US District Court in Manhattan on Wednesday indicted the former assistant of Goldman Sachs Group co-President David Solomon, accusing him of stealing more than $1.2 million in rare wine from his boss over the span of about two years, according to Bloomberg.
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.
Solomon, who in 2010 won the title of Mr. Gourmet from the Society of Bacchus America, is a double-black diamond skier whose widely respected for his wine collection.
The theft reportedly 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.
In all, Solomon’s former assistant, who was employed from 2008 to late 2016, when the theft was uncovered, stole hundreds of bottles, 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 was stolen had previously purchased for $133,650, prosecutors said.
As Bloomberg adds, “the indictment doesn’t specify the vineyard, vintage or size of the bottles that Solomon’s assistant is accused of stealing. But standard bottles of the quality mentioned above go for about $20,000 apiece, placing them in the top tier of wines.”
The theft was discovered in 2016 and reported to law enforcement officials, who have been pursuing the matter and are better positioned to answer questions, said Andrew Williams, a spokesman for Goldman Sachs. Solomon fired De-Meyer in November 2016, after discovering some wine was missing, according to another person familiar with the case. De-Meyer left the country, delaying the investigation, the person said.
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.
So what income does one need to have to be able to afford a multi-million wine collection? Here’s the answer:
Solomon receives a salary of $1.85 million and annual variable pay. The bank hasn’t publicly disclosed details of his full compensation package, but filings show he received an award of restricted stock worth about $10 million on Jan. 19. Harvey Schwartz, Goldman’s other co-president, received $20 million in compensation in fiscal 2016 when he served as chief financial officer.
De-Meyer is scheduled to appear Wednesday in federal court in Los Angeles, charged with interstate transportation of stolen property.
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