Sour Grapes Page #5

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This is the 2003 US Department of Justice

removal proceedings for Rudy.

He was living in the United States

with a warrant out for his arrest.

Are you going...

Have you done any travelling lately?

No.

-To the wine countries?

-No.

He did.

At that point in time,

his student visa had run

and if he leaves the country,

he'll never get back in.

You're not a big traveller?

You don't like travelling?

I like travelling. I love travelling.

Like putting a sugar addict

in a candy store.

No, I love travelling. I love travelling.

One of the letters to Homeland Security

had the name of the business

that Rudy and his brothers used

to obtain visas to the United States.

We took that letter

and went to this location,

Jalan Gajah Mada plaza.

It's a series of small shops in Jakarta.

One is like a hardware store.

It's like a hardware store.

I have been insisting on emails

and he said,

"Okay, well, I didn't find out yet,

but I promise I will give you that."

A month and a half later

he gave me a name.

"I found out I bought the wines in Jakarta

and it has been sold by a Mr Pak Hendra."

This is the only information he gave me.

I flew to Los Angeles

and I invited him to dinner.

Again, very quickly I ask him,

"Now, Rudy, face to face, eyes into eyes,

tell me the truth.

"Who is this Mr Pak Hendra?"

He's a great guy.

Great... He has a great palate,

been drinking for the last 20, 30 years.

And he took his cell phone and he wrote

two numbers in Jakarta, so I was happy.

Then we had nice dinner.

Great food, great wine, great people,

great ambiance.

Perfect. Can't ask for more.

The next day I tried to call

the two numbers.

One was a fax machine

and the other had no answer at all.

We had heard Rudy had just met

a French vintner

and gave him two phone numbers

and the name of an individual

who was his source.

I immediately had our

former CIA officer run them.

The first number came back to an airline,

Lion Air,

the largest airline of Indonesia.

Not a big wine collector.

And the second number came back

to a strip mall, Jalan Gajah Mada,

and I said...

We knocked on every door,

none of the people in the locations

had ever heard of

Rudy Kurniawan or his father.

Everything with this fellow

just kept coming up fake.

Have you heard about this big wine fraud?

That someone faked wine from these vines?

No.

Someone counterfeited bottles

of Clos de la Roche...

...and then sold them for $20,000.

When I came back to Europe

from this dinner,

it was time to focus on my harvest,

and, you know, I'm a winemaker.

Okay, I don't look like a winemaker,

but I am.

I started to investigate again

at the end of the harvest.

Then I decided to go to Asia, Hong Kong,

Singapore and Taipei.

I wanted to know who is Pak Hendra.

And this one is a roll.

A cheese roll that kind of looks

like a spring roll.

On top we will use a

fresh rosebud for decoration.

When you serve the sauce,

please use the spoon.

You have to put it in the middle

of the plate with the meat.

And let the sauce flow nicely.

I go very often to Asia

and I know very well Asian people

and I have to tell you that

the wealthy people from Jakarta

are coming to Singapore and Taipei

to have fun.

So, I knew a lot of these people

from Jakarta and I would ask,

"Do you know a Mr Pak Hendra?"

Finally I found out that "Pak" means "Mr"

and "Hendra" is like "Smith."

So, this is the most used name

in Indonesia.

So, I would ask, "Do you know a very rich

family importing beer

"that would have a son in California

that would love wine?"

Nobody knew about a family like that.

So, who is Rudy?

No, not at all, he bought them

at a high price.

But he often sells them for a lower price,

the idiot.

He's a good friend then?

I love him!

He didn't talk so much about his wealth,

but he didn't have to

because it was obvious.

I chose this wine tonight

because I have a lot of it.

I wanted to taste it again.

I met his mother, who is a wonderful lady,

and I met his brother.

And your brother, you know,

in the last two months he's been here

eight, 10 times alone.

He doesn't want to go back.

He was very business-like, very nice.

But Rudy was very outgoing

and just the opposite.

I've got to cut down a little bit

on drinking and eating like this

every week.

I spent three Christmases, Christmas Eves

with he and his mother.

She was very old,

she did not speak English

and he was clearly taking care of her.

-We always exchange.

-We always exchange.

Dar seemed very much like the big brother

who was running the business back in Asia

and giving Rudy an allowance.

From my point of view,

he looked up to his brother

and his brother could say,

"Hey, if you screw up,

then I can cut you off."

That's the perception I got.

Dar didn't strike me as a criminal.

What's your favourite Al Pacino movie?

Scarface!

My name is James Wynne.

I was an FBI agent for 30 years,

26 of which were spent investigating cases

involving the theft of art or art fraud.

I've read the Idiot's Book on French Wine.

That's how I started.

My background is financial

and this in a lot of ways

is a financial crimes investigation.

One person described Rudy as having

a never-ending reservoir of needs.

He ran like $16 million

through his American Express account.

Rudy had a number of very nice cars.

An Italian sports car, a Mercedes, SUV.

He had purchased a mansion

in Bel-Air, California.

He was buying contemporary art,

he had a Damien Hirst, he had some Warhol.

All of these trappings

go into creating Rudy.

He was like the Gen X Great Gatsby.

You put me in big trouble, man,

I'm on diet.

The persona established by Rudy

was that he was a trust-fund baby,

very wealthy, sent to the US

to care for his mother.

Was earning an allowance from his brother

who was running the family companies.

I was unable to establish

any of that as being true.

Based on my review

of years of bank records,

I see no evidence whatsoever,

that he was receiving trust-fund proceeds

from his brother.

I always said that, we always said that.

The right wine, the right food.

Let's toast, let's toast.

What emerged for me was

how desperate Rudy was for money.

He's putting people off,

putting people off.

He has a deadline,

he's supposed to pay someone

and he's procrastinating

because he doesn't have the money.

It's almost like a shell game,

he's borrowing money from here

to pay over there.

All the activity involves

wine transactions

and/or loans and advances he was receiving

from clients of one of

the auction companies.

Do you see wine as a good investment?

It's a great investment,

I mean, historically it's been

one of the best investments,

on par with gold and...

Acker, like a lot of auction companies,

offer advances in anticipation of sales.

The beautiful thing about wine

is that people actually drink it,

so there's less bottles every day

or every week

of some of the world's greatest wines.

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