The Wine Con

In the early 2000s, a young upstart named Rudy Kurniawan exploded into the world of fine wine, where the rich spend more on a bottle than some people make in a year. He was spending up to a million dollars a month on rare wine at auctions, throwing lavish dinners and becoming the darling of the wine world. He also became the center of one of the most outrageous scams of all-time, conning some of the richest collectors in the world. Kurniawan was celebrated for building a cellar full of the rarest wines, selling many of his bottles for record-breaking amounts of money, but he was hiding a secret. After crossing billionaire wine collector Bill Koch, the dark truth about Kurniawan was exposed. The episode features interviews with Koch, novelist Jay McInerney, Rudy's friend and filmmaker Arthur Sarkissian, and takes viewers around the world with investigators, wine experts and former FBI agents as they uncover lie after lie.