Sour Grapes Page #6

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So, it naturally, kind of, puts pressure

on pricing automatically.

This was a way to beat out

other auction companies

that might be competing

for Rudy's business.

At one point, you know,

Rudy was obligated to Acker

for almost $10 million.

Sir, raise your right hand, please.

Do you promise to tell the truth,

the whole truth

and nothing but the truth,

so help you God?

-I do.

-I do.

Thank you.

Can you please state your name

for the record?

Rudy Kurniawan.

Let me cover some ground rules

just so that you know.

-Have you been deposed before?

-No.

So, it's important that you speak audibly.

Okay, sorry about that.

Because the court reporter's trying

to write down what you're saying,

so he can't write down nods of the head,

he needs words.

-Do you understand that?

-Yes.

Mr Kurniawan, who inspected these bottles?

Well, we basically have...

We basically drank a lot of these bottles

with a lot of different people,

including critics, experts,

auction houses and whatnot.

We tried to press Rudy

for the source of his wine.

We were looking to build our case

and file against him.

John doesn't want to take it,

it could be fake, it could be counterfeit,

but he's not sure, I'm not sure.

I don't believe so.

So, I agreed to take them back,

which is the right thing to do.

He wasn't defensive,

he was guarded but, you know, friendly.

He's a "hail fellow, well met"

kind of fellow.

-Do you speak French?

-No.

-Do you write French?

-No.

Just merci.

Never definitive, nothing concrete.

You know what, that guy, told me nothing.

He owes everybody money,

and John Kapon is no longer,

at least publicly, selling his wine.

And that's when I started to see,

you know,

lists fly across the country

from different brokers and whatnot

because Rudy was trying to find other ways

to sell, and he did.

This is another fake one.

After the Ponsot auction in 2008

nobody wanted to deal with Rudy's wines,

everybody knew there was a problem.

But in 2009, Christie's, of all people,

sold wine for Rudy in a series of auctions

for him under his own name.

You know the auction houses had gone

from having high reputations

to having apparently sold tens of millions

of dollars' worth of counterfeit wines.

In 2012, on top of all this,

I got a hold

of a Spectrum and Vanquish catalogue.

They had brand-new labels,

they had the pink wax.

We all looked at them and all said,

"Yeah, absolutely, this is Rudy's wine."

Spectrum wouldn't withdraw them and they

wouldn't disclose that it was from Rudy.

At that point,

I went and published a warning.

Boy, did this go viral.

There were a number of different

labelling issues

that were basically called

to our attention.

One of them involved a strip label

for an importer, Percy Fox,

that had a misspelling of his address.

Sackvilee street with two "E"'s

and it should have been

with an "L" and an "E".

FBI agents came here

and were talking pretty seriously.

I could tell by their line of questioning

that they were zeroing in on him,

they were serious about it.

I said,

"You're barking up the wrong tree."

Rudy could never do

what you think he has done

because he just doesn't have

the capacity to do it.

And after they left,

I went to the phone and I called him.

As a friend, I thought I should warn him.

I remember his very words.

I said, "The FBI were just here, Rudy,

and I think they're really seriously...

"I can tell,

"the last time they came,

they were just asking.

"This time, there's something serious

going on,

"and I just want to let you know."

And he said, "Don't worry, dude,

I have everything under control."

Those were his very words.

"Don't worry, dude,

I have everything under control."

I don't think there was any reason

to think he knew we were coming.

We meet on the morning of the eighth,

somewhere around 5:00.

The plan was to approach the house,

set up a perimeter,

knock and announce

and place him under arrest.

We pulled up,

agents went to their designated positions,

and they proceeded to knock and announce,

and knock and announce,

and knock and announce,

and yell, and yell,

and there was no answer.

The team leader said, "Get the ram",

and I thought,

"Oh, no, this is going to be a long day".

And then the door opened,

and it was Rudy,

and he looked like

he had just gotten out of bed.

When you walked in the house,

the first thing you saw

was wine everywhere

in the living room

in a huge wine refrigerator.

I was stunned,

I mean, I could've been knocked over

with a feather

when I saw what was in the kitchen.

In the kitchen sink

there were two or three bottles soaking.

The labels were being

soaked off the bottles.

There were two or three bottles

sitting next to the kitchen sink,

waiting to be labelled.

There was a cork extraction device,

there was a re-corking device.

There was in effect a mixing station

of somewhere around 20 bottles

sitting in the kitchen,

all sorts of California wines.

And there were notations.

Change the year, the vintage,

change the size.

Remove a serial number.

We found bottles that were unlabelled

that had handwritten notations,

like formulas.

There were labels and labels and labels,

thousands of labels,

banded like US currency.

The thermostat was set at like 63 degrees,

and in this million-dollar house,

they use space heaters

in the two bedrooms where they slept.

In a store room there were racks

and racks of wine,

and on the treadmill there were 18 waiting

to be labelled.

There was a stencil, there were old

wooden crates throughout the house,

there were boxes with real labels,

like a library.

There was everything you'd ever need

to make fake wine.

As an FBI agent,

if I had listed the 10 things

that I would like to have obtained

from a search,

this was 10 times 10 times 10 times 10

times 10 to infinity.

I don't know

what all that stuff was doing there.

It's very odd, right?

I can't picture...

They didn't find printing presses,

they didn't find... They just found stuff.

They found no stuff to make wax caps,

nothing that...

no means of production, just stuff.

So, what's that stuff doing there?

Is he looking at it,

is he giving it to someone?

Is someone giving it to him to look at?

I don't know.

I could not believe.

I couldn't believe it.

That can't be Rudy.

Being a very close friend of his,

I got calls.

And then I saw the pictures.

He was the last...

He is the last person I would ever suspect

of being able to do

any kind of intensive arts and crafts.

-I left you a message, just so you know.

-No, I didn't get it.

-The number that I have for you, I called.

-It's still there, but I changed...

I just changed to a new phone you see.

He is ADD.

He doesn't have the attention span.

Life is good, life is good.

Life is good, man.

It's a time-consuming,

laborious thing to do and he could...

He could never do that.

I just could not see him doing it,

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