NEW YORK (AP) — A Florida billionaire energy maven and wine collector told a jury on Wednesday that he's lost his taste for fine wine auctions after getting ripped off too many times by peddlers of fake wine.
William Koch took the witness stand in the second week of a civil trial in which he accuses one-time billionaire Eric Greenberg of fraudulently selling him two dozen bottles of phony vintage wine in 2005. He is seeking a return of the $320,000 he spent on them, along with unspecified damages, in the Manhattan federal court trial.
Koch, a yachtsman who won the America's Cup in 1992, conceded that the wine he bought from the California businessman was not his first encounter with fakes. In 1988, he said, he paid $400,000 for four bottles of French wine he falsely believed had been owned by Thomas Jefferson.
"I buy very little at auctions today because I'm tired of buying fake wine," said Koch, the brother of industrialists and conservative political supporters David and Charles Koch.
Earlier in the trial, Greenberg testified that he never intentionally sold a fake bottle of wine. In the 2005 auction, he sold 17,000 bottles of wine, pocketing about $9 million and reducing his wine collection by about 25 percent.
