Sour Grapes Page #8

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It was pretty evident to us

that this was kind of a family affair.

-Are you independently wealthy?

-What?

Are you independently wealthy?

No, I'm broke, man.

No, I'm trying...

I scam people and drink their wines.

When we spoke to witnesses

and when we conduct our investigation,

one thing that was pretty consistent was

that no one really knew

the source of his purported wealth

and no one actually knew his background.

His legally registered name

is Rudy Kurniawan,

but he has operated under different names.

He operated under the name Lenywati Tan,

or Lenny Tan,

which is actually his mother's name.

To answer your question, I come from...

I come from a wealthy family,

a good family.

No, that's not what I asked.

The names for Rudy Kurniawan

and his brother Dar Saputra,

those are both the names of famous

Indonesian badminton players.

His father gave him that name

because it is an Indonesian name.

Rudy was of Chinese descent

and there was a period of time when

there was a huge amount of even danger

to people of Chinese descent

that were living in Indonesia.

The family was reasonably well to do

and involved in a number

of business interests

and they've been successful.

They're fairly reserved in terms

of talking much about the family.

I come from a wealthy family,

a good family.

This guy, he's recreating himself.

It's like he was

in the witness protection programme.

It's probably going to take him a while

to really taste the wine,

you know what I mean?

In Indonesia, everybody is given

an identity card

and we were able to pull his passports,

and we knew that his father's name

was Makmur Widjojo

and that his mother was Lenywati Tan

and then we knew he had a brother Dar

and he had a brother Teddy.

Then we were able

to find their Facebook pages.

They weren't hiding

their conspicuous consumption.

Who backed him?

Where did his money come from?

Who created him?

Well, you should introduce the menu.

We started receiving information

through sources

in the banking community

and in the business community in Jakarta

that there was a link

between Lenywati Tan's brothers

being involved in the largest bank heist

in the history of Jakarta.

The Supreme Court hasn't been able

to extradite the bank robber Eddy Tansil.

But there have been

sightings of Eddy in China.

One of them is Eddy Tansil,

who's still a fugitive in China.

Eddy broke out of prison and escaped

after stealing all the proceeds of a bank.

The fugitive misappropriated $565 million

that he obtained through credits

from Bapindo bank.

And the other brother, Hendra Rahardja,

had a bank,

Harapan Santosa, and he walked away

with hundreds of millions of dollars.

He just stole it

and then fled to Australia.

Hendra Rahardja is accused

of Indonesia's biggest corporate fraud,

defrauding $670 million.

This is really painful you know for us,

for all the clients of the banks.

I saved my money for about 30 years.

One of the properties

that Hendra Rahardja

claimed to own was Jalan Gajah Mada.

And I was like,

"The coincidence, is just, you know",

I don't believe in coincidences.

Our governments

and the people of Indonesia

call on all Rahardja's family members

and associates to come clean

and surrender themselves

to account for their grotesque crimes.

Do you have any indication

as to where the money might be?

Is it in bank accounts

or is it in property or...

Well, I don't want to signal

our shots in that regard,

but we do believe

that there are assets overseas.

I'm going to meet somebody at 12:30

in Westwood, so, I could...

I don't know if Rudy was benefitting

from Eddy Tansil

and his mother's family's thievery.

Maybe that's why

the backstory was created

when he came to the United States.

Once this guy was a rock star

in the world of rare expensive wine

and now Rudy Kurniawan is on trial

for fraud here in New York

accused of making millions selling

counterfeit wines to unsuspecting...

I don't want to be away from the trial.

When Rudy will be in front of me,

eyes into eyes,

I want to let him know

that I know what he has done

and it's not a satisfaction

that someone goes to jail.

But this is so important for Burgundy.

If Rudy, at the end of the trial, is free,

I can't believe in anything any more

in life.

Maybe I will become a monk.

I'm worried,

I don't know what will happen.

I am in America, I'm French

and I have to make my testimony

in English.

It makes me a little nervous.

"He turned his home into a wine factory",

said prosecutor Joseph Facciponti

of the defendant

and created what he called

his "magic cellar".

He decided to plead not guilty.

Sometimes, certainly in the area

of financial fraud,

there are defendants who basically

don't want to accept reality.

They choose not to acknowledge it.

When I got into the room

I found him a little slimmer.

He lost weight in prison probably.

It's never something you can like

when you see someone on the ground.

The Sherlock Holmes of French wine.

Laurent Ponsot's crusade

to sniff out the fraudster

who was faking his vintage wines

began about five years ago and ended here

at Manhattan's federal district court

this week.

At a certain point of my testimony,

our eyes, for once, get in touch,

and he smiled to me

and he made me a little sign

with his head and smiled to me.

I found it bizarre,

but in the meantime nice.

The first person ever to be convicted

for selling fake wine in the US

will spend the next 10 years

bottled up in a jail cell.

Fraudster Rudy Kurniawan will also pay

$28.4 million back to victims.

Hi, what's your reaction

to the trial today?

Very surprised, stunned, I think.

We did not expect the judge

to impose a sentence of that length.

Rudy has apologised

to the New York judge saying,

"Wine became my life

and I lost myself in it",

an obsession that will be hard

to pursue from behind bars.

I've had organised crime cases

with dead bodies for less time.

That's the truth.

Dead bodies, less time.

The harm that was actually

done in this case does not justify

the kind of sentence that was handed out.

It just doesn't.

Like he didn't profit from the crime

as much as other people did.

And the people who profited the most

from his crime

are living large and drinking great wine

and they're not in jail and...

Others have suggested

that there are additional people

that should be prosecuted,

but to bring a criminal prosecution,

it's not enough to say

that they were negligent.

You have to prove they intended

to defraud someone by lying to them

or making misrepresentations.

It's kind of like a game of musical chairs

and Rudy was the last one standing

when the music stopped.

It is not the real end of the fakers.

If I go on investigating,

I will find more people doing this,

but I'm going to stop.

I want to focus again on my job

to produce authentic wines.

We're gathered tonight to play

the final note in a symphony...

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