Wine consultant jailed for defrauding clients

A former fine wine consultant at an exclusive Auckland auction house has been jailed for two years and four months for defrauding affluent clients by faking vintages and taking money for wines he never possessed.

Simon Gregory Mickleson, 43, was sentenced in the Auckland District Court yesterday to prison for defrauding leading surgeons, company owners, senior law firm partners and the legal counsel to the Todd Property Group, owned by New Zealand's richest family.

Mickleson was the fine wine consultant at Webb's auction house where he would sell bottles of investment wines for thousands of dollars per bottle.

But he also made unauthorised purchases on clients' credit cards, took money for wine he did not have, and altered labels to make wines appear older than they were.

Mickleson was also charged with using an altered document after he engaged a graphic designer to change labels in a photograph to make a case of 2001 Chateau Lafite appear to be from the valuable 1982 vintage.

He offered these doctored wines to two clients for $98,000 for 24 bottles, though both pulled out of the sale suspecting the images were false.

Auckland surgeon Jim Shaw paid Mickleson $400,000 for a consignment of wines in 2007. Court documents said Mickleson could not supply the wines and over the next two years compensated Shaw "by taking money off other good clients and failing to deliver the wine" and also "handing him other vendors' wine to clear the debt".

In January 2008, Webb's was given $125,700 worth of wine to auction. Mickleson sold the wine to Shaw and used the proceeds to pay other debtors, and then claimed the wine had been stolen in a burglary, causing insurer IAG to make a payout.

Other charges include offering cases of Chateau Lafite to clients in Hong Kong, taking the money - $66,000 in one case, $22,000 in another - and not delivering the wine.

Reparation of $542,000 was sought.

After Mickleson's arrest, Webb's managing director Neil Campbell said he did not know how much Webb's had reimbursed clients but "we certainly wrote some cheques".

Other charges related to altering invoices to make it appear Mickleson had collectable Domaine de la Romanee-Conti and Chateau Petrus wines that he offered to two Australian collectors whose initial $25,000 purchase was never delivered.

Havelock North wine merchant John Macpherson, who paid $36,000 for Te Mata Coleraine wine that never arrived, said Mickleson had excellent wine knowledge. He said he met Mickleson at a wine junket to Queenstown for dealers and he was "an interesting character".
Macpherson said he met Mickleson's family and had dinners with them but the wine deals were "always very slow and very difficult".

When the final deal went sour he placed a caveat on Mickleson's house and he eventually got back his money.

Shaw also said he got back "some" of his money.

Legal counsel to the Todd Property Group, Andrew Webster, was named
in court documents as a friend who had lent Mickleson money with other people's wine used as security. The loan was never repaid.