How a Fake Bottle of Wine Sparked a $35 Million Fight for Justice

On this episode of Our American Stories, it began with a few rare bottles and a collector who thought he’d found perfection. But what looked like the discovery of a lifetime turned out to be one of the most elaborate wine scams in modern history. Billionaire Bill Koch, known for his meticulous taste and love of authenticity, discovered that his prized collection included counterfeits, some forged so well that even experts were fooled. Rather than quietly move on, he poured millions into uncovering the truth. The investigation led to Rudy Kurniawan, a charismatic con artist whose deception stunned the wine world and exposed the lengths people will go to chase prestige. Here's Bill with the story.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American stories.
This next story, well, it's our rule of Law series,
where we tell stories about what happens when the rule
of law is present or absent in our lives. And
Alex Today brings us an unusual story from a guy
named Bill Koch, an entrepreneur with thirteen hundred employees. Here's Bill.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
You know what I really like if you look at
a great painting, you could tell the love the artist
in creating it, And to me, that's precious and that's
what creates, in my opinion, great art, you know, is
the love for what the artist was doing. And then
food too, you know, with an outstanding chef, you could

(00:55):
taste that, Oh my god, this tastes differently because he
put a lot of love into it, which means he
put a lot of energy and thought and everything else
into it. And the same with a bricklayer. You know,
if he really loves his work, he takes a little
extra care in doing it other than slapping it together.
And the same thing with wine, the great wine, she

(01:16):
could really taste the love that the vintnor had in
making it. And so that to me is highly offensive.
When someone is faking it.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
Bill found out that four bottles that were sold to
him as Thomas Jefferson's were fake, and then he found
out that more were too.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
There's a huge coat of silence because the faker doesn't
want to know that he's faking. The middleman who's selling
the wine doesn't really want to know if it's fake.
In fact, there was one big auction house that was
selling a lot of wine in New York and auctions

(01:57):
and they had to have this retailer with them to
get through the laws. And the guy who owns the
retail shop said, why are you selling a lot of
fake wine in this auction And the head in house
council versus the outhouse council said, authenticity is an opinion

(02:21):
and we're not in the opinion business. We're in the
business of making our margin, So just ignore it. And
then the guys who buy the fake wine that they
find out it's fake, they want to get rid of
it and get their money back, so primarily either dump
it into the auction market, or they give it to
a charity to auction off are they find some sucker

(02:43):
that will buy it. Some of the fake wines I
bought were from charity auctions because the guy gave it
to him and he got a tax deduction on it,
and some others schmuck got them, mainly me, I got him,
and so I just said, I'm out of on a crusade,

(03:06):
a legal crusade to shine a bright light on it.
And I also, I guess because when I was younger,
I was taken advantage of by people when I was naive,
and so I said, I just hate being cheated, hated.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
One of the fakers actually offered to give Bill all
of his money back, and Bill said, no, We're going
to court.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
That's right. Well, I ended up in one real long lawsuit,
which we won hands down. And then after that everybody
wanted to settle with me. And there was one guy
who said, well, I sold you these fake bottles. Would
you give him back to me so I could give
him back to the guy that sold him to me.

(03:53):
And so I said, all right, I will, But then
I engraved on the bottles counterfeit and gave him back
to it. I haven't heard from him since. One big
faker sent me a fax saying, why are you worried
about fake wine? Even Jesus turned water into wine and

(04:16):
I'm hoping I could get him into a court in
the Bible Belt, but I couldn't. One guy had a
huge collection of pre World War two bottles of Petrus,
which is one of the best wines in the world,
and oversized bottles. And I bought a bottle of nineteen

(04:38):
twenty one Petrus and a double magnum and I opened
it up. God, that tasted like the cheapest wine I've
ever had. And I looked at it and there was
an article about this wine, about how it was found
and who found it, et cetera. And it was rated
one hundred out of one hundred. That's why I bought

(04:59):
this bottle. And what the guy did, the faker, I
mean they have a hardy runstock, poured in nineteen fifty
seven wind into the bottle and he made a fake label.
We even found the place where he bought the bottle,
and we found where he had the labels printed. And
he poured in fifty seven wine, put in some juice

(05:23):
that made it taste old and smell. I said, what
he did was put moosepiss in it for me. And
we took this bottle to the Petres and they said
they never made big bottles pre nineteen forty five. And
this one guy who had this huge collection of huge
bottles called me up and said, are all our bottles fake?

(05:45):
And we said yeah, how do you know? Well we
went to Petres and they said they never made them,
and they said, oh my god. And then a month
later he called up and said, why don't you buy
these bottles for me? And I said why He said, well,
it's good evidence. I said, well, I don't need to
pay you. I'll just subpoena you. Unfortunately, crusades turn out

(06:09):
to be long and very expensive.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
Bill has spent thirty five million dollars going after the
fakers over what was originally a four hundred thousand dollars
wine fraud. And some might say that's a crusade, not
worth it, spending eighty seven and a half times the cost,
But for Bill Coke it is. The crusade isn't about

(06:32):
the wines. I mean, it's a little bit about the wines,
but Bill could have bought new wines for far less.
What it's really about to him is the rule of law.
And Bill's pursuit of the rule of law ended up
exposing an industry of tens of millions of fake wine.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
I try to say, well, it's bad business to cheat
when you get.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
Caught and great job is always by Alex and thanks
to Bill Coke, a rule of law, because let's face it,
sometimes the cops can't get these people, and sometimes, let's
face it, no one else can. Sometimes we the citizens,
have to go out and find these fakers. But if
we can't bring him to a court of law, if
we can't have the rule of law, then we have

(07:14):
nothing at all. Bill Koch's story, his crusade against fake
wine and again and against fake everything here on our
American Stories, Lee Habib here and I'm inviting you to
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(07:55):
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