Monday, December 14 2009

Mulled Crime

Look upon the face of evil:

Mark Anderson, thief, arsonist, vinicide, wiener

Back in 2005 there was a terrible fire in a 240,000 square foot California wine warehouse. Located in Vallejo, it was a re-purposed WWII bomb/torpedo bunker. Wine warehousing may sound funny, but when you're a small, specialty property you want to use all your available land for vines, not waste it on a big warehouse to age and store your wine, so there are a number of specialty houses that will take on the task in their guaranteed temperture and humidity controlled facilities, freeing up the winemakers to grow grapes and make wine.

The blaze took eighty firefighters a full day to contain. Ironically, the big selling point of the warehouse, three-foot thick concrete walls and impregnable construction, prevented effective firefighting, and temperatures inside became very intense. The good news is, only two people, both firefighters, suffered minor injuries--small mercies.

The bad news is, the warehouse contained the back libraries of some prominent California wineries, like Whitehall Lane, Justin, Sonoma-Cutrer, Saintsbury and a friend of mine, Signorello.

Left is Ray Signorello's wine. I like that wine.

While the structure suffered $10 million in damage, that was eventually dwarfed by the damage to the wines inside, finally capped at over $200 million. The loss went way beyond mere money, however. For many wineries the presence of their bottles in tastings and on shelves is their key marketing strategy, and the loss of entire product lines and vintages is a devastating one. One asks, what terrible event could have caused such a fire?

A jerk, that's what. According to CBS News in Sacramento:

Mark C. Anderson pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Sacramento Monday afternoon to a 19-count federal indictment in connection with a 2005 arson that destroyed millions of bottles of wine at a warehouse in Vallejo.

Turns out rather than storing the wine for his customers Anderson was siphoning it off and trying to sell it without their knowledge. As a side note, he also cheated on his taxes, and I've heard rumours he was mean to children and did not like apple pie, kittens or sunny days. To cover up his malfeasance he decided to pull off a scheme worthy of a Scooby Doo villain and burn the joint down so evidence of his chicanery would be destroyed. Facing charges of arson, mail fraud, tax evasion use of a fictitious name and interstate transportation of fraudulently obtained property he was staring down the barrel of between 150 and 200 years in prison if convicted on all counts, so he cut a deal and will do just over 15 years in the Greybar Hotel.

I certainly know there are worse crimes that go on every day, and I hope that justice is served in those cases as well. But it pains me to think of this one. It's a case of the utter perversion of the capitalist ethic of creating value and preserving it to grow a business. Instead, Anderson was a classic Cashitalist, stealing to enrich himself, ruining his own business and destroying the business of others for short-term gain and personal enrichment. Even though I'm in recovery from the People's Socialist Healthcare Republic of Canada (don't give me guff: my people are Reds from way back, I just bear up under it) it brings out the John Maynard Keynes in me. When someone thinks they can steal while pretending to be in business, that's kleptomania, and when they destroy other people's livelihoods to cover their thievery . . . well that's just plain naughty.

Lump of coal for you, Mr. Anderson. I understand they don't serve wine in the big house either.

Posted by Tim the Great! AT 2:25PM

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