Can wine fraudster reasonably whine that his sentence was not reduced given wealth of victims?
A collector was sentenced to 10 years in prison in New York Thursday for making bogus vintage wine in his California kitchen, and selling it for millions of dollars. In sentencing Rudy Kurniawan, 37, Manhattan U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman said he wanted to send a message to others who might tamper with what people eat and drink. “The public at large needs to know our food and drinks are safe — and not some potentially unsafe homemade witch’s brew,” Berman said as he announced the prison term for Kurniawan. He also ordered him to forfeit $20 million and pay $28.4 million in restitution.
Kurniawan, an Indonesian citizen of Chinese descent, lowered his head as the judge explained the sentence and described Kurniawan’s quest as a “bold, grandiose, unscrupulous but destined-to-fail con.” Assistant U.S. Attorney Stanley Okula described Kurniawan as the “kingpin of counterfeiters,” a man who turned his Arcadia home into a laboratory where he poured wine into what appeared to be vintage bottles before attaching elegant fake labels and selling them for tens of millions of dollars.
“He did it to line his own pockets,” Okula told Berman, who concluded that Kurniawan had caused losses close to $30 million, primarily to seven victims. One of them was William Koch, a billionaire yachtsman, entrepreneur and wine investor. Koch testified at Kurniawan’s December trial, when Kurniawan was convicted of mail and wire fraud.
Before he was sentenced, Kurniawan twice apologized, saying “I’m really sorry” and expressing a desire to take care of his mother, who lives in California after receiving asylum….
His lawyer, Jerome H. Mooney, asked for leniency, saying his client got swept up in the thrill of mixing with California’s wealthiest people. “He was insecure, very insecure,” Mooney said. “He wanted to be them. He wanted to be part of it.”
Mooney said Kurniawan used some of his family’s fortune to buy $40 million of wine, eventually selling $36 million of it before he realized he could develop a business in which he created mixtures that tasted like the world’s greatest wines. He said Kurniawan’s victims were wealthy and aware that counterfeit wines were a frequent occurrence in the marketplace. “Nobody died. Nobody lost their savings. Nobody lost their job,” he said. The lawyer said the 2 1/2 years Kurniawan has served in prison was enough penalty, since he had lost everything and been branded a cheat.
Okula called the defense lawyer’s comments “quite shocking,” especially when he suggested that Kurniawan should get lenient treatment because he ripped off rich people rather than the poor. “Fraud is fraud,” he said.
Kurniawan was a connoisseur of counterfeiting who mastered label making, cork stamping, bottle waxing and recorking to create fake bottles of wine. Federal prosecutors said Kurniawan turned his California home into a wine factory. Restaurants sent him empty wine bottles, then he mixed together cheap wine and rebottled it as vintage wine. He also borrowed money against his collection of fake wines and owes a New York bank several million dollars….
For example, Kurniawan phonied up two bottles of 1934 Romanee-Conti and sold them for $24,000. A fake double-magnum of 1947 Chateau Petrus was auctioned for $30,000. “He made blends,” Downey said. “He was like a mad scientist.” But he made mistakes that raised eyebrows in the world of fine wine. Kurniawan put up for auction bottles of Clos Saint-Denis from the 1940s and 1950s even though the winery didn’t start producing that appellation until the 1980s.