Man jailed over $30m vintage wine fraud in US

Top wine collector sentenced to 10 years in prison for making and selling millions of dollars of counterfeit beverage.

A man in the US once considered one of the world’s top wine collectors has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for manufacturing and selling millions of dollars of fake vintage wines.

The Manhattan federal court in New York also forced Rudy Kurniawan, who was born in Indonesia, to pay $28.4m in restitution to compensate seven unsuspecting consumers.

Kurniawan, 37, was convicted by a federal jury last December of one count of mail fraud for creating and selling counterfeit wines, and one count of wire fraud for defrauding a financing company in connection with a $3m loan.

Judge Richard Berman said Kurniawan’s victims lost close to $30m as a result of the scheme, which ran between 2004 and 2012.

Al Jazeera’s Kristen Saloomey reports from New York.

Source: Al Jazeera