Posh NYC Liquor Store Voluntarily Pays $100K Fine for Fake Bourbon Sales

Edited by: TJVNews.com

In a strange twist of events, a 203-year old booze store on Manhattan’s Upper West Side that promotes itself as the oldest in America agreed to pay a $100K fine for selling counterfeit bottles of expensive bourbon, but has not held any employees responsible for this accountable, according to a recent report in the New York Post.

The Manhattan store, known as Acker Merrall Condit has not terminated any of the employees who were responsible for the scandal, The Post has learned.

Public records show that the liquor store in question did not dispute the state’s maximum penalty after public records showed that a probe revealed that government regulators uncovered sloppy business practices surrounding the sale of fake bottles of Colonel E.H. Taylor Four Grain bourbon at $1,000 each, the Post reported.

At a monthly meeting that took place on February 1^st, the New York State Liquor Authority revealed the fact that store employees bought the fake booze from a private collector despite knowing the telltale signs that it wasn’t authentic, the Post reported.

The Post also reported that Acker Merrall Condit is a The family-owned business. It is operated  by famed wine connoisseur John Kapon, who regularly stages tastings and auctions bottles of prized vintages such as Lafite Rothschild and Domaine Romanee Conti for thousands of dollars each. Assuring the panel’s three commissioners at the hearing that Kapon was taking responsibility for the scheme was Kevin Danow, the attorney representing Acker Merrall, the report indicated.

Danow noted that the shop recently hired its first in-house counsel, a former Sotheby’s attorney – Stacey Chervin Sigda – who “instituted the record keeping that was missing,” the Post reported. He added that,  “That’s not going to go on anymore.”

The Post reported that Danow’s comments came in response to New York State Liquor Authority Commissioner Vincent Bradley who queried as to whether the employees who bought the fake bourbon were still working at the West 72nd Street retailer.

In a video recording of the hearing that was reviewed by the Post, Bradley told the attorneys representing Acker Merrill that.  “There was clear fraud here or at least a large potential for fraud.”

Bradley added that store employees “were going out with their own money, buying from private collections and reselling it to the liquor store, but not telling the liquor store what they paid for it,” the Post reported.

Bradley also inquired about whether Acker ever learned what the employees paid for the fake bourbon, the Post report indicated.  Danow answered “No.”

“The employees you are talking about,” Danow said, “have been disciplined” and “retrained,” adding that the state investigation “frankly scared the hell out of them,”  the Post reported.

Danow told the SLA, “we believe Acker was targeted,” but didn’t elaborate.

A fine was imposed on Acker for failure to keep proper records and for purchasing whiskey from “unauthorized” sellers on five occasions in 2020 and 2021, as was reported by the Post.

The bottles in question were filled with inferior bourbon and passed off as a coveted Kentucky whiskey from Buffalo Trace, the Post reported.  Lab testing by the distiller found that the bottles – which also were missing lot codes and the proper cardboard tube packaging – were not authentic, according to the Inside Edition report, the Post said.

Speaking to the Post, the spokesman for the State Liquor Authority, Joshua Heller,  said that according to New York’s alcohol laws, an individual is not permitted to purchase wine or spirits from a private collection, except if the alcohol is being purchased on behalf of a licensed business.

Heller also told the Post that, “It’s not legal what the Acker employees did. He added, “but it’s a little bit gray whether they were acting as agents for the company.”

Experts in the liquor industry have said that most SLA fines are approximately between $2000 and $10,000, so the $100,000 is striking considering the fact that it was offered voluntarily by Acker, the Post reported.

Also speaking to the Post was liquor license attorney Max Bookman. He told the paper that,  “What anyone does if they are concerned that they might lose their license is offer a settlement to ensure that the license isn’t cancelled.” He added that, “They could have lost their license over that.”