Prominent wine dealer Rudy Kurniawan, age 37, of Arcadia, California, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for carrying out an elaborate scheme in which he manufactured and sold counterfeit bottles of purportedly rare and expensive wine for millions of dollars, and fraudulently obtaining a $3 million loan from a financing company.
Kurniawan was found guilty in December 2013 following a one-week jury trial before U.S. District Judge Richard Berman, who also imposed today’s sentence.
Kurniawan became one of the most prominent and prolific dealers in the United States of purportedly rare and expensive wine. From 2004 through 2012, he engaged in a systematic scheme to defraud wine collectors and others by selling and attempting to sell numerous counterfeit bottles of purportedly rare and expensive wine. Kurniawan manufactured counterfeit bottles of rare and vintage wine at his home in Arcadia, California, operating a counterfeit wine laboratory.
Kurniawan mixed and blended lower-priced wines so that they would mimic the taste and character of rare and far more expensive wines. He then poured his creations into empty bottles of rare and expensive wines that he obtained from various sources and created a finished product by sealing the bottles with corks and outfitting the bottles with counterfeit wine labels he created. Kurniawan then sold and attempted to sell these counterfeit bottles of wine at auctions and in direct sales to wealthy wine collectors. Kurniawan collected millions of dollars through the sale of these counterfeit bottles of wine.
Kurniawan also executed a scheme to fraudulently obtain a $3 million loan from a financing company located in New York City that specialized in extending loans that are secured by valuable collectibles, such as art and wine. Kurniawan obtained the loan by providing false information to, and concealing material information from, the financing company, including falsely omitting approximately $7.4 million in outstanding loans, falsely representing his annual expenses, and falsely representing that he was a permanent resident of the United States when he had no legal immigration status in the United States and had, in fact, been ordered by an immigration court to leave the country years earlier. Just another illegal immigrant.
In addition to the prison sentence, Kurniawan, was ordered to forfeit $20 million and to pay restitution to his victims of $28,405,502.5.