| Abstract: |
As much as US$550 million worth of fine wine from imprisoned counterfeiter Rudy Kurniawan may still be in the market, according to Maureen Downey. Wine counterfeiter Rudy Kurniawan may have faked as much as $550m worth of wine between 2002 and 2012, according to Maureen Downey Downey, a fine wine authentication expert and founder of Chai Consulting, made the claim last month in London when considering the amount of fake fine wine that may be circulating the worldwide secondary market. Speaking about Kurniawan specifically, she said that he was “single-handedly responsible for $550m [of counterfeit wine] at current market rates, and almost none of it has been removed from the market; it is being resold over and over again. ” When asked by db to account for such a high figure, Downey said that Kurniawan was selling more than $1 million worth of fine wine each month from 2002 until his arrest in 2012, and estimated that he was responsible for as much as $150m worth of fake wine over a 10-year period. |
