Counterfeits Are Everywhere

If you have not seen the movie “Sour Grapes”, I highly recommend it. Sour Grapes exposed a potentially huge problem affecting valuable, collectable bottles of wine. You might be surprised to learn how many times a bottle of wine is bought and sold before it is eventually drank, if ever. And if it ever does get opened it might turn out to contain nothing more than grape juice.

Sour Grapes focused on Rudy Kurniawan, a man of mysterious Indonesian background with an uncanny skill at wine tasting. Rudy could tell you amazing details about a wine just by tasting it. Spoiler alert:  Rudy figured out how to blend less costly wines to concoct counterfeit collectables that would fool almost anyone. He also perfected resealing and relabeling classic bottles. He was an excellent counterfeiter and a prolific buyer/seller at wine auctions.  But Rudy made a few small mistakes that led to his arrest. He served seven years of a ten year sentence and was deported. Assuming he was not alone in this type of endeavor, one wonders how many counterfeit bottles are selling for thousands of dollars. 

You can argue all day about what killed George Floyd, but had he not been passing counterfeit bills he would not have suffered his life ending encounter that day. Money in all forms has been the target of counterfeits for ages. Bills, coins, lottery tickets, casino chips, you name it, it has been counterfeited. 

Carfax reports an alarming increase in used vehicles being sold with the odometer having been artificially rolled back. Average cost to the buyer who purchases one of these counterfeits is $4,000. Recently, Subway Sandwiches was exposed for selling counterfeit tuna sandwiches without a trace of tuna. An Indian man dining at an expensive San Jose, CA restaurant uncovered what turned out to be a common practice at Italian restaurants: substituting (counterfeiting) pork tenderloin for veal. 

Counterfeit drugs are killing Americans at an alarming rate. Supposedly “prescription” but cooked up in someone’s garage. Supposedly Oxy but really fentanyl. Paid for with cryptocurrency. Counterfeit cubed.

In a recent and excellent article written by Thomas J. Bruno and published at The American Thinker, Bruno describes perfectly how counterfeit Sam Brinton is. The now-disgraced luggage thief had almost zero credentials for the senior executive position he had been awarded. Sam made no impact on his field with publications or lectures and owned zero in way of peer recognition. Other than having an advanced degree from MIT and being an utter clown and freak, the man was completely unqualified for the job.

We live in a country ruled by counterfeits, starting at the very top. Now that elections are a complete farce in this country we get to be slapped around by authority figures that were installed against our wishes. They order us to take a counterfeit vaccine to save us all from a counterfeit virus and the counterfeit media outlets howl along and get their counterfeit Pulitzers for telling lies confirmed by counterfeit fact checkers. 

I fully expect that one day soon my Social Security check will arrive as a pile of $100 bills printed with a picture of Scooby Doo. 

PS: if you took a drink every time I said the “C“  word, like I did,  you should be well on your way by now. 

By Steven Sorg

Steven Sorg is a longtime friend of The Blue State Conservative, and we are happy to add his input to the broader discussion on this issue.