Original subtitles

In this episode of American Greed, Maurice Michael McCann is a convicted

robber who claims he's gone legit.

McCann carried himself as somebody who was legitimate. He had the swagger of a

rap promoter.

McCann offers 30 % returns on investments in his rap concert promotion

He actually said to them, you can stop the bleeding that you're suffering in

market if you invest with me. And investors are forking over their entire

eggs. I liquidated my IRA, and it was the tune of a million dollars.

And later, Mark Anderson holds millions of dollars worth of fine wine in trust

for clients until greed gets the best of him.

He didn't make the connection that at some point there was going to be hell to

pay, that somebody was going to come back and say, where's my wine?

When he's caught, Anderson tries to hide his fraud with fire.

The intensity of fire when we got here was like no other. He was intent on

destroying everything in this building.

A $200 million fire, the biggest loss of wine in U .S. history.

San Francisco, February 28, 1994.

On Ocean Avenue, the driver of an armored car is returning to his truck,

carrying a bag of cash.

A man jumps in front of him, pointing a gun.

Give it up, he says.

But the driver is not about to. As the robber pulls the gun and begins to fire,

the driver returns fire while jumping behind a newspaper rack.

He gets off nine rounds. The robber runs down the block before collapsing.

He's been shot five times.

He survives.

And then he's packed off to prison for six years.

His name is Maurice Michael McCant, and he's well known to law enforcement, says

FBI Special Agent Lance Nixon.

Mr. McCant had a substantial criminal history. He'd been arrested for a number

of bank robberies. Went to prison for quite a while.

When the wounds heal and he's released once again, McCant decides his days as a

street thug are over.

Is he going straight?

No way.

He figures he can steal more money with a pen than with a gun.

I'm assuming that at some point he realized there's less risk and more

be gained from white collar. He's certainly not going to have anybody

at him.

In the outskirts of San Francisco, Bernice Tingle saved enough money to

at age 45.

Her thrift, she says, was instilled by her parents.

Pay yourself.

You know, whatever you get is not what you make. It's what you do with what you

make. If you get a quarter, save a nickel.

Overachiever, I save to die.

Tingle is sitting on roughly $1 million.

An acquaintance who knows she's well off introduces her to Maurice Michael

McCant. who presents himself as the CEO of Billionaire Cat Entertainment.

His core business was introducing and promoting new rappers, which, especially

in my age range, I'm just kind of out of the age range for rapping, but I know

it's a big thing.

Tingle meets McCann in the restaurant of one of San Francisco's grandest hotels.

Under crystal chandeliers, he holds court, soliciting investor money to

his rap concert promotion business.

He was dressed almost like the rappers dressed, you know, with the jewelry and

all this kind of stuff.

The bling bling, the waiters were just falling over him.

Everyone knows me. I'm doing well. I pretty much have the city under tow.

To cement his bona fides, McCann shares articles written about him in rap

industry magazines.

He would actually be centerfold of different artists he was working with.

This man was even working with Don King, supposedly.

To the investor, or potential investor, who sees all this stuff, Mr. McCant

looks like he's the real deal, like he's legitimate.

McCant makes an offer.

Give him a small investment, $16 ,000, and he'll deliver a 25 % return in just

few weeks.

The reason for the short period of time was that there was a concert that had

been advanced, and there was just some funds that were needed just for some

-minute advertisement.

McCann makes good on his promise.

And in Oakland, word about McCann is spreading, especially among a community

wealthy, retired African -American women. People like this woman will call

diva. I've never spoken about this.

And I think it's out of embarrassment and shame.

Like Bernice Tingle, when Vera meets McCann, she is retired and her future

secure. I worked really hard and I managed to retire early because I had

such a good job in saving money, sacrificing.

Vera says when she hears McCann's pitch at the hotel, she's skeptical.

I even questioned him when he said he could give 30 % return.

I said, well, how can you do that? He said, well, I'll be honest with you.

I make over 100%. And I think it's only fair that you get 30 % while it may

sound like a lot to you, but I make a heck of a lot more than that.

But Vera's friends have made money, and she gives it a try, investing about $50

,000.

Several weeks later, McCann's driver brings her back to the hotel.

And all of a sudden, he gives me money in cash.

And I almost fainted the first time. I said, why are you giving me money, cash

money like this?

He said, well, that's what I do. I pay in cash.

He said, count it.

The cold cash eases her skepticism.

Next on American Greed.

McCann moves in for the kill, asking his investors to go all in.

I liquidated my IRA, and it was the tune of a million dollars.

Billionaire.

This is a track produced by a former convict turned music promoter.

Sounding and looking like a music industry player, Maurice Michael McCann

set the hook in his investors, paying them 30 % returns on short -term

investments in his rap concert promotion business.

Now, according to Assistant U .S. Attorney Robin Harris, He's ready to

in. He was a smooth talker, and he seemed to just have a knack of knowing

move his victims to part with money.

Like any predator, he would determine the weakness of an individual, and he

would target that weakness.

They come at you with, I can identify with you, sister.

You're taking care of your mother. I have a mother, too.

At this point, Bernice Tingle has invested less than $100 ,000 with

Her biggest concern is her mother, who is pushing 100 and lives with her. My

mother was here a long time.

And up until the last six months of her life, she was still getting around very

good. But I thought, she's going to be around a long time, and I want a

provision and be able to take care of her and have those funds available.

I was my mother's long -term care plan.

Tingle feels a financial squeeze.

Health care costs are skyrocketing.

while her retirement account is tanking.

It was all timing.

The market was declining.

The latter part of 2007 is when things really started to get bad.

He actually said to them, look, you can stop the bleeding that you're suffering

in the market if you invest with me.

He would mention it all the time. He said, well, you know, how's your

in the market going? Well, not well.

So his pitch would be, hey, look, I've made you a good return on this smaller

investment. Why don't you liquidate your retirement accounts, which are losing

significant money anyway, invest those funds with me, and I'll give you a

significant return on that as well.

It's safer to invest with me than to have it in the stock market.

The pitch works.

Bernice Tingle liquidates her individual retirement account and other savings

with a little more than $1 million and hands the proceeds to McCann.

Investor Vera does the same.

Her IRA is worth about $600 ,000.

She says she immediately feels buyer's remorse.

It was scary because it was like, gee, I think I realize what I've done.

And I even talked to him about it. I said, you know, what if you get hit by a

Mack truck?

Despite her misgivings, things go fine for a while.

Every month, investors are paid a dividend.

based on a 30 % annual return.

And the return that he promised, he gave it to me.

Repeatedly. But the hip -hop impresario seems less attentive than he used to be.

I would ask questions, well, where are these concerts? Because I like to follow

them. Well, some of them are international. I'm not doing a lot of

now. But it was always, when you get into the heat of a conversation as to

are things going in the business, it was always then, I've got to get off the

phone right quick. I'm getting a call from the convalescent hospital.

I'm taking care of my family. I'm doing this. I'm doing that.

Though he holds court in a fancy hotel, McCann lives in this drab rimple.

And those magazine articles, the ones that make him out to be a major industry

player?

They aren't actually articles at all.

What we found through our investigation is most, if not all, the magazines, the

content in them was provided by McCant. So he basically directed what was going

to be written in the magazines, provided the pictures, and paid for it to be

published. And he throws around these names as if he actually has connections

with J .C. and Beyonce and Lil' Tim.

It's relatively easy to get your picture taken with somebody.

famous or somebody who has credibility.

What that doesn't mean is that you have any type of business relationship.

And there are other warning signs.

When Tingle wants to refinance her home, she asks for financial statements from

McCant. When I got the letter, it was faxed to me, and the thing that probably

took all the blood out of my system is when it was faxed to me, and it was

from Kinko.

It gets worse.

Both Bernice and Vera have signed contracts that their entire principal is

returned after two years.

At this point, it's getting about to the time that my contract time is up. So

I'm looking for all my funds back.

And it just wasn't happening.

Instead of money, McCann has nothing but excuses.

In late 2008, he fails to show up at a meeting with Vera, where he's supposed

return some of her money.

Now, this scared the hell out of me.

And I called him. I said, where in the H -E double toothpick are you?

Oh, my goodness, I got hung up.

Could you come back tomorrow night?

The next day, they arranged to meet again.

So when we met, where's my money?

Oh, he said, I didn't know you wanted it now.

Kent was a master storyteller. He had an explanation for everything. And one of

his big stories was that he was.

expecting a $20 million settlement from a lawsuit, and then as soon as the $20

million settlement came in, the victims would get their money back.

I asked him where was the court hearing on that, and he said it was going to be

in Southern California.

And I have a daughter who lives in Southern California. I had her checking

dockets of everything in Southern California.

Nothing came up.

Next on American Greed, if McCann thinks white -collar crime is easier than

robbing armored cars, he hasn't yet suffered the wrath of an angry investor.

I said, stop blowing smoke up my ass. I want my effort money.

And I'd be cussing like a drunken tailor.

In San Francisco, former bank robber Maurice Michael McCann now rips off

old ladies.

Why? Another bank robber, Willie Sutton, may have said it best.

Because that's where the money is.

Mr. McCann, he's a smart guy. He knew that. He knew these people had money,

those were the people that he targeted.

Bernice Tingle receives monthly annuity payments from McCann based on her

investment of more than $1 million.

So for a little over a year, monies were coming in like they were supposed to

and allowing me to sustain.

And then it was cut off, and then I was just left there.

At some point, his bank accounts dried up, and when investors stopped receiving

their money, they realized that they might be in trouble, and that's when

came to the FBI.

A lot of times with white -collar cases, we'll see a sophisticated money trail.

We didn't really see that with this case.

McCann spent almost all of the money. There was virtually nothing left.

He spent it as soon as it came in the door and went out the door, and usually

for himself.

Restaurants, hotel bills, airfare, jewelry.

As the FBI learned the truth about McCann's scheme, investors begin to

McCann's story that he's a changed man.

And you know what I'm convinced of now? Once a criminal, always a criminal.

And going to jail many times, it only allows you to hone your

craft. You only become better at conning.

Bernice Tingle sought big returns from McCann's scheme in part to ensure she

enough money to take care of her elderly mother.

In an ironic twist, investors learned that caring for the elderly is indeed

important to Michael McCann.

And I say another thing.

Your mama is in a nursing home in New Jersey. I hope to hell you ain't using

money to pay her estate.

Oh, no, I would never do that.

We did see amounts of victim money going to fund his mother's nursing home bill.

Unfortunately, those are money that can't be recovered. It's been spent, and

that money's gone.

On March 21, 2011, McCann is arrested.

He agrees to sit down for an interview with Special Agent Nixon.

McCann admits that the image he presented to investors of the successful

promoter is drastically at odds with reality.

We asked him if he had put on any concerts, and he did not tell us of any

he had put on. We saw no money going to anything that would have been a

legitimate concert promotion.

Eventually, the interview was ended, and we took him to jail.

It's curtain.

for the show that never was.

McCann is indicted and charged with four counts of wire fraud.

Over four years, he stole more than $2 million from 15 investors.

The evidence against Mr. McCann was very strong.

He was basically dead to rights and realized that, and he did plead guilty

basically acknowledged every fact in the indictment.

McCann is sentenced to just under four years in prison.

a punishment that his victims feel will never match the pain they've suffered.

Bernice Tingle lost more than $1 million of hard -earned savings.

And then, the cherry on top, when individual retirement accounts are

substantial tax penalties accrue. McCann promised he'd pay that liability.

Of course, he didn't.

And Tinkle gets two tax bills, one from the state of California for $127 ,000

and one from the IRS for $487 ,000.

Tinkle says the bills bring on an anxiety attack that sends her to the

I will probably go to my grave even if I live to be as old as my mother. I will

never be able to meet that tax obligation.

The federal government has forgiven a portion of her tax liability because it

was a theft loss.

The state is not looking at it that way.

So that bill continues to tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

McCann preyed on people and he betrayed their trust.

These people were trusting, hardworking, law -abiding people who trusted McCant,

and he violated that trust, and that's something you can never get back.

Vera lost more than $800 ,000 of savings.

In the wake of her loss, she struggles to control her anger.

Sometimes I feel so angry that I have to pop a baby aspirin because I'm feeling

like I'm going to explode in the neck.

The head.

The chest.

I don't know how to get rid of the pain.

I don't know how.

Up next, one of America's biggest arson cases conceals a record -breaking wine

theft. My first reaction was, wow, that's a big fire.

My second reaction was, that bastard.

Basically started a fire to cover his tracks.

October 12, 2005.

A beautiful Indian summer day in the Bay Area is tarnished by black smoke.

It's pouring out of a warehouse in Vallejo, seen in this local TV news

used by law enforcement in an arson investigation.

Vallejo Fire Chief Douglas Robertson is one of dozens of firefighters en route.

We could not believe what we were seeing.

It looked like a 747 had crashed.

It was just a big, huge, black column of smoke.

Inside the warehouse, some of Napa County's finest wines are stacked floor

ceiling. There are more than 4 million bottles in all.

Now, with temperatures inside the warehouse reaching 2 ,000 degrees,

the vino turns to vapor.

It would melt the shrink wrap that was holding him, and then they'd tip over.

And when one would tip over, it was like a domino effect.

So you could hear just the noise of crashing glass just slamming to the

When the smoke clears...

Conservative estimates of the damage boggle the mind.

At least $200 million worth of wine is destroyed.

Wow. You know, it was, we had almost our entire net worth of that building.

Seven, eight years of blood, sweat, and tears basically put into a bottle and

then destroyed by fire.

Investigators quickly determined the fire was set deliberately.

But who would want to ruin all this wine?

And why?

It had all of the ingredients that you want in a story.

Bill Maher is a Bay Area journalist who writes about the fire.

It had the money, which was sexy, and it had the wine industry, which is

bigger than life around here.

And then it had Mark.

Mark is Mark Anderson.

He's well known in Sausalito, a Marin County town of houseboats and mansions

the hill.

Anderson runs a wine storage facility he calls Sausalito Cellars.

I never saw him be anything but this mellow, fat guy. You know, he was very

easygoing. He looked like kind of an old hippie.

Ron Lucier lives in Sausalito and is a wine collector.

All of these here.

are various sine qua non bottles.

Lucier collects sine qua non, a so -called cult wine that can fetch more

,000 a bottle. This one here is a beautiful label, kind of a cowboy scene

tack room.

It's called Midnight Oil. His labels are just as beautiful as his wine. His wine

is just transcendent.

Today, Lucier has a cellar at home.

But back in 1999, he has a growing collection and nowhere but a cramped

to store it.

That's when he first meets Anderson.

He was kind of promoting himself as a place where you could store the wine. He

would have a website where you could see what wine you had. It was a database.

And he would also pick up and deliver the wine, which was very convenient for

me.

Now that is a beautiful cork.

Keith Ogden is another Sausalito wine collector.

That's going to be good.

It's a very personal thing, and that's one of the things that we had the most

enjoyment with, is you find something that appeals to you.

That's what I like about wine. I like enjoying wine for me with the way I

the way I drink, the way I eat.

Just like Lucier, in the early 2000s, Ogden has a burgeoning collection.

His wine of choice?

California Cabernet.

I didn't start out saying...

I need to have 2 ,000 bottles of wine.

I started out, I've got two cases there in the bottom of my closet. I need a

place to store it.

A friend says Mark Anderson can be trusted with the finest wine collection.

It was around the corner from my house at the time, so it was great. It was

convenient.

Here was a guy who knew wine and seemed to be kind of the man about town. He was

on the Sausalito Parks and Recs Commission.

At first blush, it all looked pretty good.

And it looks good to a lot of wine collectors.

And by 2004, Mark Anderson is storing more than a million dollars worth of

wine for scores of clients.

But in retrospect, there are a few off notes in Mark Anderson's bouquet.

There's the question of where Anderson gets his money.

His business isn't very lucrative. And he lives in this humble apartment

building. Yet he spends lavishly on travel, food.

There's a restaurant in town called Sushi Ron, which is a great sushi

restaurant. And Mark had a plaque on the wall because they'd eaten there about

400 times one year, which was astounding, mainly because the place is

expensive. It's not a cheap place.

I never ran into anybody who said Mark had a tough time covering a tab.

When he went off to Italy, for example, and went to the White Truffle Festival

for a month and then came back and talked about all the amazing truffles he

by the pound, everybody just thought, oh, Mark must, you know, be digging into

his family's money.

But it's not family money Anderson is digging into, as Lucier will later

In addition to his lavish spending, there's another early warning sign.

With Mark.

You could never necessarily be sure that what he was telling you was strictly

truthful. He had told people that he had managed the rock group Iron Butterfly.

Their best -known song was Ennegada De Vida.

When I reached out, I was informed that nobody with the group had ever heard of

Mark. Anderson also claimed to have had a hand in the invention of voicemail.

Invented voicemail? I'd probably wear a T -shirt that said that.

Mark dropped it in casual conversation.

Thank you for calling. Please leave a message.

Anderson's penchant for tall tales lands him in trouble with a local newspaper

where he writes a column under the name Joe Sausalito. As it turned out, he

actually had to stop writing for one of the papers because he turned a column in

that actually wasn't his.

He had literally cribbed the entire column.

Anderson is fired.

Though few people outside the paper take note of the incident, it's the canary

in the wine cave.

Because with Mark Anderson, honesty is harder to come by than a 1945 LaToshe.

He basically was pilfering it, fencing it, and living the high life off the

proceeds.

Next on American Greed, watch your fraud go up in flames. Literally, there was a

river of wine running out of this building. It was three inches deep, just

river of wine.

It's just unbelievable.

Hear about a mysterious stash of unclaimed wine being stored by ATF

AmericanGreed .cnbc .com.

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In Sausalito, California...

Mark Anderson runs a storage facility for collectors of high -end wine.

Client Ron Lucier describes Anderson as an old hippie and admits his cellar

wasn't the most organized.

And you went in and it was just wine cases piled floor to ceiling.

Lucier takes American Greed to the cellar's first location.

And you'd basically come around the corner.

And there was a tiny door. It had, like, no sign on it, even then. And you'd

come through, and inside you'd just find this narrow hallway and then just this

big, dark area full of wine crates. And it was just all mixed together.

Lucier has more than $50 ,000 worth of wine at Sausalito Cellars.

Despite Anderson's unorthodox methods, he trusts Anderson until things start to

change in 2004.

He was not responding to emails.

Keith Ogden is another client.

He was not as available to talk about wine with me, my wine with me, as he had

been in the first year I dealt with him.

There are rumblings around town that clients are asking for their wine and

Anderson can't produce it.

The first evidence I had...

was the rumor around town through some friends that, oh, I hear Mark Anderson's

being accused of stealing wine from his clients.

Well, as one of his clients, I was obviously worried about that.

Marin is an incredibly small place.

It's the old line, bad news rides a fast horse.

I called Mark and I said, Mark, what's the story in the newspaper?

You know, is there any truth to it?

He said, no, no, this guy, he had his wine shipped to me, and it never got

and now he thinks I stole it.

But, you know, the shipment got lost, and I don't know what happened.

I'm starting to get a little nervous. You hear another rumor. You turn back to

it and say, okay, I want my wine delivered.

Several clients come forward, accusing Anderson of stealing more than $1

worth of their wine.

selling it on the open market through auction houses and retailers and keeping

the profits as though the wine were his own.

And at that point, my husband Dan said, we've got to get our wine out of there.

And I said, yeah, you're right, we've got to get our wine out of there.

Ron Lucier, Keith Ogden, and scores of other clients demand their wine back.

What they get is excuse after feeble excuse.

I can't deliver the wine because your garages are a little bit on an angle. I

can't use the truck. I can't get the labor to do it. I would say, Mark, you

know, you find my wine yet? He'd be like, oh, you know, we're still looking

it. Concern has now become red -hot anger.

Clients storm Anderson's office, not with pitchforks but spreadsheets,

lists of every bottle held by Anderson.

We went bottle by bottle.

You know, we actually had his assistant hold the checklist and check off things

as we pulled them out of the cases. And when we get done, there were a few cases

of wine missing, about $5 ,000 retail worth of wine. And at this point, it had

been stored for a while, so it was probably worth more than that. And a lot

it was impossible to get. It included, by the way, all of my sine qua non that

had accumulated because it was the wine that got me into wine.

Keith Ogden learns that Anderson has moved his wine, without his knowledge,

much larger warehouse in Vallejo.

He, too, is missing his best bottle.

When I told Mark there were a lot of wines missing from inventory, and, oh,

the way, it happened to be some of the high -value wines, he had no response.

He basically was the dog ate my homework all over again.

The Sausalito police investigate the theft and identify 11 victims.

and $1 .2 million of wine stolen.

The motive? Nothing but greed, according to Assistant U .S. Attorney Stephen

Lapham. I think Mr. Anderson got used to kind of the high life.

He dined out quite a bit, and when he dined out, he always liked to have a

wine, which typically would be one from his own stock, and by his own stock, I

mean the customer's stock.

I think...

He just couldn't afford that lifestyle on his own, and he needed to embezzle

wine to pay for that.

Lapham says that Anderson first sold clients' wine through two retailers in

San Francisco area.

When locals started to get hip to his scheme, he started fencing the wine

through a Chicago -area wine auction house.

He used two aliases, according to Lapham.

He started selling wine at the Chicago Wine Company in about 2004.

and typically those were sold under the names Peter Martin or this Throckmorton

character. I'm certain that he was shopping in his own place saying, how

this wine worth? How much is this vintage worth? Can I successfully sell

without it being traced back to me?

In September of 2005, Anderson is charged in Marin County with 10 counts

embezzlement, and the pressure mounts.

Civil lawsuits follow the criminal charges.

And as summer turns to fall, Anderson is evicted from his new warehouse for non

-payment of rent.

Right around the time that Mr. Anderson first was notified that he would be

evicted from the warehouse, he started doing Internet research on topics such

arson, arson investigation, things of that nature. He was quoted by one of his

employees as saying, what a tragedy that would be if Jack, the owner of the

warehouse,

if Jack's warehouse were to burn up.

Next on American Greed, a devious plan goes into action.

He mentioned how the warehouse was nothing but a bunch of dry timber and it

would go up in a flash.

On October 12, 2005, it's one of the biggest stories in the Bay Area.

More than 100 firefighters from both Solano and Contra Costa counties out

fighting this fire.

A massive wine warehouse is in flames. You could hear just the noise of

glass just slamming to the ground. And the fire just burning, knocking concrete

off the ceiling, just making its own noise and its own animal. Just

unbelievable, the amount of fire that was in this building.

When the smoke clears, the damage is overwhelming.

More than 90 Napa Valley winemakers, most of them small mom -and -pop

operations, had stored their wine here.

It's their lifeblood, their stock and trade.

And now it's all gone.

The total loss, at least $200 million.

Our bottles were melted because of the intense heat.

Ted Hall is the owner and founder of Long Meadow Ranch in Napa County.

an award -winning maker of California Cabernet Sauvignon.

Longmeadow Ranch had its entire inventory of wine stored at Wine

How much did they lose?

All of it, except that which was in barrel from the current vintage and a

few large format bottles that were retained in our cave.

After the fire, Longmeadow Ranch has no wine to sell.

Ted Hall has 19 employees and virtually no revenue.

This was not a crime against property.

It was a crime against people.

This is the handicraft of many, many people.

It's irreplaceable. It's a devastating experience.

Our winemaker, Kathy Goreson, couldn't talk.

Special Agent Brian Parker with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms

leads their investigation into the fire's cause and origin.

Here would be burned -up wine and burned -up wood, and then out there in the

middle would be burned -up wine boxes and either still standing or collapsed

pallets of wine.

Things that do not belong in a particular situation or a particular

are things that we clue in on.

Agent Parker finds something unusual in the storage area rented by Mark

Anderson, a man under investigation in neighboring Marin County for allegedly

embezzling wine.

It's a propane torch, seen in this photo taken the day after the fire.

Agent Parker takes American Greed into the ATF's evidence vault.

This is the...

Propane torch. It, again, was located in the storage area that Mark Anderson

rented inside of Wine Central in close proximity to our area of origin.

Agent Parker also recovers gasoline -soaked rags, boxes, and a bucket found

Anderson's storage space.

He concludes the fire started in Anderson's Bay, and the cause is arson.

What we believe he brought in was a cardboard box. Inside that cardboard box

a plastic bucket containing gasoline and at least two different types of racks.

Neither a bucket nor a torch are typically found in a wine cellar, says

Assistant U .S. Attorney Steve Lapham.

Anderson's explanation was he was using that torch to take apart part of his

metal cage that housed the wine.

That was his explanation.

but we could see very little reason why you would need that to accomplish what

he wanted to do.

As the forensic news tightens, a circumstantial case against Mark

also growing.

Quite frankly, when we went out and did the interviews of some of the

surrounding businesses and some of the people who worked at Wine Central, we

routinely ask a question, who do you think may have had something to do with

this? And every time we ask that question, Everybody came back with Mark

Anderson.

Anderson had recently been evicted from the warehouse for non -payment of rent.

The day of the fire, he was there to pack up his cellar.

He was one of the only people in the warehouse that day and left about 20

minutes before the fire alarms went off.

He also did something very suspicious after he left the building.

From the road, Anderson called the warehouse manager.

something he had never done before.

And he expressed surprise when the office manager answered the phone.

He said, oh, you're still there.

The call ends awkwardly, according to the manager, with Anderson saying he'll

back next week to pick up more of his wine.

My thought is he was checking to see if, one, the fire was in fact still going,

and if anybody was still in the building.

I think he was concerned that...

He had set this fire and he wanted to make sure that people were out of the

warehouse.

But not concerned enough to say, hey, get out of there.

Exactly.

Even without a warning, everyone in the warehouse was able to escape unharmed.

If Anderson is the culprit, Agent Parker believes he knows the motive.

It has a lot to do with the criminal and civil cases he's facing in Marin County

for allegedly embezzling wine.

What the fire does is gives him an out to basically be able to say, all of the

wine that you are alleging that I've embezzled was actually present and

accounted for, but it was all in the fire, and now I can't prove it, and you

can't prove your case, and therefore you need to drop your case.

But that's wishful thinking.

On March 15, 2007, the U .S. attorney charges Mark Anderson with 19 felony

counts, including arson, transportation of stolen goods, and mail fraud, among

others. And so begins a years -long period of delay tactics and stalling.

Anderson hires and fires a succession of defense attorneys. He pleads guilty,

then withdraws the plea, saying he wants a trial.

The delays aggravate his victims.

Mark Anderson still infuriates me. The old story about I'd like to be left in a

room with him and a bat.

Yeah, he's a bad guy.

And he will not ever atone for his sins. He's just not that kind of guy.

In a letter to American Greed, Anderson says he's innocent.

There are no actions which I ever did to warrant any charges whatsoever.

Regarding the alleged theft.

He blames inventory problems and serious packing errors.

Victim Ron Lucier has a story about packing errors.

While Anderson is in jail awaiting trial, Lucier and his husband decide to

a collection of silver oak wine they had stored with Anderson and manage to get

back. It's kept in a special wood case, which they realize has been opened and

glued shut.

He literally tore the cover with a crowbar off the box.

And in the box were six bottles of 2 -Buck Chuck.

And the box had been glued shut.

And that is clearly a deliberate act. It's not a misplacement.

In February 2012,

Anderson's attempt to withdraw his guilty plea is denied.

And he is sentenced on all 19 counts.

At his sentencing hearing, small winemakers from across Napa Valley have

chance to deliver statements about Anderson's devastating impact on their

We tend to think of winemakers and winery owners as being rich guys that

huge operations, but that's not what Napa and Sonoma County are necessarily

about.

Ted Hall of Longmeadow Ranch says the fire kept him out of the market for more

than two years.

His best clients were not happy that his wine was unavailable.

He says they include a famous restaurateur in New York City.

And he was very gruff and upset with me. He said, you know, I've been ordering

your wine and the distributor's been telling me they can't get it. The

restaurateur, who was unaware of the fire, felt sheepish when Hall explained

loss.

He felt really badly. He felt really badly that he'd started the conversation

by...

chewing on me.

And it's prudent for me not to mention who it is.

Though he can laugh about it now, Hall tells the court that the fire nearly

destroyed his family's business.

While Hall delivers his statement, Anderson lies on a table in the rear of

courtroom, citing back pain. He says he can't sit.

When this was all done, the judge asked Anderson and his attorney whether he had

anything to add.

And they said, no, your honor.

Everybody in the room just went, gasped, right?

Well, then there was a second gasp when he announced the sentence.

27 years in prison.

For the 60 -year -old Anderson, it's effectively a life sentence.

And a life without wine.

Because as journalist Bill Maher notes, the wine list in prison has just one

choice. They call it...

Pruno. It's what the inmates actually make in their cells.

It's supposed to be quite a kick, but I know that it's not real gourmet.