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"The public at large needs to know our food and drinks are safe ... and not some potentially unsafe homemade witch's brew," U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman said as he announced the prison term for Rudy Kurniawan. He also ordered him to forfeit $20 million and pay $28.4 million in restitution.
Rudy’s lawyer, Jerome H. Mooney had asked for leniency, saying his client got swept up in the thrill of mixing with California's wealthiest people. "He was insecure, very insecure," Mooney said. "He wanted to be them. He wanted to be part of it.” He said Kurniawan's victims were wealthy and aware that counterfeit wines were a frequent occurrence in the marketplace.
"Nobody died. Nobody lost their savings. Nobody lost their job," he said. The lawyer said the two and a half years that Kurniawan had already served in prison was enough of penalty, since he had lost everything and was now branded a cheat as well.
However, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stanley Okula had described Kurniawan as the kingpin of counterfeiters- a man who turned his Arcadia home into a laboratory where he poured wine into what appeared to be vintage bottles before attaching elegant fake labels and selling them for tens of millions of dollars.
He found the defense lawyer's comments quite shocking, especially as he suggested that Kurniawan should get lenient treatment because he ripped off rich people rather than the poor."Fraud is fraud," he said, telling judge Berman, ‘he did it to line his own pockets.’
Judge Berman concluded that Kurniawan had caused losses close to $30 million, primarily to seven victims. One of them was William Koch, a billionaire yachtsman, entrepreneur and wine investor with whom the defendant had settled mutually at the time of previous reporting by delWine:
Kurniawan is a 37-year-old Indonesian citizen of Chinese descent who had moved to the US at the age of 16, had his own request for political asylum turned down and was ordered to be deported in 2001. He continued to live in the United States after his appeal was rejected in 2003.
According to ABC news which has published the Release from Associated Press , Kurniawan lowered his head as the judge explained the sentence and described his quest as a "bold, grandiose, unscrupulous but destined-to-fail con." Before he was sentenced, Kurniawan twice apologized, saying "I'm really sorry" and expressing a desire to take care of his mother, who lives in California after receiving asylum. Kurniawan will be deported after serving his sentence. |