By then collectors had reached a critical mass of hearsay and rumors that Mr. Kurniawan was involved in fraudulent wines.
— Julia Moskin Wine Diarist Rudy Kurniawann, accused of making and selling fraudulent wines, has now been formally indicted by a federal grand jury in New York.
On Thursday, Mr. Kurniawan, 35, was arrested on charges — filed in federal court in New York — of trying to sell fraudulent wines, which, if genuine, would have been worth $1.3 million, and also of counterfeiting wine.
ALMOST a year and a half after news first broke that Tuscan authorities were investigating producers of brunello di Montalcino for making fraudulent wines, the inquiry is approaching an end.
A $100 purchase at a shop that sells hard liquor is more likely to be fraudulent than a more expensive shopping spree at a wine shop, because whisky is easier to fence.
The Guardian and other news outlets reported yesterday that a number of French wine producers have been convicted of the fraudulent sale of millions of bottles of fake Pinot Noir to E. and J. Gallo.
The second great advantage for wine forgers is that when collectors do open fraudulent bottles they often lack the experience and acute sense of taste to know that they have been defrauded.
The Good Wife: A fraudulent vintage, because you waited forever for the payoff only to find out the wine wasn't even in the same room as the barrel.
Potential fraud alert at DELTA.COM: $2,357.00 This transaction was completed at 3 25 A.M., so we assume it was a fraudulent charge made in another time zone, not one of those things where you drank a bunch of free wine at an art opening and decided to go home and reimagine yourself as a performance poet/beekeeper living in Croatia.
Experts at the CIVB have begun paying visits to local wine shops and grocery stores, compiling a database of counterfeit names and investigating links between the sellers and fraudulent producers, the article says.
