Update: FEDERAL INDICTMENT - Safe Harbour Wine Storage and Bill Holder – CRIMINAL

I want to thank the 2 people on this board that reached out to me. If you currently have wine stored at the facility, I urge you to immediately contact an attorney to get your wine back or what is left of it.

76 cases or 912 bottles in storage. Total wine delivered 153 bottles. That is correct, he completely wiped us out. He replaced some of the cases with cheap bottles of wine. My brother and I foolishly did not have insurance so a total loss. This is what Bill stole from us. We have been on the Rhys list since the beginning. He wiped us out of all of our Rhys from 2006 – 2013, All Bordeaux from 2003-2005, a lot of Pegau and Clos Des Papes, Barolo, Karl Lawrence, Outpost. Unfortunately, we have young families and are not in the position to replace the wine. We are officially out of the wine collecting business. Our guess based on information we have is that Bill has sold the wine to merchants across the United States and they are either unknowingly or knowingly selling stolen goods. He has no documentation for provenance so the wine merchants had to be suspicious but probably turned a blind eye.

Bordeaux 191 btls
CDP/N .Rhone 116 btls
California Cab 43 btls
Rhys 212 btls
Arcadian 33 btls
Saxum 25 btls
Italian 60 btls

If you are interested, here is a brief summary. There is a lot more detail that I have left out. My brother and I have had our wine stored at Safe Harbour since 2010. It had been uneventful until the last year or so. We always had access to our wine and were able to easily schedule a time with Bill to pick up wine or add to our collection. We tried to visit Safe Harbour in February of 2017 but Bill indicated he was unavailable that weekend. We became busy and did not attempt to get additional wine until November 2017. At that time, we were told by Bill that he had cervical fusion of his upper back and that Safe Harbour was closed until January 2018. We contacted Bill in January he stated that due to insurance change, people were no longer allowed in the warehouse. We told him at that time that we would like to get all of our wine delivered to our houses. I am not going to go into the gory details but let’s just say it was broken promise after broken promise and he never delivered the wine.

We began investigating what he was telling us and found most of everything to be untrue. Additionally, we discovered that Bill Holder was sued by AIG to recover $354,000 in “stolen” wine from the warehouse that AIG payed out from an insurance claim. Apparently, a customer showed up to get his wine and Bill reported a break-in and the Anne Arundel police were there when the customer showed up – This was in June/July of 2016. It is my understanding that 7-8 people were affected but only one of those clients has become public through the law suit by AIG.

Fast forward to April of 2018 – Federal law enforcement showed up at my brother’s house to ask if we had wine stored a Safe Harbour. At that point we retained and attorney and after our attorney tried to get Bill to deliver the wine, we filed suit in court to get access to our wine. We had a court date of July 10th but I reached out to Bill and stated the authorities were onto him, we had a court date in 10 days and it was to his advantage to release the wine. We told him we had a 3rd party ready to pick it up. He agreed to let the 3rd party pick it up on July 6th. The wine was delivered to my brother’s house that afternoon. Most of the wine was gone.

Wow. Sorry you had to go through this. Hope there’s some restitution.

Where is (was) this place? DC?

Glen Burnie, MD

Highly doubtful - We are small fish. This is going add up to losses in the millions. Our best hope is that he ends up in jail.

1 Like

So sorry to hear about this Todd. Money back would be better than the miscreants in jail, but the latter would be some measure of solace.

Oh man, how terrible. I’m so sorry to hear that Todd. I can only imagine how you feel and obviously it’s easy for me to say not being in your position, but I would do my best to try and keep things in perspective. Ultimately it’s only wine, and you still have what’s important in life - your family and your health.

Again, I know that’s not what you want to hear…but it’s the only thing that helps me in those types of scenarios.

Best of luck with some sort of resolution.

Awful news, so sorry to hear this Todd. I wish/hope there will be an opportunity for at least some level of restitution.

I was contemplating offsite storage a few years ago and Safe Harbour was one place that I had considered. We fortunately stuck with home storage but under not too different circumstances I might have been in the same boat with you.

Arrrrrrgh! [swearing.gif]

I won’t say what I wish would happen because this is polite company.

Rich - I completely agree! I made a decision 2 years ago to change careers. I chose a life to help people and to leave a lucrative career in finance to peruse a passion to help people. I went back to school and just graduated with a BSN degree Nursing. Specifically, in emergency medicine. I will be starting a new career as a nurse in a large hospital in the emergency department. After working in this space, it puts everything in perspective…specifically money and wine. Health, happiness are the most important things is life!

Todd, I am sorry for your loss.

As a friendly suggestion, you may wish not to assert publicly in writing that he is a criminal, until an official legal proceeding has formally indicated such. Otherwise, he might sue you for defamation. In that case, he probably would not win ultimately, but could still cause you meaningful additional headache and legal bills meanwhile…which you seem not to need atop the lost wine.

Also, you may wish to document exactly what wines you have received from the facility, especially if damaged, or replaced with cheaper ones. If the facility were to file bankruptcy within 90 days of delivery to you, their fair market value may be deemed a preference item, which you might then owe back to any such bankruptcy estate. You would hate to find that a bankruptcy filing asserts that you received back Clos de Papes 1998, and you actually got only Two-Buck Chuck 2017 instead, but are liable to return the value of the former.

These events really kill the joy of wine collecting.

Earlier. Post on CT: Safe Harbour Wine Storage - Baltimore, MD

Love it man! This is without a doubt a really shitty situation and its unfortunate that there’s people out there like this can actually treat other human beings this way, but I give you a ton of credit for staying positive and trying to keep things in perspective.

Really hope you get some resolution…and that the scumbag running the busines/scam gets what’s coming to him.

Todd, check your PM inbox from yesterday.

For what it’s worth, my condolences and sympathy. A lousy thing to have happen.

If you’re ever up in NYC let me know and I’d be happy to organize a dinner and open some nice wines for you. No need to reciprocate.

I echo this… if you’re in Chicago I will rustle up some of the Rhys you lost to have a dinner.

https://www.wine-searcher.com/m/2018/04/missing-wine-case-heading-to-court?h=1

First, my sympathies for your situation. I hope you’re able to get some recompense in some fashion.

Second, it reminds me of the infamous Mark Anderson/Vallejo wine storage theft incident detailed in this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Tangled-Vines-Obsession-Vineyards-California/dp/1250033225/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Third, given these kinds of stories, I would be extremely reluctant to store my wines with any wine storage facility that has direct access to my wines. In my facility, the customer have their own lockers, and we put our own lock on our lockers. Theoretically, someone could still break into individual lockers, but it’s more challenging to do.

Bruce

Please keep us updated. Has any legal action (civil or criminal) been taken beyond what you described?

Thank you.

Dan Kravitz

Todd, very sorry to hear of your misfortune, and thank you for letting others know as soon as you were suspect.

Have you filled a personal property claim through your home/renters insurance carrier? If so, what was the written/formal disposition?

Your new career sounds great, all the best.