Last month, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California announced charges against five people in an unusual bribery scheme. This particular case was not about paying off law enforcement or convincing building inspectors to overlook an unsafe structure; instead, it involved bribes given to retail buyers for favorable placement of wine and other types of alcoholic beverages.
According to the office’s announcement, the bribes took several forms, including “prepaid gift cards valued at up to $1,000 each, luxury and designer items such as watches, purses and golf and exercise equipment.” Four of the five people charged pleaded guilty, while the fifth entered a deferred prosecution arrangement. A Los Angeles Times article about one of the people who pleaded guilty, Patrick Briones, noted that he had taken bribes in exchange for selecting and placing certain wines at the Albertson’s chain of grocery stores, where he worked as a buyer.
Is financial wrongdoing in the wine industry becoming more commonplace? That’s one of the big takeaways from the latest installment of The New York Times‘ DealBook newsletter. There, Ian Frisch cites the Briones case as one of a growing number of scams rocking the industry at a time when it faces financial uncertainty.
One expert on wine-related crimes, Maureen Downey, suggested that there’s something inherent in the industry that leads to various forms of deception. “It’s getting bigger and getting worse because nobody wants to talk about it,” Downey told the Times.
Turns Out a Ponzi Scheme Involving Rare Wine Bottles Is Still a Ponzi Scheme
It’s a particularly ambitious scamBribes are not the only form of criminal wrongdoing cited in the DealBook article. Frisch also cites the recent sentencing of James Wellesley to 10 years in prison for his role in a Ponzi scheme that purportedly involved rare bottles of wine. (Wellesley also used the aliases Andrew Fuller and Andrew Templar in doing this work.) It isn’t surprising that some bad actors would look to take advantage of the implicit need for trust in the industry, but it is notable that so many examples are coming to light now.
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