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A wealthy Napa Valley wine mogul has admitted to using knockoff grapes to produce his upscale wines in a multimillion-dollar scheme.
Jeffry Hill, the owner of the closed vineyard Hill Wine Company, pleaded guilty to an elaborate mislabeling ploy that prosecutors say sold upwards of $2.5 million of misrepresented wine.
Prosecutors found that Hill’s winery fraudulently claimed its grapes were being grown in its sun-soaked Napa Valley vineyards, when in fact he was swapping them out for cheap substitutes and ‘bulk grape juice.’
Hill was first indicted in 2016 and his case meandered through the courts for almost a decade before he admitted to the scheme and was sentenced to three years’ probation last January.
The winemaker finally apologized for the plot this week, blaming alcoholism for his crimes as he said he allowed his ‘ego and drinking to dictate my priorities.’
‘I thought I was in control. I lost sight of my values. I ignored responsibilities,’ he wrote in a letter to the court. ‘In that blind pursuit, I destroyed not just my own future but caused real harm to people who trusted me.’
Hill said he got sober in 2014, the year after his crimes ended, and that he has since worked ‘tirelessly’ to make amends.
In 2015, Hill also spent four months in jail for a separate scheme to steal grapes from a competitor in 2012, reports Mercury News.
At his peak, Hill’s wines sold for upwards of $100 per bottle, and his vineyard along Napa’s Silverado Trail placed him among the industry’s elite.
His commercial clients included some of the biggest wine brands in the world. His own Hill Wine Company bottles were used on planes shuttling US athletes to the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia in 2014, the New York Times reported.
But his business was quietly landing him in huge debt that led him to come up with the deceptive scheme.
Hill pulled off the gambit by altering shipping labels, fabricating paperwork, and either giving growers false information or ordering them to deny he was buying from them, according to his indictment.
Prosecutors cited federal regulations that mandate that wines made in Napa Valley are only able to brand themselves as being from ‘American Viticultural Areas’ (AVAs), where grapes have particular growing characteristics, if 85 percent of the product is from the area.
Hill promoted his wines as being from the AVA region in Napa Valley, allowing him to increase his prices exponentially compared to cheaper options.
At the same time, he actually ‘grew or purchased grapes, pre-fermented grape juice or wine grown outside of the Napa Valley then sold bulk grape juice, bulk wine, or bottled wine made from these non-Napa Valley grapes’, his indictment said.
Hill was charged with four counts of mail fraud and four counts of wire fraud and faced up to 20 years in federal prison for the mislabeling hustle.
His guilty plea allowed him to avoid jail time and instead receive just three years’ probation. Prosecutors had requested an 18-month prison sentence.
The vineyard owner will also face a financial penalty of at least $500,000 in restitution; however, the final amount has not yet been determined.
Hill’s case dragged on for almost a decade following his arrest.
The Mercury News reported it is unclear why Hill’s case remained in limbo for so long as 85 of his 177 hearings and document filings in his federal case are under seal.
Hill said in his apology letter to the court that in the years since he was caught, he has rededicated himself to making up for his crimes, including volunteering to build playgrounds for children.
Hill also said he has helped a family of war refugees flee Ukraine and traveled to the Middle East to help farmers. He told the judge he ‘fears repeating harm.’
He was also forced to file for bankruptcy and, at the time of his arrest, he owed more than $8 million to creditors, the New York Times reported in 2015.
Source: Dailymail.co.uk | Read the Full Story…
