© Trachtenberg

The company fell over spectacularly in January 2016, leaving a trail of debt and unfulfilled orders.

The Berkeley store's sorry saga of sex, lies and regret has another instalment, cheated customers discover.

Some wine lovers who were ripped off by John Fox's Ponzi scheme at Berkeley's Premier Cru are now being taken again – only this time, it's happening legally.

In a great irony, people who successfully complained to Fox about not getting their wines in the last months of his business are now being sued by a federal bankruptcy trustee for their hard-fought refunds.

Oh, and there are prostitutes in this story: it is John Fox we're talking about, now serving a 6-1/2 year sentence in federal prison in Lompoc, CA after pleading guilty in 2016 to federal wire fraud. In his plea agreement, Fox admitted spending $900,000 "on women I met online". He had that kind of money to spend because he sold wines to hundreds of people but never delivered them: he owes more than 4000 customers about $45 million in restitution.

This is how victims become victims again. Here's one case: Jamie Kutch, a California winemaker who also is a huge fan of Burgundy wines. He paid for some wines, never received them, and still had to pay the bankruptcy trustee $4000. Kutch is not the only Premier Cru victim in this situation, but many of them have lawyered up because they are being sued and aren't willing to talk about it.

In 2012, Kutch paid Premier Cru nearly $17,000 for 24 bottles of Burgundy that had not yet been released: 18 bottles of 2010 Armand Rousseau Chambertin Clos de Bèze at $800 each, and six bottles of 2010 Domaine Comtes Georges de Vogüé Musigny Vielles Vignes at $400 each. These were the kind of bargains Premier Cru was famous for: the Rousseau now sells for $2000 a bottle; the Vogüé for $900.

Of course what Premier Cru is even more famous for now is selling wines it didn't actually have, and that is what happened to Kutch. He bought some other wines in the interim, but by September 2015 he had given up on receiving his 2010 Burgundies, and he asked for a refund.

Kutch was one of the lucky ones: he got a refund. And he will even get to keep most of it. Kutch says he received $10,000 of his refund by wire transfer 91 days before Premier Cru declared bankruptcy on January 8, 2016. He can keep that $10,000. Three days later, Fox wired him the remaining $6799.76.

Unfortunately for Kutch, that second refund came less than 90 days before Premier Cru's bankruptcy. That means that, according to bankruptcy law, Kutch had jumped the queue of creditors, even though he had no idea that Premier Cru was going to declare bankruptcy. He got a letter from a lawyer working for the trustee's office demanding 80 percent of the money: $5439.81. Otherwise, "the Trustee will file suit to recover the full value," reads the letter Kutch received.

"I said: 'I heard rumors that you were settling for 50 percent'," Kutch told Wine-Searcher. "I wrote them a check for $4000."

Keep in mind, this is $4000 that Kutch had to pay the bankruptcy court even though he never received the wine he ordered.

"You think, I lost some wine or I lost some money," Kutch said. "It's compounded even worse now that they're coming for the money that you did get back. Bankruptcy law is bewildering. Most people who owe $5000 or $6000, they're not going to go to the trouble of hiring a lawyer. It's like the bankruptcy court is extorting people left right and down the middle."

Premier Cru bankruptcy trustee Michael G. Kasolas has filed dozens of lawsuits in cases similar to Kutch's, most for much more money. People who thought they were lucky enough to get some wine or money back from Premier Cru in late 2015 are now expected to return it.

"It is the toughest part of bankruptcy, the preference claim," Mark Bostick, an attorney representing the trustee, told Wine-Searcher. "It's bad enough to lose when the debtor didn't pay. But then when they do pay you something, you may be asked to pay that back. And that is very, very tough. The idea is that it's an equalization process. The law permits the trustee to try to make things the way they would have been had the bankruptcy been made 90 days before."

Bostick cannot comment on specific cases, but the court files speak volumes.

A man named Bruce Coleman purchased wines from Premier Cru for years, some as far back as 2004. On November 11, 2015, he picked it all up, $67,000 worth of wine that he had paid for years earlier. He is being sued for $67,000. Another man named Walter McLallen had bought $18,000 worth of wine from Premier Cru, almost all of it in 2006, but like Coleman he picked it up less than 90 days before the bankruptcy and he is being sued for $18,000.

At least 26 similar lawsuits have been filed, and there is no way of tracking how many people like Kutch may have settled.

© Wine-Searcher

Typically, most of the claims center on high-end French wines.

Steve Coyle is both a creditor of Premier Cru and is being sued by the trustee. He put in a claim for $6700 worth of wine that he never received. But he is being billed for $25,000 for wine he was able to get shipped less than 90 days before the bankruptcy.

"I was chasing [Premier Cru] and chasing them, and they said, we have some of your wine, you should get it," said Coyle, who works in commercial real estate in New York. "I paid to have it shipped to me. All of it I ordered in 2011 and 2012. I paid for the wine and I paid for the shipping and now [the bankruptcy trustee] wants me to pay 50 percent. At one point I said, I'll ship you back all this damn wine. And I want to increase my [creditor] claim."

Coyle said he has not drunk a single bottle of the wines he finally received from Premier Cru.

"Now the wine that we did get, we're being told, it's not ours," Coyle told Wine-Searcher. "It's left a very bad taste in my mouth. The lawyers, they're the ones getting paid."

Moreover, the ones who fought hardest against Fox are now finding their arguments at the time used against them.

Wayne Nicholson of Henderson, NV is being sued for $1299.88 for one bottle of 2009 Château Lafite Rothschild that was delivered less than 90 days before the bankruptcy. It's not a huge sum, but it must be painful because Nicholson actually ordered and paid for 63 bottles of 2009 Lafite and received only the one.

On August 15, 2013, Nicholson sent an email to Fox reading, in part: "I will be pressing criminal charges against you and all of your staff that have aided and abetted this little Ponzi scheme of yours." The bankruptcy trustee, in his lawsuit against Nicholson, cites that email as evidence that Nicholson knew about Fox's fraudulent business.

There's another painful issue for some customers regarding the value of wine they're being sued for. The trustee claims that, because Fox was running a Ponzi scheme, not a legitimate business, he wasn't really selling pre-release wines, even though that's what Fox advertised and what many people paid for. Thus, the trustee is suing customers in some cases for the difference in value between what they paid and what the trustee considers the wine to have been worth when it was actually delivered.

This is most apparent in the lawsuit against Garry Hurvitz of Rousseau, Ontario. Hurvitz was a massive customer of Premier Cru and he is being sued for $900,000 as the difference in prices between what he paid and what the wines were worth when he got them.

The trustee used his emails against him, writing in the lawsuit: "The Defendant's email of January 13, 2015 ... confirmed his understanding about Premier Cru's Pre-Arrival Fraud." That email from Hurvitz to Fox reads in part: "I know the LA law. I know law about selling futures that you have never bought. I run into people all the time that have issues with you. I listen I say nothing."

Whatever money the trustee collects will go to Premier Cru's creditors, minus hefty fees for the team of lawyers Kasolas has hired. They have been busy. Other people and entities that the bankruptcy trustee is suing so far include:

* The California Department of Motor Vehicles, over $46,087 in vehicle registration fees

* Several car dealers for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and Chevron, for $25,000 in gas money

* Carondelet High School, for $25,000 in tuition for Fox's daughter

* Several European wine exporters who never delivered Fox wine that he paid for (karma?)

* American Express for credit card payments

* And, colorfully, 12 women who "rendered personal services to John Fox". One woman is being sued for $90,000; two others for $60,000. The personal services were not described, but Fox did reduce his sentence by helping prosecutors charge a young woman, Seul Ki Yum, who they said had sex with Fox and then blackmailed him for $200,000. That makes the other dozen women a bargain.

Perhaps Fox purchased their services pre-arrival?