Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Co-President David Solomon’s personal assistant has been charged with stealing more than $1.2 million of rare wine from his boss.
Nicolas De-Meyer was named in an indictment unsealed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. The indictment says De-Meyer worked for an "individual who collects rare and expensive wine," without naming the person. The individual is Solomon, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The theft included seven bottles from the French estate Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, widely considered "among the best, most expensive and rarest wines in the world," according to the indictment. Solomon has a 1,000-bottle wine storage area in his Manhattan residence, according to The Real Deal. In all, De-Meyer stole hundreds of bottles, prosecutors said.
Solomon is a double-black-diamond skier and a wine collector who earned the title of Mr. Gourmet 2010 from the Society of Bacchus America. Jake Siewert, a Goldman Sachs spokesman, declined to immediately comment. Solomon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
De-Meyer is accused of using an alias, "Mark Miller," to sell bottles to a North Carolina-based wine dealer. De-Meyer’s regular duties included receiving wine shipped to Solomon’s Manhattan apartment and transporting them to his boss’s cellar in East Hampton, New York.
De-Meyer worked for Solomon from 2008 to November 2016, according to the indictment. The thefts occurred from about 2014 to about October 2016, prosecutors said.
The wines De-Meyer is accused of stealing and selling include bottles of DRC, a top Burgundy. The seven bottles of DRC that were stolen had previously been purchased for $133,650, prosecutors said.
The indictment doesn’t specify the vineyard, vintage or size of the bottles that De-Meyer allegedly sold, but standard 750-milliliter bottles at that price -- almost $20,000 apiece -- would sit at the very top of the wine-auction stratosphere.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.