New York Post, Sunday, November 15, 2020
nypost.com
Authorities broke up a
party at a Chelsea venue
aptly named Rogue Space
where they found 205 revel-
ers who had gathered to
drink and smoke hookahs in
violation of city and state
COVID-19 rules.
The early-morning raid
Friday took place after depu-
ties from the New York City
Sheriff ’s Department went
online and saw that a party
had been scheduled for the
space at 516 W. 26th St.
The deputies saw a white
box truck at the location
marked BOOM VIP Events
and workers unloading ta-
bles, chairs and velvet
ropes. Melissa Klein
and Joe MarinoHookah
party bust
By Peter HellmanNormally, when ICE sends a de-
portee back to their home country,
the US government picks up the tab
for the plane ticket.
Rudy Kurniawan, however, isn’t
interested in a freebie.
“They’ll give him the worst seat on
the plane,” said lawyer Jerry
Mooney of his client, who would
rather splurge on first class when
he’s sent back to Jakarta, Indonesia.
In the 2000s, Kurniawan was a
free-spending star of the haute wine
world — chartering private jets and
owning a Mercedes, a Land Rover
and a Lamborghini. Dining out, he
didn’t hesitate to round up his tip to
the nearest thousand. But in 2012 he
was unmasked as a master counter-
feiter of the rarest bottles. His
wealthy victims, confident that they
were too smart to be fooled, pur-
chased an astonishing $30 million of
faux wine from him. Nearly every
bottle had been fashioned by his
own hand.
The now-44-year-old is the only
person ever prosecuted by the feds
for selling fake wine. He was re-
leased from a Texas prison on Nov.
6, after serving nearly nine years —
straight into the hands of ICE. Kur-niawan now awaits deportation at
an ICE holding facility in El Paso.
Kurniawan arrived in the US in
the mid-1990s on a student visa. Be-
fore discovering wine, he worked
part-time in a California golf pro
shop. The epiphany that changed his
life, he claimed, came at a 1999 fam-
ily dinner at San Francisco’s Fisher-
man’s Wharf. Scanning the wine list,
Kurniawan ordered the priciest bot-
tle: Opus One, a so-called “cult”
Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon
that cost about $300. From the first
taste, he was hooked. The next day,
he got busy purchasing every vin-
tage of Opus One he could.
Kurniawan discovered that he
had a talent for precisely re-
membering what he tasted. It
wasn’t long before he was ac-
cepted into exclusive circles
of wealthy American collec-
tors. (Kurniawan claimed
that he was funded by a $1
million monthly allowance
from his family, but one of his
victims — billionaire busi-
nessman Bill Koch — sent in-
vestigators to comb Asia,
where they found no evi-
dence of this wealth.)
Kurniawan became known
as a wine dealer with kingpinclients. He also began auctioning
oceans of wine. In just two auctions
in 2006, $35 million worth of Kurnia-
wan’s bottles were sold.
Between 2004 and 2011, using his
American Express Black card, Kur-
niawan purchased $40 million
worth of top-end wine in the US and
Europe. But as authentic treasures
grew harder to find at any cost, Kur-
niawan didn’t give up. Instead, he
turned to making his own in his
Arcadia, Calif., kitchen — and
was able to fool even major
wine critics. His basic method:
Blend old commercial-grade
wine from France with young
American wine made from
the same variety of grapes.
Recycling his old bottles,
he would relabel them
as legendary French
vintages.
Kurniawan’s downfall
dates to an auction in
April 2008, when he put
up seven lots of red
wine from a sought-after
Burgundian grower, Do-maine Ponsot, at prices up to
$70,000 per case.
The only problem, according to
the domain’s fourth-generation pro-
prietor, Laurent Ponsot, was that
those wines, vintages 1945 to 1971,
could not have been real — because
at that time, his father did not yet
have access to the famed vineyards
claimed as their origin.
When the FBI arrested Kurniawan
in March 2012, agents discovered a
sophisticated in-house operation at
the home he shared with his mother.
On hand were 18,000 expertly made
fake labels bearing the names of the
top French vineyards.
Kurniawan’s case might never
have been taken up if not for the ef-
fort of NY federal prosecutor Jason
Hernandez. Shortly before Christ-
mas 2013, a federal jury took under
two hours to find the defendant
guilty of wine fraud and making
false statements to a loan company.
Incredibly, though, he may still be
able to bounce back. Kurniawan
could even go right on copycatting
sought-after wine, so long as he told
purchasers that he made it.
“Collectors would love to know
what a great old wine tastes like,”
said Mooney. “Rudy already knows.
He could make it to order.”Genius
in a
bottle
Forger fooled wine world with faked rarities
Mel Hill Photography; Getty Images (2)tle: Opus One, a so-called “cult”
Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon
that cost about $300. From the first
taste, he was hooked. The next day,
he got busy purchasing every vin-Kurniawan discovered that he
had a talent for precisely re-
membering what he tasted. Itturned to making his own in his
Arcadia, Calif., kitchen — and
was able to fool even major
wine critics. His basic method:
Blend old commercial-grade
wine from France with young
American wine made from
the same variety of grapes.
Recycling his old bottles,
he would relabel themwine from a sought-after
Burgundian grower, Do-Forger fooled wine world with faked rarities
pOur me:
Rudy
Kurniawan
auctioned off
millions of
dollars of bogus
collector wines
that he created
in his California
home. He was
arrested in
March 2012.Genius
in a
Forger fooled wine world with faked raritiesForger fooled wine world with faked rarities
pOur me:
Rudy
Kurniawan
auctioned off
millions of
dollars of bogus
collector wines
that he created
in his California
home. He was
arrested in
March 2012.Order in the
cOrk: This bottle was
used as trial evidence
against Kurniawan.The Army has identified
the five American soldiers
killed when their Black
Hawk helicopter went
down during a routine
peacekeeping
mission in
Egypt’s Sinai
Peninsula.
The Thurs-
day crash
took the lives
of Capt. Seth Vernon Van-
dekamp, 31, of Katy, Texas;
Chief Warrant Officer 3
Dallas Gearld Garza, 34, of
Fayetteville, N.C.; Chief
Warrant Officer 2 Marwan
Sameh Ghabour (inset), 27,
of Marlborough, Mass.;
Staff Sgt. Kyle Robert
McKee, 35, of Painesville,
Ohio, and Sgt. Jeremy Cain
Sherman, 23, of Watseka, Ill.
They were part of an in-
ternational contingent that
monitors the 1979 Israeli-
Egyptian peace agreement.
Vandekamp was a doctor
assigned to a medical com-
pany, according to the Mili-
tary Times. A French
peacekeeper and Czech of-
ficer also were killed, and a
sixth American on the heli-
copter was injured.
Initial reports said six
Americans had died.
There were no signs of an
attack and officials said
Thursday the crash ap-
peared to be caused by
technical failure.
Melissa Klein, with WiresGIs killed
in copter
crash ID’d