EP 76: Rudy Kurniawan: Wine Connoisseur? Or Total Fraudster?
09/07/21 • 36 min
This week on Hashtag History, we are discussing Rudy Kurniawan, a world famous wine connoisseur, collector, seller...and total fraudster. In 2012 when the Federal Bureau of Investigations raided Kurniawan’s Arcadia, California home, they found the place littered with empty wine bottles, detached labels, corking tools, wax for sealing bottles, and extensive wine tasting notes. It would appear that Kurniawan was mixing cheaper wines, studying his tasting notes to blend the tastes as seamlessly as possible, and then putting them in bottles with expensive labels and passing them off as rare, vintage wines. Kurniawan would become the first person in the United States to be tried and convicted of wine fraud.
Follow Hashtag History on Instagram @hashtaghistory_podcast for all of the pictures mentioned in this episode.
Citations for all sources can be located on our website at www.HashtagHistory-Pod.com.
You can also check out our website for super cute merch! You can now sponsor a cocktail and get a shout-out on air! Just head to www.buymeacoffee.com/hashtaghistory or head to the Support tab on our website!
Finally, you can locate us on www.Patreon.com/hashtaghistory where you can donate $1 a month to our Books and Booze Supply. All of your support goes a long ways and we are endlessly grateful! To show our gratitude, all Patreon Supporters receive an automatic 15% OFF all merchandise in our merchandise store, bonus Hashtag Hangouts episodes, a shoutout on social media, and stickers!
THANKS FOR LISTENING!
Rachel and Leah
This week on Hashtag History, we are discussing Rudy Kurniawan, a world famous wine connoisseur, collector, seller...and total fraudster. In 2012 when the Federal Bureau of Investigations raided Kurniawan’s Arcadia, California home, they found the place littered with empty wine bottles, detached labels, corking tools, wax for sealing bottles, and extensive wine tasting notes. It would appear that Kurniawan was mixing cheaper wines, studying his tasting notes to blend the tastes as seamlessly as possible, and then putting them in bottles with expensive labels and passing them off as rare, vintage wines. Kurniawan would become the first person in the United States to be tried and convicted of wine fraud.
Follow Hashtag History on Instagram @hashtaghistory_podcast for all of the pictures mentioned in this episode.
Citations for all sources can be located on our website at www.HashtagHistory-Pod.com.
You can also check out our website for super cute merch! You can now sponsor a cocktail and get a shout-out on air! Just head to www.buymeacoffee.com/hashtaghistory or head to the Support tab on our website!
Finally, you can locate us on www.Patreon.com/hashtaghistory where you can donate $1 a month to our Books and Booze Supply. All of your support goes a long ways and we are endlessly grateful! To show our gratitude, all Patreon Supporters receive an automatic 15% OFF all merchandise in our merchandise store, bonus Hashtag Hangouts episodes, a shoutout on social media, and stickers!
THANKS FOR LISTENING!
Rachel and Leah
Previous Episode
EP 75: Rodney King
This week on Hashtag History, we are discussing Rodney King, a twenty-five-year-old Black man who was captured on video camera on March 3, 1991 as he was being beaten viciously by four Los Angeles Police Department officers. The review would find that he had been struck over fifty times with a baton leaving him with fractures to the skull, a broken leg and teeth, bruises, lacerations to the face, a burn wound on his chest from a stun gun, and permanent brain damage. The officers were charged with assault with a deadly weapon and excessive use of force and, after a three-month long trial, a nearly all-white jury acquitted the officers. This verdict directly correlated with the start of the 1992 Los Angeles riots and reiterated the racial tension, misconduct, and police brutality many had experienced at the hands of the LAPD.
Follow Hashtag History on Instagram @hashtaghistory_podcast for all of the pictures mentioned in this episode.
Citations for all sources can be located on our website at www.HashtagHistory-Pod.com.
You can also check out our website for super cute merch!
You can now sponsor a cocktail and get a shout-out on air! Just head to www.buymeacoffee.com/hashtaghistory or head to the Support tab on our website!
Finally, you can locate us on www.Patreon.com/hashtaghistory where you can donate $1 a month to our Books and Booze Supply. All of your support goes a long ways and we are endlessly grateful! To show our gratitude, all Patreon Supporters receive an automatic 15% OFF all merchandise in our merchandise store, bonus Hashtag Hangouts episodes, a shoutout on social media, and stickers!
THANKS FOR LISTENING!
Rachel and Leah
Next Episode
EP 77: The Rise and Fall of Lance Armstrong, Part One
This week on Hashtag History, we are discussing Lance Armstrong, the only professional cyclist to win seven Tour de France titles...all before it was revealed more than a dozen years after his first win that he had been using performance-enhancing drugs in every single one of his Tour de France wins from 1999 to 2005. This news was particularly devastating to those that had admired and supported Armstrong through his 1996 cancer diagnosis when he learned, at only twenty-five years old, that he had stage three testicular cancer and that the cancer had already spread to his lungs, brain, abdomen, and lymph nodes. To come back from what his doctor’s initially determined as a less than 50% chance of living - to not only survive that but to then go on to achieve not one, not two, not three - but SEVEN titles in what is considered by many to be the most difficult sporting event in the world - was just unbelievable. The only thing more unbelievable than his miraculous rise to the top...was that he had cheated and lied the whole way there.
Be sure to come back next week when we finish our coverage of this topic in a special second part episode!
Follow Hashtag History on Instagram @hashtaghistory_podcast for all of the pictures mentioned in this episode.
Citations for all sources can be located on our website at www.HashtagHistory-Pod.com.
You can also check out our website for super cute merch!
You can now sponsor a cocktail and get a shout-out on air! Just head to www.buymeacoffee.com/hashtaghistory or head to the Support tab on our website!
Finally, you can locate us on www.Patreon.com/hashtaghistory where you can donate $1 a month to our Books and Booze Supply. All of your support goes a long ways and we are endlessly grateful! To show our gratitude, all Patreon Supporters receive an automatic 15% OFF all merchandise in our merchandise store, bonus Hashtag Hangouts episodes, a shoutout on social media, and stickers!
THANKS FOR LISTENING!
Rachel and Leah
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