The Confessions of John Fox of Premier Cru

"The man behind a "Ponzi wine scheme" that bilked customers of a high-end Berkeley wine store out of at least $45 million pleaded guilty in federal court on Thursday to one count of wire fraud, admitting to spending his ill-gotten gains on expensive cars, private golf memberships and almost $1 million on women he met online.

The U.S. Attorney's Office is recommending that Concord resident John Fox, 66, be sentenced to more than six years in prison and pay restitution to cheated customers who paid in advance for unfulfilled wine orders from the now-shuttered Premier Cru wine company."--www.eastbaytimes.com


I may have spent a little too much on pussy. It’s not like I’m the first guy who did that. In fact, you know, I spent $900,000 on pussy before I got caught, which is $899,990 more than Hugh Grant spent before he got caught. So it’s not like I’m stupid. I just like to fuck young women, and wine geeks. Hard to say which gave me more pleasure. It was sort of even. Except with the young women, I never really thought about needing protection when I fucked them.

And, really, how much different is it to spend all your excess cash on pussy instead of First Growth Bordeaux? You just do it because you can. No one really needs a cellar full of either one. It’s just a way of feeling better about yourself whether you collect great wines or great pussy. And, frankly, it’s a myth that either one gets better with age. Some guys want a vertical of Margaux, I just wanted a horizontal of LaWanda. The urge is the same. It’s just to show your buddies you can dip your dick into something rare and wet whenever you want, that money is no object. So I’m not sure why everyone is mad at me.

Let’s look at it another way. Bernie Sanders ran on a platform of taking money from the rich and then distributing their excess wealth to people in the lower class. How is that different from what I did? I figured out how to get $45 million from rich and/or stupid wine collectors and then I distributed that money to poor, working class pussy. How does Sanders get all that admiration and I get contempt, jail time, and dick warts? This country is fucked up.

I didn’t set out to scam those idiots. But, you know, they were just asking for it. I spent years and years in the wine business learning to rip off suppliers. I can’t believe I was that stupid. What a waste of time that was. I mean, brokers and distributors who sell you wine, they get pissed when you don’t pay them. They threaten you, they strong arm you, they cut you off from buying more wine from them… What kind of shitty way to do business is that? How do I pay you for the wine you delivered if I can’t get more wine to sell? If I’d had the money to pay you for the wine in the first place, I’d have written you a goddam check. But I had Ferrari payments, and I just bought a new house in an expensive neighborhood, and, well, I may have spent a little too much on pussy, so what else could I do but ask you to extend my credit? In hindsight, well, I think it took me way too long to figure out that it’s much easier in the wine business to promise shit you can’t deliver than it is to pay off your debts. That’s the very foundation of most of the wine business. I should have known that. So, yeah, that’s on me.

Another thing, wine futures are a ripoff to begin with. Not one of the girls I met online expected me to wait two years before we had sex after I paid her. There are no pussy futures, unless your woman is old school “wait until we get married.” It seems to me that any time you’re paying for something and not getting anything back for two years, you’re just looking for trouble, begging for disappointment. I mean, ask any jackass making wine how crazy that is. Putting a shit-ton of money into something and never being rewarded? That’s the very foundation of the wine business! But, I figured, why not be one of the ones getting paid upfront? So much easier.

I thought it might be hard to find people dumb enough to give me money on the promise I’d get them rare wines. I was pretty nervous the first few times. And, this might be hard to believe, but I actually intended to obtain those wines for those trusting clients! I know, even now I am amazed at how little I understand human nature. As if I were going to look at my bank accounts swollen with futures money and not spend it on muscle cars and pussy! Isn’t that what anyone would do? It’s only wine, people.

I figured out quickly that you only have to look successful for people to think you are successful. I mean, ugly is ugly. You’re ugly, there’s just no getting around that. But if you’re a fake, it’s easy to make people think you’re legit. I was the Donald Trump of wine. I built a fancy looking building with other people’s money, and then I got other people to give me more money based on the appearance of success. I fed those morons hope. Trump stole my act. Now I'm going to jail and he's going to the White House! Like that's fair. Rich people always think you can buy hope, like they think you can buy respect. And they believed the fancy Premier Cru store I built with other people's money, not what was apparent to anyone else who didn’t have some underlying lack of self-worth expressed in the need to possess unicorn wines, namely, that I was even more vain than they. Vanity is a common trait among serious wine collectors, and always easy to exploit. Frankly, you meet a guy with a gigantic wine cellar, Riedel glasses you could wear as a space helmet, sporting a Coravin, yet another lesson in self-deceit, and you can pretty much take his vanity to the bank where you keep your high-yielding pussy account. Vanity, thy name is Wai-Man.

I’m taking the fall for lifting a cool $45 Mil from a bunch of suckers, but I think there’s plenty of blame to go around. OK, so look at it this way. It’s the same as when the cops throw the pussy in jail, but let the johns off. How is this different? Those Chinese guys, those pathetic dweebs on Wineberserkers, the poor, lonely fools who answered my email blasts (something phallic about “email blast”), I’d take their money for 2009 Bordeaux futures, never deliver, and yet they’d be back in eight months to offer me money to fuck them again. I’m in business! How do I say no? They’re just as much to blame for the legal prostitution of wine futures as I am. I gave them what they wanted. And I gave it to them cheaper than the other prostitutes! I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem fair.

Well, I guess I’m a fool, thinking those guys would treat the one who fucked them with the same tenderness I gave to the pussy I may have spent a little too much on. Men. I’m pretty bitter about them.

When I was plea bargaining, I invoked my Fifth Amendment rights countless times. Something ironic about it being a fifth. But I’ve wanted to tell my side of the story, and now I have. I am to serve six and a half years in prison for using a Ponzi scheme to swindle $45 million from stupid wine people. Hey, Rudy Kurniawan got 10 years for about $20 million worth of fraud. And his scam was a lot more work! Dumb shit. And you thought I was the one busted for abusing his Koch.

And, frankly, what Rudy did made me sick to my stomach. Making fake wines. What kind of an asshole does that? I mean, it very easily could have happened that I might have sold futures on fake older Bordeaux I obtained from Rudy that I never intended to deliver! That would have me look like a real crook. And that would have been a crime.