All language subtitles for Sour Grapes_English

[piano music playing]

[vocalizing in harmony]

[people cheering]

[female reporter] And the stock down on Wall
Street today as both the DOW and the S&P 500

closed at all-time highs.

If I told you that you could turn your
love of wine into an investment return...

[male reporter] We've seen prices
go up higher than they've ever been.

[female reporter] Could you
forget gold and invest in vino?

[man 1] And the bottom line is, if you
want to own a fine or real wine collection,

the time to buy is right now.

[man 2] Did you sell
1961 Château La Fleur?

[woman 1] I can taste
the Chardonnay on the palate.

[man 2] Did you sell one or more
1961 Château La Fleur magnums?

[woman 1] I thought
it was a little forward.

[man 2]
Who inspected these bottles?

[woman 2] I've got
elderflower, perfumed, juicy...

[woman 1] Bright and leafy.

This is the whole "power
of suggestion" thing, right?

[man 2] Did you have any reason to
suspect that the wine was counterfeit?

[Laurent Ponsot]
Wine is alive.

It's not a beverage.

It's not a tool. It's not a
table or a plate or a car.

It's alive.

[speaking French]

I am Laurent Ponsot.

Winemaker, vigneron,
in Burgundy.

I was born above a cellar in
this village in Morey-Saint-Denis,

in a family that is owning
this winery since 1872.

You feel here what I call
"the spirit of the vines."

As soon as I started to breathe,
I had the smell of wine.

And I can say that I had some
blood in my wine, not wine in my blood.

The spirit of
Burgundy wines is unique,

with the name on the label
representing not only a wine,

but a culture and history.

What people are seeing, feeling,
behind the wine has no price.

At 1,600, $1,600,
order bidder 1053.

Lot 982, Romanée-Conti. '72.

Two bottles, wow.

9,500, 10,000.

$10,000 bid now
for these at 10,000.

At $10,000, give me 11,000.

At 10,000.

$10,000 now, for 10,000.

11,000 these now for 11,000.

Give me 12,000.

11,000.

$11,000 I have now at 11,000,
it's in the orders.

Boom for 1019.

[Jay McInerney] I guess
the auction scene

really started in the '90s,
in the dot-com boom.

Everybody was making money.

There developed this culture
of very wealthy collectors, um...

gathering at these auctions
to see and be seen.

To be seen bidding.

The prices started
to really escalate.

5,500 go 6,000, 5,500 last call.

At 5,500.

Pass then at 5,500.

1987...

[Jay] I started
to get these emails.

It was strange, I couldn't really figure
out where they were coming from.

They described these evenings

where these guys,
very wealthy collectors,

were drinking like 1945
Romanée-Conti, and 1955 Petrus.

You know really,
really expensive wine.

I eventually learned that these
emails were coming from John Kapon,

the head of the auction house
Acker Merrall & Condit.

OWC, 12 bottles of
1990 Romanée-Conti.

They do not make
12 bottle OWCs anymore.

I think this in fact was
the last vintage in this...

[Jay] Kapon's notes
were very colorful.

He had these
unusual descriptors.

Trying to make the whole
tasting note more interesting

and developing new metaphors.

This culture kind of
reached its apogee

under the auspices
of Acker Merrall & Condit

and this group
called the Angry Men,

all of whom had nicknames

like Mr. Angry and Big Boy
and Hollywood Jef.

[Hollywood Jef] We missed
the tequila party last night.

- But, you know...
- [David Fredston] I think it was worth it.

[Hollywood Jef]
It was worth it, yeah.

[David] I drank a lot of that
1907 Madeira last night.

- It was...
- It had a lot of layers, that wine.

Yeah, I mean, it was it was
coconut, it was nutmeg, espresso.

- Yeah, it was really
exciting, wasn't it?

[David] I think the '88
has so much acidity.

It can be incredible.

But it's more a hit-or-miss
vintage than...

[Hollywood Jef] The '88
has a huge amount of acidity.

[David] No, that's
absolutely right.

'96, though,
is the vintage to buy.

For anyone out there,
buy '96 champagne all day.

If you can't afford that,
buy '02.

If you can't afford that,
drink fucking beer.

[Hollywood Jef] The best way to
taste high-end wines is with a group,

because there's
power in numbers.

- Thank you.
- ...unique taste of it.

Wines are really, really expensive,
and so our group meet eight times a year.

Each time one member hosts
and does the wines from his cellar.

You guys drink
too much together.

You don't hold back!

[Hollywood Jef] Where the
"Angry Men" name came from

is you get invited
to a wine dinner

and you bring a really nice,
a great bottle of wine, okay?

And everybody else brings
shit wine, bad wine.

And so you get very angry and...

It was men who didn't
want to be angry anymore

and everybody had to bring it,
you know, you had to really bring it.

Thank you very much.

My entry into Burgundy
was Rudy Kurniawan.

There was an Angry Men
that Rudy had invited me to,

and that's where
I met that whole gang.

Their dinners were always
over the top. Crazy.

Breaking it out with like 100,
200 grand worth of wine in a night.

It was pretty extraordinary.

[Maureen Downey]
What these guys actually had,

it's what Americans call
"fuck you money."

"Well, I got a $3-million bonus,

"I'm going to take a million
of that and blow it."

And that's their
"fuck you money."

They're going to do
whatever they want with it.

They don't care,
there's no consequences.

And it's a kind of money that most
human beings never experience.

Uh-oh. Here she comes.

[Maureen] The fine-wine world,
it's really mostly men.

Especially when I was younger,

I'd walk into the tastings and
everybody would immediately ask,

you know, whose date I was.

But I had an important job. I ran a
major auction house in New York.

I bought like $50,000 worth of
champagne in the last auction,

for one of my clients 'cause
his daughter's getting married.

It was 2000 or early 2001.

We were doing auctions

and I started being
aware of this kind of,

you know, skinny, geeky
young guy that liked wine.

...for 2,600.

[Maureen] At the time he was somebody
that was bidding on Pahlmeyer Merlot.

Pahlmeyer Merlot sticks out
in my mind with Rudy.

You know, a high quality wine,

but, you know, it's got
one zero, not four zeros.

Now 16, 17, $1,800,

1,800 for the single bottle
of La Tâche, 1985.

1,800, $1,800 bid. At 18...

What was really strange
was 18 months later

he reached out to me on the telephone
and said that he wanted to meet with me

because he wanted to be a player
in the auction scene,

which I found kind of odd

because he had just been a
geeky kid drinking Californian Merlot.

- Hey, what's up, Rudy?
- Hey, what's up, man?

- How are you doing?
- How are you, man?

- Very well.
- Good, good, good.

I brought some wines for us to
drink. Can you help me with this?

[Hollywood Jef] His breadth of knowledge
seemed to be pretty extraordinary.

He actually taught me, you know,
almost everything I know.

[Jay] He was a real cult figure
and everybody talked about him.

- My friend.

[indistinct]

He had this mysterious
background. Where did he come from?

Part of what created
his mythology

was he had an extraordinary...
Who has an extraordinary palate.

The best palate of anyone
I've ever met in my entire life.

Any wine, from California to
France, any type of wine, any vintage.

Rudy was extremely, insanely,

unbelievably correct
on all the wines.

[Rajat Parr]
The art of blind tasting,

it comes naturally,
but you have to make an effort.

You know, you really
have to work at it.

You taste wine blind,
you identify the wine,

and you know, that's the
badge of honor for a sommelier.

You do a little swirl and just see
if there's anything with the alcohol.

Looking at the legs,
how slow or fast they fall.

Smell it, and then it kind of just
tingles off senses to your brain.

And then you look through
your Rolodex in your mind

of all these different wines
you've tasted.

And I'm thinking,
"What could this be?"

I think a wine palate is
very similar to athletic ability.

Sorry.

Wine tasting is a lot about
knowing the vocabulary

and being able to express,
using that vocabulary,

to other wine tasters what
it is that you're experiencing.

I totally get that peppery
citrus that you're talking about.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I met Rudy.

Tony!

- Tony, what's happening?
- What's up, Tony?

[Rajat] I met him at a tasting.
I was very, very impressed.

He identified almost
all the wines blind.

He must have learned by drinking an
enormous amount of different wines.

That's the only way to learn.

You always wondered why and how.

- That's why you know.

You know, 18 months
and now I have, what,

pretty much like 3,000
bottles of wine, you know.

We're going to make a booklet,
you know, yeah.

Rudy's Adventures.

[Arthur Sarkissian] I met
Rudy first in 2004, I believe.

There was a luncheon
for one of the producers

and we quickly became friends.

He was very warm to everyone.

I really liked the guy.

It's fun because there's a lot of
wines today that I haven't tried.

[Arthur] We hung out a lot
and went to wine dinners.

- [man] How you doing today?
- Good, man.

Tired, but good.

- Long trip?
- From 5:00 a.m. in the morning.

Long trip.

Fourteen hours drive.

- Where'd you drive from?
- LA, man.

LA, man.

The people in this town, excuse
my language, are full of shit.

But not with Rudy.

- Just wakes me up, you know.

[Arthur] Nothing he did was short of
real class, warmth and graciousness.

- You like...
You like everything so far?

- For my birthday he gave me a bottle
of, I think a Pol Roger '49 champagne,

which is incredible.

- What do you have right now?
- Colgin, interesting.

- Yeah?
- Very different from the Herb Lamb.

- Yeah?

- I don't know if it's 100% Cab
because... Like a Meritage.

- He just was a lover of wine.
Is a lover of wine.

I keep talking in the past
because it's still very strange.

[Corie Brown] He never said something to
me that I could look at and find was untrue.

But he didn't ever
say that much.

I was a reporter and I was
curious about the auction market,

and I sat there at the back of Christie's
and I noticed a very, very young man

spending a lot of money
surrounded by people that I knew

were movie producers, clearly
the focus of everyone's attention.

That's a story.

Who is this guy? And why is
he spending this kind of money?

And what does he want
to do with his wine?

Today I can't, today's overbooked.
Tomorrow, call me. I might...

[Corie] It took months to get him to sit
down and have a cup of coffee with me.

- I've got to go in five minutes.

I have a big Burgundy tasting.

- Let me move around before...
- [man] Go ahead! Go ahead!

- I'll talk to you soon.

- Let me have the honor
to try my wine.

- It was like another month or two

before I got him to sit down and
actually have an interview with me.

He proceeded to serve
some of his great wines.

Oh, my God, this is...
It's corked.

No.

[Corie] He lived with his
mother in Arcadia and, uh,

the people around him would say

that his family owned
the Heineken distributorship

for all of China.

Fabulously wealthy,

and he was on a million-dollar-a-month
allowance for his wine,

and when I asked Rudy about this
stuff he said, "I don't talk about my family",

and he wouldn't
tell me anything.

I sort of assumed he was a rich
kid looking for something to do.

The auction houses were giddy.

No one had ever spent
that much money that fast.

It was ruining the quiet little
club that the old guys had.

[Don Cornwell] I've been
collecting for 38 years I guess.

So, I've got, you know,
lots of DRC labels

and they're all categorized by
particular domains or groups of domains.

There's Ponsots in here.
I've got mostly from the '80s.

That's some major wine,
yeah, that's his, one of his best.

Sometimes you only get to
taste them once in your life

if you get to taste them
at all, so it's kind of fun.

I was introduced
to Rudy by John Kapon

at an Acker auction event
over in Beverly Hills.

- I want to drink Burgundies.

That's me, of course, you know.

- He said, "Well, you're a Burgundy
collector, what Burgundies do you like?"

And I said, "Well, my favorites
are probably Roumier, Rousseau, and...

DRC, Romanée-Conti."

- You got that right, my friend,
you got that right.

- Right after that he said,
"You should buy wines with me",

he said, "I buy cellars and
collections in Europe all the time."

And then I remember
Rudy asked me,

"What's the oldest Roumier
you've ever had?"

And I said it was a 1969.

And I told him I'd been lucky
enough to find a couple at auction,

that they're real hard to find.

And then Rudy said,

"Well, you know,
in the last year I've had

"1945, 1949, 1955

and 1962 Roumier Bonnes-Mares."

He picked the greatest red
Burgundy vintages from that era.

I was just flabbergasted.

I'd been looking
for them for 25 years.

[Laurent] Burgundy is
unique on the planet.

The band of slopes, we say, which is
70 kilometers long and 1 kilometer wide,

and composed by 1,250
different appellations.

[speaking French]

We are just 11 meters
below the ground level here

and we are really with two feet
in the history of Burgundy.

See here are tiny roots, from vines,
which are probably here since 200 years.

The vine is sucking,
so to say, the rock.

Going up on the hill on
the other side of the street,

the vines will not find
the same mineral elements

and they will never find
the same taste and aromas.

[speaking French]

The most important for me
is what nature gives.

We are only a tiny
element of the chain.

If one element breaks, the chain is broken
and you cannot reach the glass of wine.

[Jay] Wine is
the expression of place,

and Burgundy is the ultimate
example of this.

It's a wine for obsessives.

Someone who really
knows their stuff

can tell you the difference, blind,
between something that was grown here

and something that was
grown 40 feet away.

- It's really good.
- Look at where the fill is.

- Fucking incredible.

This is probably insane.

This is where I go crazy.

This is my crazy...
This is my crazy spot.

I get nervous
and my blood pressure goes up.

It's the ultimate
existential art form.

It's living in a
bottle. It's alive.

And then you drink it and
you absorb it into your body.

It's art that becomes
part of you, literally.

Well, that's Ponsot,
who's a great producer.

Hey, Carl.
- Hello!

- How you doing, babe?

- I'm good.

- A lot of good shit here.

You have a few drinks and then you
come here and spend 100 grand on wine.

This is the place.

This is the place, yeah.

They're very, very
reasonably priced.

Where can you get
a '61 white for 600 bucks?

From 1961?

This is crazy time.

- Jef?
- Yeah.

1990 Romanée-Conti.

This is maybe one of the
greatest bottles ever made of wine.

Right here.

20 grand maybe?
- 20 grand.

He knows his prices.
- 20 grand for the bottle.

And you want this.

If you like wine, you
need this, you want this.

- But you have to decide, do you
want this or do you want a Prius?

- Yes, exactly!
Trade it for a Prius.

- When we drink wine we don't look
at the price value, you know.

We look at what we get from the
wine. The excitement, you know.

The passion, the way they make
the wine and everything.

It's not about the price of the
wine, you know. Some people...

[Hollywood Jef] Rudy was
very generous with everybody.

I had some of the greatest
Romanée-Contis with him, you know,

I will ever have.

Put on your best Burgundy face.

Who wants to drink wine?

- At the time when all this was happening,
there was a huge demand for old fine wine.

As a whole, Burgundy very quickly
went from affordable to unobtainable.

I guess you can
call it the Rudy era.

It's very fine sediment, so stand
them up and then put the ice.

The economy was
booming back then.

...standing up,
not leaning down.

There was such tiny quantities
of Burgundy worldwide.

There wasn't enough
to satisfy the thirst.

[David] It was all about
liquidity and it continues to be.

Any time there's tremendous
volatility in a market,

and all asset classes
move the same.

- Dave, your go-to
cellar's pretty good.

You've got some
good stuff in here.

- So many of my friends
in finance collect wine

because when you watch stocks
all day on Bloomberg, right,

and then you can see
auction prices move,

there's a certain pride
to getting a good buy.

- Today there is no relation between
the prices and what is in the bottle.

When I sell a bottle
at 100 euro,

I see this bottle when
it's released at 1,000.

How come?

At $2,600, I ask the bidder
against the room.

- Sold at...
- Dude, I just opened a bottle on Thursday.

- Yeah?
- Now I feel bad about opening it.

It's a 1,000 a bottle.

Can I refill it
and put the cork back?

[Corie] It was clear to me
in very short order

that he had revolutionized
the wine market.

Prices were skyrocketing.

I thought it was
a pretty smart little racket.

He was cornering the market
in a lot of these wines.

What a clever thing to do.

If you have a lot of money,
go in, buy up a lot of wine,

drive up the prices, and then
start selling at the new high price.

There was one other guy there who
was always bidding furiously against Rudy

and that guy was the
representative for Bill Koch.

[Bill Koch] Collecting has to
have an emotional meaning to me.

Part of it is the detective
story of tracking it all down.

I've collected impressionistic
art, I've collected samurai swords,

silver coins from Greece,
have some antiquities,

have some sculpture.

And I've collected wine.

Do you want to see
my wine bathroom?

The bathroom is
generally a bathroom,

but I thought I'd be more fun
to make it interesting,

so we put wine crates here,
wine labels, corks on the ceiling,

and then if you look over there,
there are wine bottles on that wall.

My secret wine opener.
Wine opener.

Not wine opener, cellar
opener. Come on in.

I've been a little bit obsessive
about buying wine in the past.

I have in total 43,000 bottles.

With super fine wines you can taste
the love the vintner had in making it.

And that to me is almost
a religious experience.

You know, we collectors
like precious things.

Love is extremely precious.

What price can you put
on the love of your wife?

What price... Well, if you're
getting a divorce, you can, but...

Here's one bottle
of Jefferson wine.

1787 Lafite, Th.J.

I'll set it down on the table.

We'll line them up.

The reason I wanted to buy four bottles
of Thomas Jefferson wine is very simple.

The mere fact that
Thomas Jefferson owned it

and held it in his hand, et cetera,
et cetera, that's part of history.

Here's another one.
1787 Mouton, again Th.J.

Look at this bottle.

Isn't it beautiful
in and of itself?

1737 Lafite, Château Rothschild.

The faker didn't know
his wine history very well

because the Rothschilds
didn't own Lafite in 1737.

Unfortunately,
I paid $100,000 per bottle.

The rogues' gallery.

[Maureen] Well, the first
time I think I found a fake wine,

it was because of the
weight of the bottle.

There was a bottle of Petrus
on the back of the table

and I reached to grab it,

and when I lifted it up, I almost threw
it on the ceiling 'cause it was so light.

This has a '75 seal on it.
- Yeah.

- But it's a 1929.
- Yeah.

- That only started
with the 1930 vintage.

You're looking for anomalies.

Is it in the right glass? Does
the cork have the right stamp?

Is the cork properly aged?
Is the paper correct?

Yeah, everything's
pixelated here.

I wonder what
the sediment in here is?

If these things have allegedly
been together for the last 60 years,

they need to look like it.

That is one hot mess.

If the capsule looks like hell,
and the label looks pristine,

that doesn't work.

You know, that's got a 95-year-old's
face on a teenager's body.

- You know, you always want to be
careful with these online auctions

because you never
know the provenance.

They just want to sell.

- Really it's hard.

- This bottle's corked, man.

No, I'm just kidding.

I love doing that shit.

- At the time fake wine was just
starting to be talked about,

Rudy was quite
the expert on fake wine

and when I asked him about it, he
said that he bought so much fake wine

that he'd had to become
an expert on it.

- No, they won't tell you if
there's something wrong with it,

but sometimes if they doubt the
bottle, they put the picture of it,

so you be the judge.
- Okay.

- Look at the picture, you
want it, you take it, you know.

- Is there anybody out there
looking at conditions and...

- Tell them about Acker auctions.

- Acker's great man, we love John.

[Corie] He and John Kapon were
meticulously going through all of his wines

to catalog everything
and sell some off.

John Kapon was the son of a very
nice family-run wine store in Manhattan.

Shopping for anything during the
holidays can be simply maddening,

and shopping for wine
is no exception.

I'm here at Acker Merrall
and Condit,

the oldest wine store in
America, located in New York City.

[Corie] Acker Merrall
wasn't a big house,

they were a store that got
into the auction world

and then Rudy really made them.

[Hollywood Jef] John really
turned it into a fun thing.

He was the first one to like,
break it out.

It was like a giant crazy
party with an auction.

At the same time he was doing that,
Rudy came along, with this incredible cellar

and they kind of
helped each other.

[Maureen] When Rudy was
drinking California Merlot,

Acker Merrall & Condit was in
last place of all the auction houses.

When Rudy sold $35 million worth
of wine through Acker Merrall & Condit

in two sales in 2006,

Acker Merrall became the number
one auction house in the world.

He is the CEO of
Acker Merrall & Condit.

This year he has auctioned off
more than $100 million,

the first wine house to do so.

John Kapon, joining me, so you
can't whine about that revenue, right?

Get it, "whine."

John, you're going to leave now,
aren't you? All right.

Well, it's been
a pretty crazy year...

"There's not much that can
be said about this collection

"outside of the fact,
it is one of America's greatest.

"This is a collector that
actually inspects his wine."

To see all the magnificent
wines in there,

I said, "Man, this is
a wine collector's dream."

I felt like maybe I ought to buy
the whole bloody cellar.

[John] You know, the auction
is a complex transaction.

I mean, you get a catalog,
it's 300 pages long

and you have two weeks
to make up your mind.

You may win, you may not win.
Some people...

They were selling massive
amounts of wine,

and, you know, I don't know how John
could have inspected every single bottle

when he's selling
$30 million worth of wine.

The fakers like to fake
the very hard to find,

very old wines 'cause you
give them a much higher price.

One night my bulldog
investigator, Brad Goldstein,

found that I had just paid 25,000
for one 1921 magnum of Petrus.

In 1921 Petrus made no magnums.

You gotta go, big guy.

You gotta go. You wanna go,
you wanna go get Mommy?

Come on. Come on. Come on.

Bill kept saying to me, "I want to know
how deep this problem is in my cellar."

Where are the Ponsots?

Where are the Ponsots?
I don't see them.

We had to find experts
who knew about corks.

We hired a guy who knew
about labels, capsules, glass,

and even looked
at the glue, you know.

On an 1858 bottle
we found Elmer's glue.

And Elmer's glue didn't come in
until sometime in the '70s.

Here, see if you can spot
the inconsistencies there.

You know, the more we learned,
the larger the epidemic became.

I have over 400 bottles
that are proven fake,

for which I paid $4 million.

I think what spurred Bill on

was when the auction
houses told him,

as they say in French, "Tant
pis", you know, "Tough luck, buddy.

"You bought it, you bought
it as is, you're stuck with it."

[Bill] For some reason,
you know, Freud can answer why,

I just hate being cheated.

In the wine business
there's a code of silence.

I'm not taking this.

[Brad] We were fairly certain that some
of the wine bottles that Bill had purchased

from Acker Merrall were,
without a doubt, counterfeit.

Let's keep it out of the way.

[Brad] He tasked me with finding out
the information on this Rudy Kurniawan.

I was given video
of Rudy in early 2000

doing what was going to be
a food show on wine.

I almost fell out of my chair
when I first saw these videos.

Dude, I just opened
a bottle on Thursday.

Now I feel bad about opening it.

Can I refill it
and put the cork back?

The motivation behind
the investigator is to, um...

Is to show the elegance of the hustle.

This is the catalog of the
auction in April 2008 in New York.

The page to present
Domain Ponsot.

And when you see the pictures
here, there is a 1929 Clos de la Roche.

Ponsot started
estate bottling in 1934.

So, first of all, in the catalog
it was already wrong and fake.

Everything here also is fake.

This wax we never used.

We never sold
any wine to Nicolas.

We never had this vintage
printed outside the label here.

And Clos Saint-Denis, Clos
Saint-Denis, Clos Saint-Denis,

'45, '49, '66, and '71

and we started to produce the
Clos Saint-Denis in 1982. So...

And here you have the
99 points from the expert.

And the expert is JK. John
Kapon, this is the auctioneer.

So, how can the expert
be such a good expert on wine

which costs $50,000 to $70,000?

Because he earns 20% on it.

When you find a fake wine,

it's a dirt on the integrity of
Burgundy and I wanted to wash it.

So, two days later I jumped into
a plane and I flew to New York.

I wanted John Kapon
to withdraw everything.

[female reporter] The stock
market is now down 21%.

[male reporter] Dow traders are
standing there watching in amazement

and I don't blame them.

[male reporter 2] This could be the
most serious recession in decades

and that means life
as most Americans know it,

is about to change,
in some cases, dramatically.

[Jay] Bear Stearns had collapsed
the week before the auction.

So, there was some question about,
what was going to happen with the market.

This particular auction
was just a wild affair.

We were all really, really
buzzed on really expensive wine.

Things got so raucous,

and halfway through the auction, you
know, Kapon is banging his gavel saying,

"Shut the fuck up, guys."

You know, I mean this is not...
This is not Sotheby's.

[John] 7,000, 7,000, 7,000.

I'm looking for 7,500.

[Jay] I happened to recognize a guy who
came in and sat at the back of the room,

and he was not part
of the merriment.

He was sort of like
Banquo's ghost.

[Hollywood Jef] Suddenly Ponsot
stood up,

and there was silence.

He said, "Withdraw my wines",
and everything... John, like,

was at the podium.

It was a bizarre moment.

Kapon announced the entire
30-odd lots were being withdrawn.

Parcel executed.
Do they want two cases?

[Laurent] At the end
of the auction I met Kapon

and I was asking who are
the owners of these wines.

The next day I met Rudy
Kurniawan for the first time.

We go to Jean-Georges.

I had no idea
of what would happen.

He was just the owner
of the wine, that's it.

My two options was,
he didn't know,

or he knew and he wanted
to sell it, and this is not nice.

But that's, that's...
No matter what...

After "hello" and so on, I said,

"Look, now, you have to tell me
where the wines are coming from."

He's not going to have food?

You bought these wines,
you should know.

I buy a lot of wines and...

"You know, we buy so many wines,
I buy so many wines", said Rudy,

"that I don't know where they
come from, I have to check."

[Rudy] That's why I love wine,
you know, wines, you can never tell.

You can never tell.

[Laurent] I had the idea that Rudy
was doing a lot of dinners and parties,

trying to have every
client as a friend.

So, I said to myself, "I'm
going to do the same with him.

"Let him think I will become his best
friend and then he will maybe talk."

We had assembled a team
of international talent

who was actually
a former CIA agent.

[dog panting]

Sorry, guys.

Percy, you're looking for food,
I got nothing for you.

Percy, get outta here.

We had received some information
about his immigration status.

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 traveling lately?

No.

- To the wine countries?
- No.

He did.

[Brad] 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 traveler?
You don't like traveling?

Oh, I like traveling.
I love traveling.

Like putting a sugar addict
in a candy store.

No, I love traveling.
I love traveling.

[Brad] 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 we 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.

[Laurent] 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.

[Laurent] And he
took his cell phone

and he wrote two numbers
in Jakarta, so I was happy.

Then we had nice dinner.

[Rudy] Great food, great wine,
great people, great ambiance.

Perfect. Can't ask for more.

[Laurent] The next day I
tried to call the two numbers.

[phone dialing]

[line bleeps]

One was a fax machine and
the other had no answer at all.

[line bleeping]

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... Whoa! Whoa!

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.

[man speaking in French]

No.

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.

[man 1 speaking Mandarin]

[man 2 speaking in Mandarin]

[Laurent] 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 "mister"

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?

[Rudy speaking
in local language]

[man speaking in local language]

[Arthur] He didn't talk
so much about his wealth,

but he didn't have to
because it was obvious.

[in local language]

[Arthur] I met his mother, who is a
wonderful lady, and I met his brother.

[man] 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.

[Arthur] 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.

[Arthur]
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 favorite
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.

[Rudy] I always said that,
we always said that.

The right wine, the right food.

Let's toast, let's toast.

[James] 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.

[female reporter] 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, uh...

[James] 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.

So, it naturally, kind of, puts
pressure on pricing automatically.

[James] 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.

[officer 1 ] 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.

[officer 2] Can you please state
your name for the record?

Rudy Kurniawan.

[officer 2] 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.

[Brad] 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,

and, and... 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.

-[officer 2] Do you speak French?
-No.

- Do you write French?
- No.

Just merci.

[Brad] Never definitive,
nothing concrete.

You know what,
that guy, told me nothing.

[Maureen] 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.

[groans in frustration]

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 catalog.

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
labeling 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".

[Hollywood Jef] 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."

[James] 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 labeled.

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 unlabeled

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 labeled.

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've liked 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 did not be... 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.

- [man] 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.

[Hollywood Jef] 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, and still don't see him doing it,

and I still don't
believe he did it.

No way.

I think part of what
he started doing was...

Doing some reconditioning.

[inaudible]

If you want to take everything
they're saying as true

for the purposes of argument,
and again I'm not stipulating that,

but if you want to take
everything they're saying as true,

we're talking about wine here.

- Oh, my God.
- '91 Ridge Monte Bello.

Don't you want it?

[Jerome] Here's a wine over here,
something that people have tasted,

that they're saying
is the best ever.

Well, if you can make
something taste like that,

why not recreate
that experience?

And I think that's
what happened.

They tried to make that sound
like it was alchemy.

You know, like he was mixing
and matching and contriving.

But that's not what
I think it was at all.

I think Rudy just
really digs wine.

- This is...
- Where is Rudy?

[Jerome] We're all insecure.

My God, that's it, man.

[Jerome] And if we're the new kid
in the group, we're really insecure.

And especially if everybody
else in the group is older,

if everybody else
in the group is richer,

you want to live up to
whatever the expectations are.

The only government evidence was

relating to something that
would have been a couple of bottles

at a time perhaps being made in the
kitchen sink in Rudy's house in Arcadia.

I don't think that you could have
created the number of bottles they claim

that were counterfeit doing that,
so they have a problem with that.

This bottle,

1985 Côte Rtie La Mouline,

is from the famous...

The famous crazy wine auction.

The Cellar auction where all
the shit happened, Rudy's auction.

The cellar was Rudy's cellar

and you will see
this is very real.

So, this is an example of 90% of
Rudy's wine that he sold that is real.

It's fantastic
as everyone's going to see.

Yeah, this one is real.

So, he did sell mostly
real wine, I think.

He had an incredible palate
and he was also very generous.

Oh, my God, this is so good.

It's rare and perfect.

Do you want to use a fork
'cause it's on camera?

- No, I'm just going to do with my hands.
- Yeah, go for it.

- Let's do it.
- Here we go.

Thank you very much.

Hi, Matthew!

- How are you, babe?
- Everything's good.

- How are those wines?
- Fucking awesome!

Were you just walking down
the street drinking wine?

- No, we took a car here.
- Okay.

We are not able to drive
right now, so we had a driver.

This is one of the wines
that Rudy sold.

Try this, please.

It's outstanding.

- It's as good as it gets.
- It does taste really good.

Thank you so much.
Christian.

So, this is a bottle
that Levy bought from Rudy.

It's real.

- He bought it from...
- How long has this been open?

About two hours.

- It's garbage.
- You don't like it?

You think it's fake? Really?

I know this wine very well.
It's not even close.

It doesn't have the life,

it doesn't have the verve
and the vivacity

and the dimension
of a La Mouline '85,

which is almost like,
if you had a really rich

BLT with the egg on top.

That's how that wine
tastes almost.

This?

I mean, it tastes like,
you know, skunk juice.

So, that's very interesting.

How much of the Rudy
wine do you have?

I don't know.

Six bottles or something.

He has 6,000 bottles.

[Jay] There is a kind of collaboration
between the forger and the dupe.

People kind of
want to be fooled.

They really want to own
this very rare bottle of wine

that maybe doesn't
even exist anymore and so,

you don't really want
to know that it's a fake.

If you believe
that Rudy Kurniawan

was just trying to recondition the
bottles and give them nicer appearance,

then you probably believe
that in a few weeks

a man with a white beard is
going to come down your chimney

and leave a case of 1945
Romanée-Conti under your tree.

I became interested
in this investigation

when I met Jim Wynne,
the FBI agent assigned to it.

I sensed right away that there was going
to be an actual charge that could be made.

We certainly had
overwhelming evidence.

[reporter] A connoisseur of counterfeiting,
master of label making, cork stamping...

[Jason] He had been purchasing
things like extremely large quantities,

thousands of dollars, of wax.

He was ordering paper that was
known for its antique properties

that can be used to make labels.

He was collecting dozens and dozens
of empty bottles from restaurants.

[Rudy] I always keep my empty
bottles. You know that.

And people ask me why.

I actually put the date
and the place that I had where,

you know, and who I had with.

Kind of simple notes
at the back of the bottle.

Rudy's explanation was that he
was creating a museum of some kind,

or he was doing a
photo shoot of some kind.

He was scanning labels
into his computer

and then he was printing them on
a huge printer that was in the house.

[Maureen] What I'm doing is
forensically looking at the wines.

After having scanned through
and cataloged

all the evidence
from Rudy's computers,

what I can say
is this is definitely Rudy's

because here's
the template that made it.

There are notebooks upon notebooks
in evidence of Rudy's tasting notes.

One of the really interesting pieces
of evidence I thought was a half-bottle

that had writing on it, and,

he had M-45
and he had a formula.

So, that was 1945 Mouton,

and he had his first formula that he
had blended and he didn't like that.

He had that scribbled out
and then on the other side

he had another formula
for M-45 that he liked better.

So, I think that it was a lot of trial
and error and it was a lot of blending.

He would take these old wines
that he had tasted once.

He found other wines that
had similar characteristics

and he'd just mad scientist it.

[Jay] What he would
make was generally

a very convincing imitation
of what it said on the label.

It's easy to dismiss all this and say,
"These guys are sniffing and swirling,

"and it's all a crock of shit
and you could, you could fool..."

Well, the fact is most of these guys
you couldn't fool them most of the time.

That's what's interesting
about Rudy's fraud is that

hardly anybody
could have done it.

He was a bit of an artist.

Here this one which is dirty on
the side and not in the middle.

It was well done, actually,

but too much well done
because there is nearly

a line between the dirt
and the non-dirt.

My theory is easy.

To fake one bottle
you need one hour,

if you have the labels
the wax and everything.

Just to eliminate the
original label, the capsule,

and then clean it,
put the new label on it,

dirt it again, put the wax and
everything. It takes one hour.

When you know that
one of the big sales

was 15,000 bottles,
or something like that,

if you multiply the number
of bottles by one hour,

15,000 hours,
so it's impossible.

I mean, technically, it's
impossible that he could do it...

He could have
done it on his own.

[Brad] We know that some of
the paper came from Indonesia.

His brothers were in Indonesia.

We knew that there was money
going to his brothers in Indonesia.

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.

[Jason] 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 one of...

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.

[Jerome] 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 program.

It's probably going to take him
a while to really taste the wine,

you know what I mean?

[Brad] 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.

[Brad] 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.

[in Indonesian]

[Brad] 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.

[reporter speaking
in Indonesian]

[Brad] 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.

[reporter] Hendra Rahardja is accused
of Indonesia's biggest corporate fraud,

defrauding $670 million.

[speaking in Indonesian]

[man] This is really painful you know
for us, for all the clients of the banks.

I saved my money
for about 30 years.

[Brad] One of the properties
that Hendra Rahardja

claimed to own
was Jalan Gajah Mada.

And I was like, whoa,

"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.

[reporter] 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.

Oh! I'm going to meet somebody
at 12:30 in Westwood, so, I could...

[Brad] I don't know if Rudy
was benefiting 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.

[reporter] 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...

[Laurent] 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
anymore in life.

Maybe I will become a monk.
[laughs]

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.

[reporter over recording] "He
turned his home into a wine factory",

said prosecutor Joseph
Facciponti of the defendant

and created what he called
his "magic cellar."

[Jason] 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.

[Laurent] 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.

[female reporter] 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.

[Laurent] 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.

[reporter] 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.

[reporter] 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.

[reporter] Rudy has apologized
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 organized 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.

[Maureen] 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...

[Jason]
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.

[Laurent] 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.

[speaking in French]

[vocalizing]

[bottles breaking]

This is the largest wine seizure
the US Marshals ever handled.

Behind you we have
over 500 bottles

that have been deemed counterfeit
from Rudy Kurniawan's private collection.

I have no doubt that it's going to
take years or decades or maybe never

to fully filter out all of Rudy
Kurniawan's fake wines.

It's impossible to identify every single
person who has one of those bottles.

It's broken!

[Jay] You know, more scrupulous
collectors have just bitten the bullet

and they've written off
a bunch of stuff.

John Kapon, to his credit has,
you know, anything questionable

he has taken back and he's
refunded a lot of people's money.

All right. Good.

But I think a lot of people
probably don't want to know

that their cellars
are full of fakes.

So, they're just... It's
still out there, you know.

For the best of Chile and
Argentina and the rest... 160!

They'll circulate.

If you buy this, you will
almost certainly get laid.

All right!

You're going to start me,
sir, but at what price?

$10,000!

[Bill] I don't look at wine
catalogs anymore.

I throw them
in the waste basket.

[host] $200,000!

[Brad] This whole industry has
a pomp and circumstance to it.

You're either a believer
or an apostate.

Cheers, guys!

Want some beer?
You want some beer?

Like, dare you say
the emperor has no clothes?

It's just liquid, it's wine.

But it's become a commodity.

Some of the biggest CEOs
of corporate America...

They all were duped by this guy.

The moral to this story
in my opinion is that

when you leave
things unregulated,

you allow the wolves to come in

and game the system and
this system had been gamed.

[Hollywood Jef] When I first discovered
this case of wine that he sold me was fake,

I was very hurt
and I felt like a fool, too.

I felt foolish,

but the number of amazing
experiences I had with him,

far outweigh
any anger I could have.

So, I forgave, you know.
I forgave that.

When I think about him and
I think about him quite a bit,

I just cannot put two
and two together.

I just can't because
it's just like talking about...

Black and white.

Oh! Vincent!

[Arthur] I have not tried,
but I would love to see him.

One day, I hope, I'll be
able to sit down with him.

I don't know. I'll just tell him,
"What was this all about?"

[instrumental music playing]