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   DealBook: Wine’s fraud problem
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             April 25, 2026
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          Good morning. Andrew here.
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         <span>
          We’ve got a fun story for you this morning about a remarkable series of fraud cases in the wine industry. But before we get to that, a quick thought about the Justice Department’s decision to drop its investigation into Jay Powell. The decision, it appears, could pave the way for Kevin Warsh to be confirmed as the next Fed chair. The big question now is whether it will also prompt Powell to step aside completely, even though he could remain on the Fed board until 2028. With the case over, many expect Powell to step down. However, Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said she would “not hesitate” to reopen the inquiry if warranted. Which could create new complications for Powell’s decision to stay or leave the board.
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          Sign up here.
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             Joseph Gough
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        <h2 class="css-10nzuqq" style="color:#000;font:700 25px/32px arial,sans-serif;margin:0 0 10px">
         <span>
          ‘Wine and fraud go hand in hand’
         </span>
        </h2>
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              By Ian Frisch
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        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          A British con man was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Monday for swindling nearly $100 million from more than 140 victims. The financial asset he used to build his scheme? It wasn’t crypto or real estate. It was wine.
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          The con man, James Wellesley, told his investors they were making loans to wine collectors, and that he was holding those collectors’ valuable wines as collateral, according to
         </span>
         <a class="css-sdwaa1" style="color:#286ed0;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline">
          federal prosecutors
         </a>
         <span>
          . Unfortunately for those who trusted him with their money, neither the wine nor the collectors existed.
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          The high-profile case is one of many recent incidents of scammers turning grapes into financial crimes. Patrick Briones, the former top wine buyer at the grocery chain Albertsons, pleaded guilty in October to bribery and conspiracy, after prosecutors alleged that he’d accepted kickbacks like fancy vacations and expensive watches from wine sellers. And the winemaker Jeffry Hill was sentenced in January for orchestrating a $2.5 million grape scam in which he fraudulently mislabeled his bottles.
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          This new wave of wine fraud has occurred as the industry experiences a severe downturn, with climate change disrupting grape-growing conditions and consumers drinking less. According to Silicon Valley Bank, the number of wineries with “very weak” financial health has nearly tripled since 2022.
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          Experts are hesitant to link the surge in crime to the broader business environment. Rather, they say financial crime is a long-running problem that’s practically embedded in the industry.
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          Frances Dinkelspiel, the author of “Tangled Vines,” a book about an arson attack at a California wine house, says it’s the nature of the product. “I think this industry attracts people who want to cheat, because there’s a certain mystique around wine,” she said. “Wine and fraud go hand in hand.”
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          Maureen Downey, an expert on wine fraud and the founder of Chai Consulting, blames the proliferation of wine crime on the industry’s murky supply chain, saying that it’s “more opaque than guns or illicit drugs.”
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          “It’s getting bigger and getting worse because nobody wants to talk about it,” Downey said of the crimes. “The producers don’t want to admit that it’s happening, victims don’t want to come forward and governments don’t want to invest time going after it.”
         </span>
        </p>
        <h2 class="css-10nzuqq" style="color:#000;font:700 25px/32px arial,sans-serif;margin:0 0 10px">
         <span>
          A well-cellared trend
         </span>
        </h2>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          One of the first modern criminal scandals to rock the wine world came in the early 1990s amid the meteoric rise in popularity of white zinfandel, a blush wine invented by the budget winery Sutter Home. Its sweet taste and low price made it extremely popular.
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          In 1993, the famed vintner Fred Franzia, whose spout-laden white zinfandel boxes filled many a baby boomer’s fridge at the time, pleaded guilty to misrepresenting lower-quality grapes as zinfandel. His firm paid $2.5 million in fines, and Franzia completed community service. This type of fraud, dubbed “blessing of the loads,” extended to other wineries and, according to
         </span>
         <a class="css-sdwaa1" style="color:#286ed0;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline">
          The Los Angeles Times
         </a>
         <span>
          , cost consumers $55 million at the time.
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          It was the first glimpse into how far Napa Valley wineries would go to increase profits, but the headlines soon faded into the background as wine became more popular, with sales of red wine jumping 39 percent in 1992 alone. Franzia overcame his white zin scandal and, in 2002, launched “Two Buck Chuck” through Trader Joe’s, which sold over 800 million bottles over the next decade.
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          An ensuing lack of scandal in Napa Valley during the 2000s was likely not a function of less crime being committed, but of a lack of enforcement. “There had been a lull,” Benjamin Kingsley, the former assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, told DealBook, adding that the geographical and cultural isolation of Napa Valley made it especially hard to investigate.
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          “The ability to make a case is entirely contingent on a really dogged agent and a dogged A.U.S.A.,” he said, referring to his prior position.
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          These prosecutorial stars aligned after the 2008 financial crisis. Money flowed back into Napa Valley, crime followed and big cases started getting made.
         </span>
        </p>
        <h2 class="css-10nzuqq" style="color:#000;font:700 25px/32px arial,sans-serif;margin:0 0 10px">
         <span>
          The rise of big wine crime
         </span>
        </h2>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          Rudy Kurniawan is one of the most prolific scammers in the world of modern wine. Between 2002 and 2012, he sold an estimated $150 million in fraudulent wine. The subject of the 2016 documentary film “Sour Grapes,” Kurniawan preyed on the gullibility of unsophisticated wine drinkers who tried to buy prestige through acquiring rare vintages. In 2009, the billionaire Bill Koch sued Kurniawan, and in 2013 the con man was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          Kurniawan seemed to be a bellwether for a certain type of criminal that had embedded itself into the wine ecosystem. His crimes involved more money and were more sophisticated than most previous wine scams (with notable exceptions: In 2005, the winemaker Mark Anderson, for example, burned down a warehouse that housed 4.5 million bottles of wine — with a value of roughly $250 million — to erase evidence of his fraudulent business practices).
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          After Kurniawan was arrested, investigators exposed a flurry of additional frauds, forgeries and fakes. In 2015, a bookkeeper for Whitehall Lane Winery was arrested and charged for
         </span>
         <a class="css-sdwaa1" style="color:#286ed0;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline">
          embezzling
         </a>
         <span>
          over $600,000 and, that same year, the longtime wine dealer John E. Fox was busted for running a decades-long Ponzi scheme in which he sold “wine futures” to investors. Fox admitted to selling, or trying to sell, $20 million worth of “phantom wine” between 2010 and 2015.
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          Also around that time, burglars stole $550,000 worth of wine from the famed Bay Area restaurant The French Laundry, and the well-known Napa vintner Robert Dahl killed his business investor Emad Tawfilis after Tawfilis discovered that Dahl had been misappropriating funds. After chasing Tawfilis through his vineyard with a gun and shooting him, Dahl turned the weapon on himself.
         </span>
        </p>
        <h2 class="css-10nzuqq" style="color:#000;font:700 25px/32px arial,sans-serif;margin:0 0 10px">
         <span>
          Ripening conditions
         </span>
        </h2>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          The wine industry has experienced pronounced economic headwinds over the past few years, which have been some of Napa Valley’s most challenging. “I started talking about a market correction in 2017,” said Rob McMillan, an executive vice president at Silicon Valley Bank who authors
         </span>
         <a class="css-sdwaa1" style="color:#286ed0;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline">
          the bank’s annual report
         </a>
         <span>
          on the wine industry. “But it’s worse than I expected.”
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          According to the International Organization of Vine and Wine, wine consumption is at its lowest level since the 1960s, and
         </span>
         <a class="css-sdwaa1" style="color:#286ed0;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline">
          Gallup
         </a>
         <span>
          found that overall alcohol consumption was at its lowest level in 90 years, falling to 54 percent among U.S. adults in 2025 from 60 percent in 2023.
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          This has hit wineries, especially in Napa Valley, particularly hard. “Thirty percent of the industry is really struggling,” McMillan said. The middle is stable, he added, and the top 20 percent of winemakers are doing well — another instance of a K-shaped trajectory.
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          With Napa Valley’s future in jeopardy, crime may seem even more tempting to desperate vintners. And the market’s very nature makes it easy to commit fraud, forgery, bribery and theft.
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          A lot of wineries are small businesses, which attracts infusions of unstructured capital that are easier to manipulate than institutional investments. The regulatory framework and criminal enforcement surrounding wine have proven spotty, and unlike most products, determining a wine’s legitimacy requires an element of technical sophistication that is extremely hard to master. Many wine drinkers, faced with a blind taste test, would be hard-pressed to distinguish a $2,000 bottle of wine from a $20 bottle. Because of this, many believe that fraud will find its way into wine, regardless of economic conditions.
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          “Through all economies over the last 30 years, we’ve had crime,” McMillan said. “There are so many ways to create fraud through wine.
         </span>
         <span style="font-style:italic">
          That’s
         </span>
         <span>
          the problem, not the state of the economy.”
         </span>
        </p>
        <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="width:100%">
         <tbody>
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           <td height="30">
           </td>
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           <h3 style="color:#000;font:700 17px/25px arial,sans-serif;margin:5px 0 30px 0;letter-spacing:.2px">
            <span>
             IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
            </span>
           </h3>
          </td>
         </tbody>
        </table>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span style="font-weight:700;font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:#000">
          The Justice Department dropped its criminal probe of Jerome H. Powell.
         </span>
         <span>
          The
         </span>
         <a class="css-sdwaa1" style="color:#286ed0;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline">
          end of the inquiry
         </a>
         <span>
          , which focused on whether Powell, the Fed chair, lied to Congress about costly renovations of the central bank’s headquarters, could clear the path to confirmation for Kevin M. Warsh, President Trump’s pick for to be Powell’s successor. But it may not end concerns about political interference at the Fed.
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span style="font-weight:700;font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:#000">
          Spirit Airlines is in advanced talks to secure a government loan.
         </span>
         <span>
          The distressed airline, which has filed for bankruptcy twice in the last two years, would get an infusion of up to
         </span>
         <a class="css-sdwaa1" style="color:#286ed0;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline">
          $500 million
         </a>
         <span>
          from the Trump administration, a loan that would give the government a more senior claim on assets than other creditors. While the deal could potentially save thousands of jobs, it also raised questions about the role of government in the private sector.
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span style="font-weight:700;font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:#000">
          The Trump administration debuted a system to refund tariffs.
         </span>
         <span>
          This week, businesses began to submit documentation to
         </span>
         <a class="css-sdwaa1" style="color:#286ed0;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline">
          recover what they paid in tariffs
         </a>
         <span>
          that were later struck down by the Supreme Court. More than $166 billion was collected from the tariffs.
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span style="font-weight:700;font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:#000">
          SpaceX struck another A.I. deal.
         </span>
         <span>
          Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company said on Tuesday that it had
         </span>
         <a class="css-sdwaa1" style="color:#286ed0;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline">
          reached an agreement
         </a>
         <span>
          with the artificial intelligence start-up Cursor, which makes code-writing software, that includes the option to acquire the company for $60 billion later this year. Musk, who for years said that SpaceX was on a mission to colonize Mars, has
         </span>
         <a class="css-sdwaa1" style="color:#286ed0;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline">
          put more emphasis on A.I.
         </a>
         <span>
          as SpaceX prepares to go public.
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span style="font-weight:700;font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:#000">
          More big deals:
         </span>
         <span>
          Amazon is investing
         </span>
         <a class="css-sdwaa1" style="color:#286ed0;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline">
          up to $25 billion more
         </a>
         <span>
          in Anthropic, and Google has committed to invest as much as
         </span>
         <a class="css-sdwaa1" style="color:#286ed0;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline">
          $40 billion
         </a>
         <span>
          in the company. Tesla expects to
         </span>
         <a class="css-sdwaa1" style="color:#286ed0;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline">
          spend $25 billion this year
         </a>
         <span>
          on its own A.I. pursuits, among other things. Lululemon
         </span>
         <a class="css-sdwaa1" style="color:#286ed0;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline">
          hired a new C.E.O
         </a>
         <span>
          . And the fight between Elon Musk and Sam Altman is
         </span>
         <a class="css-sdwaa1" style="color:#286ed0;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline">
          heading to court
         </a>
         <span>
          next week.
         </span>
        </p>
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             <span class="css-1hnedf7" style="color:#666;font:normal 12px georgia,serif">
              John Ternus, Apple’s head of hardware engineering, will succeed Tim Cook as the company’s chief executive in September.
             </span>
             <span style="margin:0;font:11px/11px georgia,serif;color:#888;letter-spacing:.01em;padding-left:5px">
              Stephen Lam/Reuters
             </span>
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        <h2 class="css-10nzuqq" style="color:#000;font:700 25px/32px arial,sans-serif;margin:0 0 10px">
         <span>
          Apple’s next C.E.O.
         </span>
        </h2>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          Apple announced on Monday that John Ternus, its 50-year-old head of hardware engineering, would
         </span>
         <a class="css-sdwaa1" style="color:#286ed0;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline">
          succeed Tim Cook
         </a>
         <span>
          as C.E.O. Cook, who will become the company’s executive chairman, is a difficult act to follow: During his tenure, Apple’s value
         </span>
         <a class="css-sdwaa1" style="color:#286ed0;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline">
          ballooned more than tenfold to $4 trillion
         </a>
         <span>
          .
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          DealBook talked with Kalley Huang, who covers Apple for The New York Times, about Apple’s big transition.
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span style="font-weight:700;font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:#000">
          Was this at all a surprising choice?
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          To Apple’s closest watchers, no. Since joining the company in 2001, Ternus has risen through its ranks. And in 2021, he became a part of its executive leadership team as head of hardware engineering. If you’ve regularly tuned into Apple’s keynote events, especially in recent years, you’d be familiar with Ternus. Beyond that, Apple had taken steps to introduce Ternus to the general public. Last month, for example, he
         </span>
         <a class="css-sdwaa1" style="color:#286ed0;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline">
          appeared
         </a>
         <span>
          on Good Morning America to discuss the company’s new laptop. But I would guess that the average consumer started paying attention to Ternus only after Apple’s announcement on Monday.
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span style="font-weight:700;font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:#000">
          You published a
         </span>
         <a class="css-sdwaa1" style="-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:700;font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:#000">
          story
         </a>
         <span style="font-weight:700;font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:#000">
          yesterday that outlined the challenges facing Apple as Ternus takes over. It’s a big list: navigating ties to China, wooing Trump, building a new management team and figuring out A.I. Which challenge is seen as the biggest stretch for Ternus?
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          Politics are never easy. That’s particularly the case here. Cook is a bit of a Trump whisperer, which means big shoes to fill for Ternus. He has been an engineer in Silicon Valley for all of his adult life, and he doesn’t have much experience with geopolitical tap dancing. Luckily for Ternus, he will have time to learn the ropes. Cook is staying at Apple as executive chair. The company has said his role will include “engaging with policymakers around the world.”
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span style="font-weight:700;font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:#000">
          There’s a perception that Cook was good at making money but not at creating innovative products. How is Ternus’s reputation similar and how is it different?
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          Cook and Ternus are both known as mild-mannered, even-handed and detail-oriented. They’re also both considered skilled managers who are good at navigating internal politics without rocking the boat. And their reputations are similar in that, internally, Ternus is known more for maintaining products than for developing new ones.
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          Recently, though, he has been involved with newer and funner products, like Apple’s experimentation with foldable phones and the iPhone Air.
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          There are high hopes that, under Ternus, Apple leans further into that sort of product. After all, he is the company’s first chief executive in three decades to have spent his career working on hardware.
         </span>
        </p>
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        <h2 class="css-10nzuqq" style="color:#000;font:700 25px/32px arial,sans-serif;margin:0 0 10px">
         <span>
          Quiz: Prediction market manipulation
         </span>
        </h2>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span style="font-style:italic">
          This question comes from a recent Times article. Click an answer to see if you’re right. (The link will be free.)
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span>
          As prediction sites like Polymarket and Kalshi have grown, so have
         </span>
         <a class="css-sdwaa1" style="color:#286ed0;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline">
          concerns
         </a>
         <span>
          about insider trading and market manipulation on such platforms.
         </span>
        </p>
        <p style="font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;color:#333;margin:0 0 15px">
         <span style="font-weight:700;font-family:arial,sans-serif;color:#000">
          Unusual activity on Polymarket recently led French authorities to investigate whether someone who was attempting to profit from a prediction market had tampered with what?
         </span>
        </p>
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               <a class="css-sdwaa1" style="color:#286ed0;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;vertical-align:middle">
                Voting machines
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               <a class="css-sdwaa1" style="color:#286ed0;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font:normal 17px/25px georgia,serif;vertical-align:middle">
                A football match
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                A weather sensor
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