| Coming closely on the heels of fraud allegedly committed on the American mining billionaire Koch and reported recently on delWine, a multimillion dollar fraud of another kind has been doing the rounds in the USA where a wine merchant destroyed US$300m dollars of wine to cover up for the wine belonging to his customers he had been stealing.
Mark Anderson, 58, from Sausalito , California , has been charged with 19 criminal counts including arson, fraud and tax evasion.
Anderson, who ran fine wine storage company Sausalito Cellars, used part of the Wines Central warehouse in Vallejo , near San Francisco , to store his clients' wines.
In October 2005, the 240,000 sq/ft warehouse burned to the ground, destroying around 6m bottles of wine. According to reports, the warehouse stored wines for 92 different wineries, including cult Napa producers.
Saintsbury, the respected Carneros Pinot Noir producer, lost all of its older wines dating back to its first vintage in 1979. Fellow Californian winery Justin Vineyards lost 15,000 cases of wine, 38% of its total annual production, in the blaze.
Insurance companies estimate the total damage to be between $250m and $300m.
Apparently, Anderson stole the wine he was storing, sold it on through a separate company using several aliases, and set fire to the old US Navy warehouse in order to cover up the embezzlement. He faces several years in prison.'
Anderson was granted bail on Monday and set free against a bond of $500,000.
Details are at http://www.decanter.com |
