Scammer 2.0 - Rudy Kurniawan The Wine Forger

the 8th of August 2014 in New York and enology meth collapses the court sentenced one of the most flamboyant characters in the wine world to ten years imprisonment it was a trial of the United States versus Rudy Kearney a 137 who became the largest wine forger of all time he was gifted with extraordinary abilities with a far more developed palette than the average person for years he put this gift to use for an international scam he managed to sell an astronomical amount of bottles of the best vintages on the market all recreated by himself a fraud that amounted to tens of millions of dollars it took the obstinacy of all the world's leading experts such as Michael Egan to successfully bring down the genius swindler I think really carrion had a great eye for detail and a great understanding of you know what constituted an old bottle so I think it was quite a genius Rudy carnea won a very mysterious man with multiple identities whose past we know nothing about out of nowhere with 9 different passports in hand he became a master at the game of deception we're going to tell you the story of this chameleon who infiltrated the wine world at a spectacular speed and eluded the American Justice Department for almost a decade he was manipulative because he knew how to develop that persona that would give him credibility in the very fine wine world which would then allow him to sell extraordinarily large quantities of wine and people would trust him because of it a complete mystery still exists around Rudy Konya one nothing is known about his past nothing is known about his personality one man spent several years of his life hunting him down nothing predestined this seemingly dandy ish winemaker to become a shock detective this French wine producer found himself at the center of one of the biggest scandals ever seen in the history of wine because Rudy Carillo on made the mistake of copying one of his rarest vintages to flush him out LaRon ponceau tracked him around the world I think they've understood it was a good imitation the labels were made from the same paper using the same ink the logo was very well reproduced which was complicated it was a substantial job we've attempted to unravel the Kearney Awan mystery to lift the veil on this enigmatic personality we've managed to meet some key witnesses to this romantic story who have never before spoken about it on television the New York Attorney who followed the case the leading expert who has analyzed hundreds of fake bottles all agreed to tell us the details of their investigation douglas basel a was the first collector to have expressed doubts over the authenticity of Kearny Oh on certified wines Jerome Mooney the forges lawyer will be his spokesman all of them crossed paths with this wine expert behind this exterior hit a man who was full of contradictions and seeking recognition an investigation into an incredible story which will take us all over the world dive into the secret world of Rudy Kearney Erwin [Music] [Music] the first known traces of Rudy Kearney Awan date back to early 2000 under the Californian Sun in Woodland Hills an outlying district of Los Angeles an hour's drive from the city center [Music] it was here in this renowned wine shop but the incredible story of the young Asian seemed to start he was 24 years old when he pushed open the stalls door a bottle of wine in hand the young Rudy carnea one shy headed for reception he hadn't gone to buy some wine but to sell his bottle Kyle would become very close to the young man he agreed to go back to the path of Rudy Kearney Awan for the first time on camera showed up one day and he was a very young kid probably in his young 20s his first request to me was that he had bought a good deal of 1998 California Cabernet is from another merchant and he came to find out that that was not a good vintage and wanted to sell them to me Kyle didn't imagine at the time he was dealing with someone who would become the greatest wine forger in history beneath his naive exterior the young Rudy seemed at this point to simply want to deepen his knowledge on Kron Cru his visits to the shop increased he asked the seller many questions so Kyle and his colleague Paul Wasserman one of California's most renowned wine experts became friends with this very curious young man Rudy wanted to know everything about French wines their tastes their grape varieties and their vinification it was good timing the two sellers are encyclopedic Paul Wasserman the great burgundy chaser it was part of our team and we we started to encourage him to venture out into Burgundy I think Rudy was a person looking for something in life that could be important to him and something that he could excel at something that he was better at than other people and he began to see hi Rudy Kearney Awan can be somebody important in particular circles Rudy progressed very quickly in just six months his palate had developed spectacularly the student proved gifted his senses were over developed and his ability to remember far higher than average he'd taste smell savor and take thence to memorize the aromas calles vintages and Ron crew a godsend he would later exploit he had an exceptional memory he knew the Bordeaux and burgundy appellations by heart while there are over 100 Appalachians on a small strip of land there's actually like a scientific word for this group of people called super tasters who actually have a higher you know density of taste buds than most people I'm not sure what the exact percentages but it's a small percentage and then the percentage of those who happen to gravitate towards wine as their way to express that talent you know is even even smaller Rudy Kenya one did not only improve his knowledge of wine he also questioned his two mentors on the great French vintages market in search of the nuggets still not recognized in the United States at this point it was the chrome crew from Bordeaux which will in in the early 2000s only a handful of Americans bet on Burgundy this was the case of Douglas Bosley one of the first renowned collectors who wanted to make his compatriots discover great Burgundy wines he is a key witness in our story because he would play an active role in the rise and fall of Korea on gradually as I started tasting Burgundy's and got more and more excited about them and the quality and how interesting they were and some of the complexities of trying to figure burgundy out I came more and more I mean I when I started buying wines for myself probably the large majority of my seller was Bordeaux and and today it's mostly Burgundy and and a lot of other people in the US have been making that same transition in 2001 the young 25 year old Rudy understood that this new Burgundy trend could be very lucrative so he decided to specialize in wine from the region to do this he had to meet as many fans as possible of these beverages which were still rare in the United States he asked his friend Kyle Smith to introduce him to his very exclusive tasting club in great restaurants like this one Algren oh one of Los Angeles best Italian restaurants a dozen connoisseurs would need thanks to Kyle Smith our young prodigy timidly took his first steps into the very close world of the city's finest palates we formed a burgundy tasting group in Los Angeles that comprised 12 of the top tasters in the city it's called the burg horse and we invited him to be part of that so that's when he his first real initiation into Burgundy began from the start Rudi was a sensation even if he had no inner logical training in a game of blind tasting this self-taught man came dangerously close to perfection he realized he could make something of his genius was an idea starting to form in his mind in any case Rudi was an obsessive perfectionist so to continue to develop his abilities he was coming to the little shop in Woodland Hills daily and starting to build up a lovely wine cellar these bottles were stored in his home in Arcadia a quiet residential neighborhood in the north of Los Angeles the rather inconspicuous young man shared his modest house with his mother a place he seemed to want to preserve even with his new knowledge Kyle is the only one who was ever invited there for a drink and he was surprised by the rather strange attitude of the young man that day we were having dinner out in his neighborhood which is not a it's a Chinese neighborhood and after dinner he invited me back to the house and when we went to the front door I'll never forget the he stops me and says dude this how he speaks hey dude when you come into the house don't freak out when you see what whines I have in there because my mom thinks they're all $20 or less so I thought that was kind of interesting so though we went in his house I mean we had a couple bottles of wine I had no reason to suspect he was manufacturing wines out of his house at this point yet it was here barely hidden that Rudy started to develop his plans for the biggest scam ever seen in the wine world if Kyle couldn't find anything suspicious that day he realized one thing but these bottles did not cost $20 as Rudy's seemed to be making his mother believe his average bottle Christ was probably four or five hundred dollars a bottle so he probably bought half a million dollars with us for the first year in late 2001 Rudy had formed a collection worth a small fortune rather strange for a young unemployed 25 year old man so where was the money he was spending so lavishly coming from the young man remained vague he was very discreet about his private life at a huge mystery hung over the source of his money he intentionally kept it dark originally his story to me at least was that his family was involved in liquor distribution in Hong Kong and Indonesia and that's that's where the money came from he seemed to have family money that was coming in millions of dollars and he said to people basically I'm a trust fund baby meaning this money comes in my family sort of kicked me out they told me to come here and as long as I stay here and in California I will have a million dollars a month to spend but in reality his life was far more obscure Rudy wasn't clear when it came to revealing elements of his childhood or his past at times he presented himself as an Indonesian annuitant who'd come to the United States to study and other time it was to become a golfer or because he was a political exile versions which changed regularly a shaky or even confused history but strangely nobody worried about it his lawyer mr. Jerome Mooney exceptionally agreed to go back to the case he is still defending the thesis of a spoiled child who could buy himself anything the family had money and the family had sent money to him so the first four or five million that he spent on buying wine was money that came from the family I suspect from what I've seen that that he was being provided with money more like maybe a million or two a year which is still a lot of money this young 25 year old man and a lot of money and quickly openly and publicly and the place he spent most of it was in auctions where the most expensive nectars could be found so he soon became indispensable I already have three hundred and fifty Bravo the best vintages being rare in their very essence are very speculative products prices can quickly saw especially with very wealthy Khanna sirs auctions can reach up to tens of thousands of dollars in this environment Rudy quickly stood out he had a killer technique to intimidate his opponents raising this little panel the paddle to continually outbid like in this photo in 2001 the witnesses to these kind of sales remember a compelling young man who never went unnoticed [Music] so you would just raise his paddle and and not make it clear he was not going to put it down till he won the the the wine so if anybody raised the bid he automatically had the next bid up he was not yet known in the wine community but that's when he started to be known because everyone was just kind of like who's this guy nobody imagined at that time that he would become one of the biggest forgers in history in 2002 are just twenty six boutique ernia one became a key figure in the environment everyone was talking about him nothing seemed to stop him in his frantic race he was spending lavishly on his collection of fine wines which was already presented as California's greatest he even called his seller magic in just two years he had made his name in wine and that was just the beginning he would make the acquaintance of a certain john cape on a young New York auctioneer barely older than him this meeting would change everything John ka-plunk came out of nowhere John cape on started writing emails about tastings he would have with Rudy and all the magnificent wines that Rudy would pour so it was it was a symbiotic relationship between the two of them that was the beginning of Rudy's thinking yes not only can i buy wines not only can I offer wines to two groups of sophisticated collectors but I can be a big player in the auction market for wine thanks to John cape on Rudy understood that he could turn his passion into a huge business he wanted to become the biggest dealer in history but for that he would need to leave Los Angeles the largest auction house is breaking all the records on the west coast or in Manhattan [Music] in the winter of 2003 Rudy was 27 when he flew to New York upon his arrival he headed to the Upper East Side the richest area of the city it was here in one of Manhattan's most exclusive streets that he met John cape on the man was the head of a renowned auction house acha Merrill Condit one of the oldest US institutions [Music] helped by his new partner John cape on Rudi aspired to attack the New York wine market a booming market mall is and this was at the time in the 2000s where money was flowing in New York where collectors were buying bottles for insane prices in five years between 2002 and 2007 the rare wine market tripled going from ninety million dollars to three hundred million dollars there was a lot of money at this time in the most prestigious places on the tables of New York's luxurious restaurants great wines were a must and tasting clubs formed one after the other horn our tutor one of the city's most respected sommelier s soul groups of young billionaires walking through his restaurant and spending excessively by buying the world's finest bottles if they'd have lunches or dinners here that would quickly escalate meaning meaning that they could bring some wines like that and then after the wine helping also at their passion and their enthusiasm they'd start to water here why not taste that and that and that and that it can reach huge proportions I regularly had tables of four with bills of 70,000 $80,000 Rudy wanted to target this golden youth of Manhattan to sell bottles from his famous magic seller in 2004 thanks to John Capon he managed to integrate probably the most wealthy group of tasters in the city they were 12 wealthy people in their 30s who call themselves the 12 Angry Men each member adopted a superhero name such as Big Boy or The Punisher every week they competed to max out their gold cards by joining the club Rudy also chose himself a pseudonym and became dr. Conte in reference to his favorite wine the Roman a Conte their most expensive in the world in these limitless parties the Grand Cru were paraded Petrus Romanus Conti Chateau Latour vataj Lafitte they were barely uncooked before they were already replaced Doug Bosley the great collector of burgundy wine was invited to these Dionysian parties several times and this odd game still leaves a bitter taste in his mouth but there were these huge parties and people would open jeroboams of romanée-conti and they'd pour them around and then it would be you know the sort of thing where you had to dump out your glass of latasha because the romanée-conti was coming and it's ridiculous after maybe two experiences I stopped going it was like a cockfight you know you put the way you put one chicken up against another in a fight and a ring they would put one old bottle up against another in a ring the members of the group loved bragging indecently about their excess on the internet they brandished the bottles like trophies which they posted on their blogs the provocative Rudi also didn't hesitate to show off on the net and not just anywhere on the site of the famous wine critic Robert Parker considered as the most influential in the world on the 24th of October 2004 he recounted his exploits for intensive days of wine tasting with his group I just had a wonderful time in New York with some great friends the great John Kay pond was slumped on the sofa eyes closed but his hands continued to hold on to a 1962 wine a little awkwardly that's why he's the great John Kay pond and if he copied the habits of his new millionaire friends it was to blend into their environment Rudi was fascinated by these young rich thirtysomethings so to become like them he gradually transformed like a chameleon he adopted the same gestures imitated their mannerisms copied their dress codes and slowly changed his appearance greevey was driving in Lamborghinis and you know wearing white leather jackets I mean it's kind of a flashy quiet but flashy character and he was buying suits he was buying jewelry he was fine whatever he bought but he lived the good life well it's something about the chameleon changing its colors you know he he instinctively knew which psychological buttons to push in people to make them his friends he gradually slipped into the skin of this wealthy character and easily integrated himself into this flashy environment Rudi the lonely young man increasingly gained confidence in Fessenden one way of getting rid of shyness is to take on the guise of someone else making yourself rich beautiful etc and this new character would become more and more arrogant in one year he got the upper hand on the group and even became the leader of the 12 Angry Men in 2005 the young 29 year old collector fascinated many and became the icon of this generation of high rollers his technique to retain power to bring increasingly rare bottles to the dinners it's interesting the 12 Angry Men Rudi was sort of the leader he was the leader really and they all admired him and it was again oh here comes Rudy Rudy's coming to this dinner you know what's really gonna bring what what incredible old wine that none of us have ever seen before will he bring someone who said you're looking for the best vintages but I know how we can have them he's someone you want to trust because it's not simply confidence that he shows it's the fact that you want to trust in them because they render a service and because they are the people realizing our dreams Eddie's new health but what does it take to make people dream behind the bidding up of ever more prestigious bottles there was certainly an explanation it was at this time Rudy developed a rather surprising obsession which should have set off a warning after each tasting he asked for the empty bottles to be returned to him Rudy would say to the sommelier the wine director I want those bottles back those empty bottles please FedEx them to my home in Arcadia I want you to be sure to wash them clean but not to cause any damage to them he was so insistent that he would go as far as getting angry at a restaurant for example which had sent out poorly packaged and broken bottles this was something that would set him off but the bottles were broken Kyle Smith would be a witness to this strange behavior after a dinner he took a bottle of romanée-conti away with him Kyle would then discover a side a rudy which he didn't know for a simple empty bottle his friend went into a rage very intriguing he poured this at a tasting after the tasting I that he hosted and he provided this bottle I took the bottle and he found out that I took the bottle and left me threatening phone calls to get the bottle back if Rudy reacted like this it's because these empty bottles were for him of key importance these corpses of bottles actually played a decisive role in the constitution of his famous magic cellar not so magical after all because although Rudy was showing off in New York he continued to live in Los Angeles and in his home in Arcadia he created a craft workshop in his kitchen to constantly bring out these astounding bottles Michael Egan is the world's best fraud expert no detail escapes him he would be the one who managed to prove the guilt of the forger by removing his counterfeiting techniques one by one he spoke of highly sophisticated methods well the most basic the easiest way of committing a fraud it's just a substitute one wine with another that means you have a bottle of wine and you just put a another label on it and sell it as such but secure anyone really went to the nth degree in creating some very reasonable looking fakes so how did he create these fine wines from scratch his modus operandi was seemingly very simple after retrieving his empty bottles he filled them with a combination of several wines using a funnel he bought gallons of wine he dosed readjusted and tasted his beverages it was thanks to his incredible taste and olfactory memory that he could reproduce the taste of the world's biggest wines he has perhaps one of the best palates that the world had seen in many many years he could figure out how to find that bottles with other things with other wines and bring them together to recreate the taste of the wine that doesn't exist in like a three-star chef he had his own recipes for each of the bottles he wanted to recreate for a romanée-conti for example his guilty pleasure he knew that by mixing several Californian wines he could manage to find the same taste as that of his favorite nectar we also saw other wines from the mountain note the Napa Valley Pinot Noir which had forties stroke fifties DRC leading to the fact that he could actually use this wine in creating a wine from the domaine de demain de la romanée-conti for the 1940s or 50s would you say where I tasted his wines when you taste blindly like that all alone it's virtually impossible to think that wasn't it because the color matched the aged the taste was correct it was very difficult and that's why he was doing this for so long and was never caught after he loaded the contents into his container the label came first using photocopying and editing software Rudy the perfectionist managed to recreate the labels of the oldest wines he actually treated the labels to make them look older and we saw a lot of you know labels and he was experimenting on in his house either by putting in the oven or putting liquids on them just to get that right degree of antiquity last crucial step the cork thanks to a blade corkscrew Rudy emptied and refilled bottles without ever piercing the cork all that remained was to put wax around it for the illusion to be perfect in this document ceased after Rudy Kearney Irwin's arrest the names of the rarest Kron crew are listed a kind of to-do list an inventory of the vintages to be reproduced but perhaps she should have been more careful over the months the forger perfected and tested his creations on his acolytes then in late 2005 he was finally ready to launch his global scam [Music] in 2006 Rudy was a young 30 year old he'd been collecting bottles for six years now he would make a big scam selling a part of his collection thanks to John Capon Rudy organized to anthological sales which he called the cellar you to sales at six-month intervals with all the elites of the wine world present the most influential critics and the biggest collectors ready to put down their money to catch a glimpse of Korea Wong's magical seller I was at both auctions and it was a bit of a sensation at the time there were a lot of wines well it was this emerging class of collectors that I've talked about people who were very interested in in buying the greatest wines in the world and and serving them various parties and advanced wines provided by Rudy Kenya ones and which came out from what was known at the time as the magic cellar this cellar on which Rudy Kenya one found bottles people haven't heard of in years romanée-conti 45 47 62 shut up at first 1920 etcetera people flocked to these exceptional sales because the collector would put more than 12,000 bottles up for sale each one rarer than the next to exceptional to be true some details would tip off the ear of the finest cornices domineer Conti which is one of the largest estates in Burgundy is a great burgundy vintage in 1945 they produce 600 bottles the vast majority of these bottles were consumed in the years that followed 1945 a few dozen bottles were able to survive Oh bird of a lane the estate manager said that in his life he'd never seen a bottle of romanée-conti 45 while Rudy Kearney Irwin had 2 3 4 5 10 bottles so there was a problem despite these real incongruities the plan worked perfectly to sales and carny Awan and john cape on the auctioneer over 35 million dollars a historic record in the wine world except the vast majority of these wines were fake and a few months later the first doubts became established especially at the opening of some bottles they allowed a beverage to be discovered that was very far from living up to expectations and one of my friends was a fairly large buyer at these auctions and a group of us had decided that we should have a tasting of the Roumieh wines that he'd bought out of eleven wines we tasted six were clearly fake how many fake wines might be coming through here but even if in the wine world some people were starting to have real doubts honey one continued his unscrupulous business in April 2008 another auction offered several Lots from Rudy's cellar he then made a big mistake that aroused the suspicions of Douglas Bosley the expert on burgundy wine an event that would mark the starting point of the forges fall I saw some old ponceau wines and I came to some old very old clothes Anthony's from the 1960s and 1950s and my first thought was wow I've never seen those before and I was intrigued and then I thought wait a minute never seen that before and when did they start making it to get to the bottom of it on the 23rd of April 2008 he decided to join his friend LaRon Paul so 9,000 kilometers from home in the middle of Burgundy in the heart of the Gold Coast vineyards the owner of this famous beverage was surprised by an email he received Douglas Bosley asked me how long have you been producing clothes and Ernie this question called out to me I didn't answer him directly but I asked him why he was asking me that question and he told me because in two days in New York there's an auction in which there are some clothes underneath 45 47 49 50 nines and so on my heart skipped a beat because we'd only started producing this particular Apple as CEO in 1982 LaRon Paul so had never before heard of Rudy Kearney on his reputation or his famous magic seller nevertheless he was certain that something was amiss in New York so he called the sales representative and happened upon John cape on the auctioneer he answered me very dismissively all the bottles have been authenticated by experts so I asked who are these experts if you could give me their names he answered me I am the main one I asked him if he knew who he was talking to at that point I was how to put this short with him on the phone he reluctantly told me that he agreed to withdraw the wines from the sale however it was a yes that seemed to be a diplomatic yes to me oh well since I told him yes he'll calm down and then we'll talk some more about it that concerned me the next day I made the decision to head to New York the rump also jumped on the first plane just two days after he was alerted he landed in New York on the 25th of April 2008 he arrived just in time to attend the auction which had just started there he discovered the catalog in which Rudy Kearney awan was offering 100 bottles from domain also all of it was estimated at more than a million dollars among them the winemaker assessed that only one was authentic the rest were just copies of his finest wines in other words fakes when somebody told Kapaun that I was there because we'd never seen each other so he didn't know who I was he was forced to say at the point when the poor so wines came up for sale that at the request of the vineyard with the agreement of the owner all these wines would be withdrawn from the sale so to understand he asked to meet the owner of these wines the appointment was set up for lunch the next day around the table neuron pond so Douglas Basel a John Capon and Rudy Kearney one [Music] very quickly even before or during the question that was hanging on my lips came out and I asked the two men sitting in front of me where did these bottles come from where did you buy these bottles and like one man they shoved their noses into their plates and mumbled a few words saying we don't know we buy so many wines Konya one especially was saying I buy so much wine that I can't recall I'll have to check my records and this and that and in that second I knew he was someone who wanted to hide something he'd been described to me as someone cheerful very urban civil who was always comfortable with everyone but that day he was very withdrawn and reserved a bit haughty alerted by Rudy Kearney one suspicious attitude the Rampal say was now determined to find what was hiding behind this strange collector he started by searching the Los Angeles coast and very soon discovered that the forger was ordering labels from a commercial printer in large quantities he realized that he was on the right track I learned that he was very fond of antique paper so I tried to understand how I found an antique paper supplier he also had paper delivered directly from Japan things like that the paper used to print the labels of course I did it quite naively as a kind of Don Quixote on the windmill road I was looking for information I was trying to understand who he was and what he was doing I walked almost all over the world because there were links that took me to Asia one to Europe so I tried to follow these links for two years two years during which the winemaker led his investigation worldwide alone and spent hours looking for the slightest detail and the slightest mistake that could incriminate the scammer but it was impossible to pin him down meanwhile Rudy Kearney awan felt the change coming since the sale interrupted by LaRon pond so his reputation was tarnished and he no longer managed to sell any bottles under his identity he took on an assumed name on this document recovered from an auction Rudy Kearney Wan poses as Juan Antonio castanos to try and sell the bottles what he didn't know was that the FBI was starting to get interested in him Jayson Hernandez was the New York prosecutor for the case alongside the FBI he began a lengthy investigation in this case we retrieved bank records to see where the flow of money that Rudy was getting was coming from and going to we subpoenaed records to see what wines he was purchasing Rudy was doing things that were highly highly suspicious in 2010 to expand their investigation the prosecutor and the FBI called LaRon Paul so alone in his corner the Frenchman was the one who'd collected the most information on Rudy who mimic their investigations had begun to overlap with mine but I had probably 80% more elements than they did which were the elements used to arrest Rudy Kearney alone they pulled their research together for two more years every week the investigation advanced a little and the evidence accumulated with a few big mistakes some estates in Burgundy were then asked to cross-check information live dose the evidence which they happened upon was of a vintage that Rudy Kenya one had printed at a time when it wasn't produced there it was so obvious that it was a fake because my grandfather had bought the vineyard of an estate which was the doormen Bellagio in Bonn ma in 1952 akhirnya one had already made 1923 1928 2945 labels saying formerly doorman below J which was impossible since the purchase and thus the production of the wine only took place from the 52 vintage at the beginning of 2012 the FBI had gathered enough evidence to bring down Rudy Kearney Irwin they were about to arrest the biggest counterfeiter in history he was buying supplies that could be used to make counterfeit wine like wax and we found emails where he would inquire about the company that sells the wax he would even email the company and ask them is the wax that you sell like brittle old French wax so once we were able to piece together many of these pieces the picture became clear he was not just buying wine but he was manufacturing these wines Rudy was finding it increasingly difficult to sell his bottles in the circuit tongs were wagging and the auctions were increasing their vigilance Clanny wands various identities were no longer enough Kyle Smith realized that his friend could get caught so in March 2012 he tried to prevent it I did contact really a day or two before the FBI raided him asking him if there's anything I should know because have you been talking to the FBI and hey I don't want to falsely incriminate you but from what I know or from what I feel something's not right here and he told me that if he was concerned about anything that he would be on the next flight home did to Asia and that factored into his denials bail Rudy Kearney Awan didn't even realize that his scam had now collapsed two days later the prosecutor ordered the search of his home in Los Angeles I told them careful you're gonna arrest him be careful don't let him go with just a caution he has nine passports if you let him leave under such pressure he'll jump on the first plane with a different passport and you'll lose him the 8th of March 2012 at dawn the Asian quarter of Arcadia was still sleeping peacefully at 6:00 in the morning several cars surrounded the forges house the FBI banged on the door and long minutes passed before anything happened they were pounding on the door for quite a long time and they were not getting a response but just before they were gonna take action to and actually knock down the door the door was opened by Rudy corneal on and from what I understand I think that he had probably been sleeping he was upstairs and had to come down to open the door the house search began and what the police discovered was worthy of a crime film in the entrance from floor to ceiling piles have stacked up wine crates the kitchen had been transformed into a counterfeiting laboratory and the windows were covered to conceal the activity counterfeiting utensils were placed on the edge of the sink as the FBI moved around the house the evidence mounted we even found some bottles in the kitchen sink that had been filled with water so that the labels could soak off there were bottles in almost every room of the house and they were in different stages of being counterfeited some didn't have labels some only had wax and really in every turn of the house we found corks and we found more and more evidence that this was very very clearly the spot where Renea wand made his counterfeit wine in the drawers 19000 labels representing the 27 best wines in the world this cupboard was completely filled with spray adhesive to stick them thousands of stamps bearing the logos of the biggest domains hundreds and hundreds of corks of Kron crew and 200 bottles stacked on the shelves the ground in every corner of the house that day nudie Konya one remained silent really I think was surprised to be arrested I don't think he had any idea that the FBI was going to arrest him but he he didn't confess and he really didn't say anything to the FBI the morning of the rest he mostly chose to remain silent which is his right yet the evidence was overwhelming kanya Wan was immediately arrested and sent to a detention center in Brooklyn New York and Michael Egan was urgently called to appraise all the bottles and the thousands of labels found in the house the expert has exceptionally agreed to reveal some pieces of evidence found in a counterfeiters home this is a fake label of Clos de la Roche the labels created with a sticky back which you just peel off and put onto the bottle like that if there was no doubt for this type of self-adhesive label he had to do a Herculean task for the thousands of others the fraud was so well executed that hours of research were spent looking for the slightest detail to prove the imitation I have yeah a digital microscope I've already got a picture of a real Chateau Cheval Blanc label here which you can see the gold quite clearly and on the Kearny one it looks pretty good but it's not as clear or crisp when you have it on the magnification and the real label this is a fake Chateau Petrus magnum size the this paper we know all comes from a printer in Indonesia in the name of the company is Concorde and here you can just see that the C and the O is very very hard to see but you can just see the C or the O here and this company only began printing in 1982 or producing paper sorry in 1982 so there's no way a company created in 1982 could create an an original château pétrus label for weeks the expert checked over 200 bottles signed by Kearney Awan each batch of labels was carefully scrutinized to dissemble the counterfeiting techniques one by one late 2013 the file was finally ready the case is the United States versus Rudy Kearney awan on the 9th of December 2013 the Fortis trial began in New York after over 20 months behind bars Jani one looks nothing like the high-powered and irreproachable man he was when he was arrested before his face had changed he was now calm and silent we can agree on Chris he lost a lot of weight in prison Rudy kami one had this chubby face with plump cheeks but he was really amazing he was wearing big black glasses which were eating his face and most importantly he didn't seem to realize the magnitude of the charge dozens of witnesses took the stand the forged bottles were displayed one by one and the charges fell progressively but the accused showed no signs of remorse nor our eyes met of course and he smiled at me and gave me a nod and a sign of complicity but already from the benches at the back of the room I'd had a feeling which was confirmed to me at that point that he was in complete denial of reality he was very relaxed he was scribbling things he seemed quite detached from what was happening from time to time he'd cast a glance around without really worrying about anything whatsoever the inability to recognize that he had been exposed until the end until the moment the axe falls this is actually denial Kearney Wan was denying reality almost unsurprisingly he pleaded not guilty but with the clear evidence found at his home it was hard for his lawyers to form a strong defense they charged him with having sold counterfeit wines through auction and in private sale to a number of different individuals and then they charged him with having made misrepresentations in obtaining a three million dollar loan from a finance company well he said not guilty I mean that's the way our system works so he said I'm not guilty and then it became the government's obligation to prove it and from there we started the fight avocado Rudy Kenya ones lawyers had great difficulty in finding a line of defense Rudy pleaded not guilty so they had to provide proof that he wasn't guilty 19000 labels fake labels of Grand Cru were found in his home his lawyer Jerome Mooney explained that these labels had been used to line the walls of his new home because he was such a wine lover that he wanted a tapestry made from thousands of grand cru labels obviously made the judges the the audience the lawyers laughs there really was no defense the scammer could have been sentenced to 40 years in prison it was eventually 10 on the 8th of August 2013 the verdict finally fell and just as the verdict was announced I kept my eyes on him because I really wanted to see his reaction I was right behind me I thought I could feel his shoulders fall a little at that point as if he realized that's it I'm doomed he wanted to play to the end and he'd obviously lost a complete mystery remains around Rudy Kearney or what we have no idea what his past is what is personality in this story Rudy Kearney one fell alone did he have any accomplices or did he act without anyone's help if everyone has their own idea on the matter only Rudy Kearney Awan knows the truth as for the bottles created by the forger it's impossible to know how many lie dormant in the cellars of the biggest collectors and are still circulating in auctions you

Channel: Show Me the World

Views: 357,980

Keywords: scammer, wine, Rudy Kurniawan, criminal 2.0, burgundy, scam, wine collector, french wine, burgandy, vintage wine, fraud, fraudster, Romanée-Conti, counterfeiting, counterfeit, Clos St. Denis, Grand Cru, counterfeiter, fake, Château Lafleur, wine cellar, documentary, documentaries, forger, forgery

Id: dTvwF5tySLg

Length: 54min 8sec (3248 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 22 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

liat sour grapes de, bagus. ada hub ke eddy tansil jg.

[u/alphadeeto]

Lol I heard it first on a podcast. Was it bkr?

[u/gacode2]

Kalau dia engga serakah ngopy vintage yang agak rare, mungkin dia masih beroperasional.