he is suing the people that he believes were responsible for selling him the counterfeit wines in the first place, spending far money than he has hopes of realistically recovering in the litigation, and those wines will obviously be exhibits in the litigation he is pursuing.

But if there was a history of Mr Koch unloading his purchases of wines he believed to be counterfeit on others, then yes, I’d be yelling every bit as loud about Bill Koch.

50

Agreed, but let me offer the Poster another scenario.

An auction house is placed on notice that it may be consigning fraudulent items. I do not know Don, but let’s assume he is a Burgundy expert of some repute. This Burgundy expert provides some concrete examples why various bottles in the auction literature appear to be faked. He places the auction house on notice. The auction proceeds. A multi-millionaire buys the whole lot, and later finds out many are fake. He sues the auction house for fraud. Document discovery, deposition and investigation into the auction house’s due diligence takes places. A smart litigator finds this website (what litigator doesn’t use the web these days?) contacts Don, gets copies of the communications, asks if the auction house ever responded, etc. They then depose the key auction house representatives to dig into the due diligence, and in particular, what they did upon receiving the email/letter from the Burgundy expert. If they did nothing when they were placed on notice of potential fraud, likely the case is closed. I see these scenarios all the time in litigation. Good on Don for what he has done.

My 2 pennies.

Robert

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51

Robert,

That is a very tight scenario, and given the fact as stated, the auction house would be at fault. However, they have contested one major assertion, and stated categorically that Rudy did not consign the wines; and in the phone conversation they have not found any relationship between Rudy and the actual consignor; how hard they looked would be an interesting question.



There has been very little time between Don’s first e mail, and Spectrum categorically being able to say that the wines did not come from Rudy. Hard to prove a negative, but had I been Jason Boland, I would probably have said that Rudy was not the consignor, but we would look into that particular consignment, and get back to you in a timely manner.

52

Except that an employee there admited already that these were Rudy wines.

I’m no legal expert but if I was on a jury and presented this information and there were no other major revelations then I would not look favorably on the auction house.

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53

[rofl.gif] Perhaps the “vanquished” are in hiding somewhere, Stuart. [bye.gif]

Hank [cheers.gif]

54

I did not get that with any certainty;

"were officially consigned through an agent – one Antonio Castanos – who is known to have acted on Mr. Kurniawan’s behalf in selling wines to third parties ", which is what Don found out from the phone call to the Spectrum employee. It is possible, but very unlikely, that Castanos was acting for somebody else. In later posts, Don writes that there were lots other than Rudy’s in the sale, so it is implied that Spectrum admitted that the wine came from Rudy, but Spectrum have denied the wines came from him.
Not sure they have come out and said came from him; in fact they have said just the opposite.

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55

This is the relevant text to me:

I pointed out that technically > Antonio Castanos had consigned the wines, but on behalf of Rudy, and that his own employee, who is a “Consignment Director” that I’ve known for many years> , had confirmed that information to me. Mr. Boland insisted that the information reported to me was “privileged and confidential” and that the employee who had confirmed that Mr. Kurniawan had consigned wines for the auction through Spectrum was not authorized to tell me this information

Seems pretty clear cut unless the employee was simply wrong but I find it hard to believe (actually impossible to believe) someone whose job it is to management consignments would make such a major and conicidental mistake.

Actually, he has not said that these were not from Rudy, only that Rudy was not the actual consigner. If they were not from Rudy one would think the president of the company would be unambiguous about it.

I think that In civil cases the burden of proof is a preponderance of evidence not “without a reasonble doubt”. Of course I may not all the details that would come out in a trial but it seems fishy!

If I were the president I would come here and make an unambiguous statement to leave no doubt.

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56

Be aware that under British libel law, the burden of proof is on the person making the defamatory statements that they were true. The target of the unflattering remarks does not not have to proof they were false. And British courts have been very receptive to suits based on statements by foreign publications and web sites that could be read in the U.K.

57

Knowing full well that spectrum is trying to establish themselves in the hong kong/asian market…these wines will just end up being mixed with soda or lemonade…so they’ll never know. My comments are sophmoric at best, but if this is spectrums strategy…do the asian consumers have enough experience/expertise to taste or inspect a fraud?

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58

I think Don is safe assuming he heard the employee correctly. Plus it is an american company.

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59

Yeah, I tried to warn of that in post 10 of this thread, but to no avail. (I am not a lawyer, so what do I know?) It makes for interesting reading, anyway.

60

It doesn’t matter that it’s a U.S. company. It would be easy for it or the British auction house to sue claiming their reputations were injured in Britain. It would be Don’s word against the company’s and Don would have the burden of proving both that the alleged admission re Rudy was in fact made and that it was true. (I don’t know if the U.K. courts could get
personal jurisdiction over people posting here. That’s a separate issue.)

Remember, Random House withdrew The Billionaire’s Vinegar from Britain when Michael Broadbent sued and issued an apology even though it was hard to see how Broadbent could have won on the facts.

British libel law is scary and hard for Americans to grasp because we are lucky enough to have had the benefit of 50 years of Supreme Court rulings that create a lot more latitude for public discussion. In the process, we’ve become more thick skinned. The British are much more sensitive about their reputations in the face of accusations, and those who feel aggrieved – whether justified or not – have a powerful bludgeon in the form of the law.

Don’s post laid out the information carefully and responsibly but, like Brady, I think it’s worth reminding everyone here that there are risks to bad-mouthing British people on-line, even on an American-based board.

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