National Roundup

California
“Sour Grapes” wine fraud con man deported to Indonesia
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A one-time California man who bilked wine collectors out of millions by selling cheaper booze he rebottled in his kitchen has been deported to his native Indonesia, U.S. immigration officials said Tuesday.

Rudy Kurniawan, 44, was deported last week on a commercial flight from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport to Jakarta, according to a statement from U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement.

“He is a public safety threat because of his aggravated felony conviction,” the statement said.

Kurniawan came to the United States on a student visa in the 1990s. He unsuccessfully sought political asylum and was ordered to voluntarily leave the country in 2003 but stayed on illegally, authorities said.

Kurniawan, whose family gained wealth operating a beer distributorship in Indonesia, was convicted of mail and wire fraud in 2013 in a New York federal court and spent seven years in prison. He was deported after being released from prison into immigration custody last November.

In a public black eye for the wine industry, prosecutors at Kurniawan’s New York trial said he made millions of dollars from 2004 to 2012 by putting less-expensive Napa and Burgundy wines into counterfeit bottles at his home in the Los Angeles suburb of Arcadia.

The scheme was recounted in the 2016 Netflix documentary, “Sour Grapes,” and in a March episode of ABC’s “The Con.”

Kurniawan’s trial featured testimony from billionaire yachtsman, entrepreneur and wine investor William Koch, who said he was conned and cheated by Kurniawan into paying $2.1 million for 219 fake bottles of wine.

A wine expert testified that 19,000 counterfeit wine bottle labels representing 27 of the world’s best wines were collected from Kurniawan’s property.

An FBI raid on the home in 2012 also turned up hundreds of bottles, corks and stamps.

Kurniawan built a reputation as a buyer and seller of rare wines and netted tens of millions of dollars at wine auctions. Other collectors dubbed him “Dr. Conti” for his love of a Burgundy wine, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.

In one auction in 2006, Kurniawan sold $24.7 million of wine, a record for a single consignee.

However, the scheme began to unravel after several consignments he submitted for auction were found to be fake. In 2007, Christie’s auction house in Los Angeles pulled a consignment of what was supposed to be magnums of 1982 Château Le Pin after the company said the bottles were fake.

In 2008, 22 lots of Domaine Ponsot wine valued at more than $600,000 were pulled from a sale amid questions about their authenticity.

One bottle of Domaine Ponsot that Kurniawan attempted to sell at auction in 2008 was passed off as having been made in 1929, even though the winemaker didn’t begin estate bottling until 1934. Others were billed as having been bottled at a specific vineyard between 1945 and 1971, even though Domaine Ponsot said it didn’t start using that vineyard until 1982.

Kurniawan also once consigned to an auction more magnums of a 1947 Château Lafleur than were actually produced, prosecutors said.

In all, Kurniawan may have sold as many as 12,000 bottles of counterfeit wine, many of which may still remain in collections.

Prosecutors said money from the fraud funded a lavish lifestyle in suburban Los Angeles that included a Lamborghini and other luxury cars, designer clothing and fine food and drinks. The government seized his assets.

At his sentencing, Kurniawan was ordered to pay $28.4 million in restitution to seven victims and to forfeit $20 million in property.

Georgia
State police to alter fitness standards that kept out women
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The Pennsylvania State Police will pay more than $2 million into a compensation fund and are changing physical fitness standards to settle a lawsuit over how the agency’s trooper-hiring practices ruled out otherwise qualified women.

The U.S. Justice Department announced the proposed settlement Tuesday of litigation that was launched seven years ago, leaving a federal judge in Harrisburg to give her final approval.

The police agency also has agreed to make it a priority to hire as many as 65 women who were affected by the prior fitness standards for entry-level trooper positions.

The Justice Department lawsuit claimed that nearly all male recruits met initial physical readiness tests, but about 30% of women failed. The state police have just over 4,500 sworn members, and 314 are women, the agency said Tuesday.

Communications director Ryan Tarkowski issued a statement saying the Pennsylvania State Police are committed to hiring the most qualified applicants, “with an emphasis on women and minority recruitment.”

The lawsuit said the physical fitness tests that screened out women included standards that were not required to perform a trooper’s job duties.

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division argued different pass rates for men and women showed the tests had a disparate impact on women. If women had passed at the same rate as men, about 120 more women would have advanced in the hiring process, and about 45 would have made the force over a 10-year period, the Justice Department lawsuit said.

Under 2003 standards, 55% of women and 88% of men passed. Under 2009 standards, 73% of women and 98% of men passed, the court found.

The pending settlement prohibits the agency from using physical fitness tests that have a disparate impact on women unless they are “job-related and consistent with business necessity.”

The state police tests had included a 300-meter run, a 1.5-mile (2.4-kilometer) run, pushups, situps and a vertical jump. In a joint filing Tuesday, the two sides noted the state police developed a new physical fitness test. Tarkowski said it was used for the first time in the academy class that began in January.

Along with cash payments, those who were passed over as a result of the former testing standards and can meet all other hiring requirements will be invited to become cadets. Those who meet specific criteria and graduate from the state police academy in Hershey will be granted retroactive seniority for pay and vacation accrual.

When the lawsuit was filed, the state police commissioner at the time claimed that lowering standards would endanger safety and insult those who had already met them.

“We will not be bullied into changing and lowering our standards by the Department of Justice or anybody else,” former Commissioner Frank Noonan said in 2014.