Evidence of alleged counterfeiting material seized by the FBI
when they raided Rudy Kurniawan's apartment in March 2012
As the jury in the Rudy Kurniawan trial is due to start to consider its verdict this morning, here is a fine piece from Mike Steinberger to read while they ponder:
2013 December 17. Mike Steinberger Wine Diarist.com
One of the Rudy memes making the rounds is the theory that he had authentic bottles alongside all the knockoffs and that he was careful not to serve or sell his counterfeit wines to people who were likely to recognize them as such, in particular Allen Meadows. In response to my last post, in which I questioned why Kurniawan’s attorneys hadn’t sought to put Meadows on the witness stand, several people wrote to me suggesting that Kurniawan had used Meadows as part of a pump-and-dump scheme, serving him legit bottles in order to gin up demand for those wines, demand that Kurniawan then satisfied with his fakes. In a comment on eBob yesterday, Robert Parker posited this very scenario (although he didn’t cite Meadows by name). The underlying assumption is that Meadows was much too good a taster to be fooled by sham bottles, and that Kurniawan knew this and plied him with genuine bottles instead. What everyone seems to be forgetting is that there was at least one instance in which Kurniawan is known to have served Meadows a counterfeit wine, and we know this because it was one of the bottles that triggered Kurniawan’s downfall. However, it wasn’t Meadows’s palate that snagged Kurniawan.'
One of the Rudy memes making the rounds is the theory that he had authentic bottles alongside all the knockoffs and that he was careful not to serve or sell his counterfeit wines to people who were likely to recognize them as such, in particular Allen Meadows. In response to my last post, in which I questioned why Kurniawan’s attorneys hadn’t sought to put Meadows on the witness stand, several people wrote to me suggesting that Kurniawan had used Meadows as part of a pump-and-dump scheme, serving him legit bottles in order to gin up demand for those wines, demand that Kurniawan then satisfied with his fakes. In a comment on eBob yesterday, Robert Parker posited this very scenario (although he didn’t cite Meadows by name). The underlying assumption is that Meadows was much too good a taster to be fooled by sham bottles, and that Kurniawan knew this and plied him with genuine bottles instead. What everyone seems to be forgetting is that there was at least one instance in which Kurniawan is known to have served Meadows a counterfeit wine, and we know this because it was one of the bottles that triggered Kurniawan’s downfall. However, it wasn’t Meadows’s palate that snagged Kurniawan.'
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