In the early 2000s, Rudy Kurniawan established a reputation as a wine connoisseur and became a regular at auctions for expensive and rare vintages. He was particularly well known for buying large quantities of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, earning him the nickname “Dr. Conti.” At one auction in 2006, he sold more than $24 million worth of wine — more than anyone had ever sold in a single wine auction by a considerable margin. Over time, however, certain wine collectors, including billionaire Bill Koch, began discovering fraudulent bottles in their collections. Dr. Conti was scamming them all.
Koch had purchased more than 200 bottles from Kurniawan for more than $2 million, and was rankled by being scammed. He used his considerable wealth and influence to lead an investigation into Kurniawan. In 2012, the FBI raided Kurniawan’s home and discovered a highly advanced setup for creating counterfeit wines, complete with all the equipment he needed to fool the experts. His primary method was putting cheaper wines into pricier bottles. While they might not have tasted right, most extremely valuable wines are never actually drunk, just kept in collections, so in many cases any difference in the flavor might never have been detected.
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In 2021, Kurniawan was ordered to pay back millions of dollars to seven collectors he had tricked and was deported to Indonesia. During his career, he sold thousands of bottles, and it’s highly likely that many of his frauds are still hiding in private collections.
