Well Don – it seems that Mr. Kapon is not your best friend. But I guess you can live with that. Thanks for your constant fight against fraud. If I had to award a medal you would be one of the first persons to get one.
Great work by both you and Blake. I don’t think Don, you will be invited to the next John Kapon Sunday lunch.
Glad to see it withdrawn, but the questions about that consignment and the vendor are still unanswered. Given the lack of transparency, and paraphrasing the article by Blake, you have to be a fool to buy from this auction.
Don may be the lunch. Be wary of the noodle soup dumplings. ![[snort.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/b/bdc3944606213c4dca6c1169cf0a166c8bc4f8c9.gif "snort.gif"){kind=small}
Hey Don,
Check out this guy’s cellar. kinaadams@msn.com's User Profile - CellarTracker
The person is active, they were just in CT two days ago.
here’s a list of wines they have purchased from the store “Rudy Kurniawan”
here’s a fun report, by producer by vintage from the store Rudy Kurniawan
it’s like the motherload of fake wines
Good thing they stocked up on some old Ponsot Clos St. Denis! ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
This seems like somebody’s idea of a joke, but may be worth a notification to Eric Levine.
Looks like they made their cellar private.
I knew that was going to happen if it was real so I downloaded it to pdf.
It’s actually a tragic story. Eric pinged me.
That is a legit cellar and that person was a victim of Rudy. There are more than 1,200 bottles.
Oh my
![[pwn.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/3/3d5d493eaefe29f8a37971ea1ffbb65a4e2b21aa.gif "pwn"){kind=small}
Another Bill Koch?
Bill Koch didn’t own that much fake wine.
It’s been requested by the parties involved that I delete the cellar list. They were involved with the FBI so people are aware of the bottles.
I am honoring their request.
I hope this wasn’t how they found out at least… I do find it strange, by the way, that cellar inventory isn’t private by default on CellarTracker. That’s rather personal information that can be tied back to an individual with associated $$$ values.
WARNING – ROYAL WINE MERCHANTS HAS RESUMED SELLING OLD AND RARE WINES, INCLUDING SOME APPARENTLY FROM HARDY RODENSTOCK, IN VIOLATION OF A FEDERAL INJUNCTION
Royal Wine Merchants, a New York City wine merchant, and its owner Jeffrey Sokolin, were sued in October of 2011 by Bill Koch for conspiring with Hardy Rodenstock between 1993 and 2009 to import and distribute in US commerce at least 2,067 bottles of counterfeit wine. As a result of that lawsuit, on April 3, 2014 Royal Wine Merchants and Jeff Sokolin were permanently enjoined by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida from selling any bottles of wine from vintages older than 1976 or any wines with a price (per 750ml) greater than $2,500.
For at least the last three months, and perhaps longer, Royal Wine Merchants and Jeffrey Sokolin have been engaged in willfully violating the Federal injunction on a massive scale, selling very old and rare wines (believed in at least some cases to originate from Hardy Rodenstock) at high prices – up to $35,000 for an alleged magnum of 1865 Lafite Rothschild or an alleged 6 liter bottle of 1900 Chateau Leoville Poyferre. As of Monday June 8, 2020, Royal Wine Merchants was selling 146 different wines from vintages ranging from 1865 to 1975 and 80 wines with prices in excess of $2,500 per bottle – in direct violation of the Federal court’s injunction. Moreover, it appears that Royal Wine Merchants resumed selling some of the same alleged counterfeit wines from Hardy Rodenstock which resulted in the injunction being issued in 2014. (Hardy Rodenstock died in Germany on May 19, 2018.)
The bottles in question have been offered for sale by Royal since at least March of 2020 according to the historical price records on Wine Searcher, but precisely when these wines were first offered remains unclear. (Wine Searcher’s records make clear that the same bottles were not offered by Royal Wine Merchants as of 1, 2, 3 or 4 years ago.) On Tuesday June 9, Wine Searcher pulled Royal’s website off their on-line price database after being shown evidence of the injunction violation. The following day Royal pulled the 146 pre-1975 wines from its website. However, Royal has continued selling bottles priced at more than $2,500 per 750 ml on their website in violation of the injunction. At the present there are 15 wines offered by Royal which are priced at more than $2,500 per 750 ml in violation of the injunction, including 1978 Leroy Musigny ($5,500), 1978 Leroy Grands Échézeaux ($3,000), 1982 Chateau Lafite Rothschild 3-Liter ($12,000), 1982 Chateau Lafleur ($4,500) and 1985 Roumier Musigny ($9,500).
As reported in this thread many years ago, in October of 2011 Bill Koch filed a lawsuit against Royal Wine Merchants and its owner Jeffrey Sokolin. The lawsuit was filed in Federal District Court in in the Southern District of Florida, where Bill Koch resides. Koch asserted claims for fraud, conspiracy (with Hardy Rodenstock) to defraud, aiding and abetting fraud (by Hardy Rodenstock), negligent misrepresentation, a violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, and a series of claims under the Federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (commonly known as “RICO”). These claims were based on 35 counterfeit bottles of wine that Bill Koch purchased for $606,000 in 2005 from Zachys Wine Auctions, Acker Wine Auctions and Tribeca Wine Merchants. Koch alleged that the wines in question were imported and sold by Royal and its principals as part of an agreement and conspiracy with Hardy Rodenstock to import and distribute counterfeit wines in the United States. While Mr. Koch did not buy any of the bottles directly from Royal, his claim was that Royal was legally responsible for the counterfeits by virtue of having knowingly placed Rodenstock’s counterfeit wines into the stream of US commerce containing fraudulent labels purportedly identifying the wine within. Koch alleged that all of the counterfeit wines he purchased were counterfeit Rodenstock wines which had been purchased and imported by Royal and then resold to either retail customers, such as Eric Greenberg, or to other retailers. As readers may recall from previous articles about the Koch v. Greenberg litigation, Eric Greenberg also had accused Royal in 2003 of selling him thousands of counterfeit bottles allegedly originating from Rodenstock. Greenberg subsequently settled with Royal Wine Merchants, returning some of allegedly counterfeit bottles but retaining many others. Some of the bottles retained by Greenberg were subsequently sold to Bill Koch via auction and were the subject of findings of intentional fraud by Eric Greenberg in the Koch v. Greenberg lawsuit.
Royal Wine Merchants filed multiple motions in an attempt to dismiss the Koch v. Royal Wine Merchants litigation, including a motion challenging Koch’s right to sue Royal since Koch had not purchased the wines directly from Royal. The court ruled that Koch’s theory of the case was a legally valid one, explaining as follows:
Plaintiff [Koch] argues that Royal, as Rodenstock’s co-conspirator, is responsible for the false statements embodied on the labels of the wines and that Plaintiff relied upon those false statements when purchasing them. In addressing intentional misrepresentations, the Restatement (Second) of Torts states that “[o]ne who embodies a fraudulent misrepresentation in an article of commerce … is subject to liability for pecuniary loss caused to another who deals with him or with a third person regarding the article … in justifiable reliance upon the truth of the representation.” RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS § 532 (1977); > see also > > Sempione v. Provident Bank of Md.> , 75 F.3d 951, 963 (4th Cir.1996). The Restatement goes on to cite as a specific example “when merchandise is placed on the market in containers with misleading labels or in a form that misrepresents its basic character.” > Id. > § 532 comment c. This approach is more straightforward because Royal’s intent that others should rely on its misrepresentations is presumed under this rule and because there is no question Plaintiff received and reasonably relied on the misrepresentations embodied in the labels. In addition, regardless of whether an auction house might have disclaimed any endorsement of the authenticity of the wines or its repetition of the content of the labels in its catalogues, an auction house disclaimer of its own representations of authenticity would not shield Royal’s false statements embodied in the labels.
Royal and Sokolin later filed a motion for summary judgment, which the court denied. As previously discussed in this thread, in response to the motion for summary judgment Koch presented evidence to the court that between 1998 and 2009 Royal imported at least 2,067 bottles of counterfeit wine from Hardy Rodenstock, most of which were in magnums or larger bottles. https://www.wineberserkers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1419508#p1419508 Koch also presented evidence that all of the bottles which were the subject of Koch’s complaint had been originally purchased from Royal Wine Merchants. Koch further presented evidence to the court that despite receiving three subpoenas from Koch beginning in 2007, Royal willfully destroyed all of its business records in 2010, including four file cabinets and 10-20 boxes of records, and all of its transactional files with Rodenstock. Then in response to discovery requests from Koch, Royal lied and stated that all of its records were destroyed in Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
In April of 2014, shortly before the trial was to start, the parties agreed to the entry of a permanent injunction against Royal Wine Merchants and Jeff Sokolin. See https://www.wineberserkers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1430185#p1430185 The permanent injunction entered on April 3, 2014 provides in pertinent part that:
Neither Royal Wine Merchants, Ltd. nor Jeffrey Sokolin will ever, directly or indirectly, sell, cause to be sold, offer for sale, consign, or distribute “Certain Fine and Rare Wine,” meaning any bottle, magnum, imperial, or other format of wine that (1) is or purports to be of a 1975 or earlier vintage, or (2) is priced for sale (a) above $2,500 for any bottle, (b) above $5,000 for any magnum, (c) above $10,000 for any double-magnum, or (d) above a proportionate price limit for any format larger than double-magnum (the “Stipulated Injunction”).
This injunction remains in effect today. The injunction unequivocally prohibits Royal Wine Merchants from selling any wine which purports to be from a vintage prior to 1976 and also prohibits Royal from selling any bottle of wine with a price above $2,500 per 750 ml.
As noted above, notwithstanding the permanent injunction, sometime between three and eleven months ago, Royal Wine Merchants resumed selling very old and rare wine, apparently including some of the same bottles that Bill Koch and Eric Greenberg claimed were Rodenstock-produced counterfeits. This includes, for example, a magnum of 1865 Lafite Rothschild, one of the bottles that was purchased by Eric Greenberg and then returned as a claimed Rodenstock counterfeit. See the attached copy of the first two pages of the Royal inventory as of June 8, 2020 sorted by ‘most expensive first.’ (Click on the images below to enlarge them).
The wines offered also included 1900 Chateau Mouton Rothschild, another bottle as to which Koch presented evidence had been imported by Royal from Hardy Rodenstock. See the photos below. The wines offered by Royal include, by my count, 12 other allegedly counterfeit/suspected counterfeit wines which Eric Greenberg purchased from Royal in the same vintages and in the same size formats, and another 9 wines purchased by Greenberg in the same vintages but in differently sized formats.
As of Monday June 8, 2020, the Royal Wine Merchants website listed for sale a total of 146 different wines from vintages ranging from 1865 to 1975 and 80 wines with prices in excess of $2,500. Here’s a list of some of the more notable older wines that were offered for sale by Royal Wine Merchants in violation of the Federal injunction:
Lafite Rothschild 1865 (mag), 1914, 1925, 1947, 1952
Mouton Rothschild 1874, 1893, 1900, 1934, 1949 (mag)
Cheval Blanc 1928, 1945, 1947, 1949 (mag), 1961 (750 and mag), 1966
Latour 1926, 1928 (mag), 1952, 1955 (750 and mag), 1959 (mag), 1960, 1961
Petrus 1947, 1950, 1961, 1970
Haut Brion 1937, 1955 (mag), 1959 (750 and mag), 1961, 1967
La Mission Haut Brion 1970 (5 liter)
Lafleur 1947, 1950
Latour a Pomerol 1961
L’Evangile 1959 (mag), 1975
Trotanoy 1947 (mag), 1961
Vieux Chateau Certan 1945 (mag), 1964
Le Gay 1947 (mag), 1950 (mag)
1900 Chateau Leoville Poyferre 6 Liter
1923 DRC Romanée Conti (Vandermuelen bottling)
1945 and 1947 Vogue Musigny VV (Drouhin bottling)
1947 Liger-Belair La Romanée
1949 Vogue Musigny VV
1961 Jaboulet Hermitage La Chapelle
1978 Leroy Musigny
1978 Leroy Grands Échézeaux
1978 Guigal Cote Rotie La Mouline
1982 Chateau Lafleur
1982 Chateau Lafite Rothschild 3 Liter
1985 Roumier Musigny
1989 Ramonet Montrachet
While the Royal website included photos of only a few of the bottles being offered for sale, some were quickly recognizable as fakes, such as the 1900 Chateau Mouton Rothschild (a wine that Royal had imported from Hardy Rodenstock) shown below.
Left – 1900 Mouton from Royal Wine Merchants website | Middle: Label detail of alleged 1900 Mouton from Royal | Right – Label detail from original 1901 Mouton label from the chateau (Sotheby’s Jan 2015)
Putting aside the long more modern-era capsule on the Royal bottle, the numerals on the date on the 1900 Mouton from Royal are completely different from the font set used by Mouton at that time. The label on the right is from the Sotheby’s auction of wines direct from Mouton Rothschild held in January of 2015 and is an original label applied by the chateau.
So, once again, it is Buyer beware!
(Note: Jeffrey Sokolin, the owner of Royal Wine Merchants, is not affiliated with Sokolin.com, a wine merchant located in Bridgehampton, New York.)
The mind boggles. What is going on at these places? Sunk cost appears to be no option.
Seeing several of these same bottles, lying about its Waterside apartment complex store in 1997, was appalling and amusing.
Just in case you might have thought that the counterfeit wines being offered by Royal Wine Merchants might be limited to the mid to late 19th century and early 20th century wines for which Hardy Rodenstock became famous, that’s clearly not true here. Here is a blatantly counterfeit 1982 Chateau Lafleur offered today on Royal’s website – versus authentic bottles from other sources. Chateau Lafleur was one of Hardy Rodenstock’s favorite wines to counterfeit. (The same was true of Rudy Kurniawan).
Left to Right – 1982 Lafleur from Royal Wine Merchants | bottle from Sotheby’s Auction 3/18/2020 | bottle from Wally’s, a Los Angeles retail store | bottle from K&L Wines, San Francisco
The bottles from Royal Wine Merchants are clearly counterfeit because:
- -The font on the date is incorrect
-The font on Ch. Lafleur is clearly incorrect. Note particularly the loop on the “C” and the capital “L”
-The font on the word “Pomerol” is clearly incorrect. Note particularly the “P” and the “r”
-The font and spacing on “Mise en Bouteilles au Chateau” is different and spaced differently
-Proprietaires is not bold, but should be
-The font on “Appellation Pomerol Contolée” is too small and not bold
-The printer marks on lower left and right of the label are missing
-The capsule is slightly too long for the vintage and appears not to be the correct shade of red
The 1982 Chateau Lafleur (rated 100 by Robert Parker) is selling for $4,500 on Royal’s website. Would you have been fooled? Assuming you were interested in buying some, would you have done the research to figure this out before buying? The tools are there and can be readily found.
I thought the labels were typically color copied; how do those font discrepancies come up?
The counterfeiters usually use a combination of both techniques. They photocopy and scan to create templates and print other parts. Both Rudy Kurniawan and Hardy Rodenstock had their labels printed. Most counterfeiters do.
Why would the fonts be off then? Some parts are drawn by hand?