Wine Crime

There's a cool wine crime story in today's SF Chronicle:

Many in Sausalito still can't believe who is at the center of the tale -- a man so woven into the civic fabric that he called himself "Joe Sausalito" in his slice-of-Marin-life newspaper column. He was a gregarious city commissioner with influential friends, and an oenophile who belonged to the local wine society -- that is, until the society's 1959 Chateau Lafite-Rothschild vanished.

Police say Mark Anderson abused the trust he built, starting a wine storage firm for collectors and then selling 8,000 bottles out the back door to fund a lavish lifestyle. Facing embezzlement charges, police say, Anderson kept right on selling -- then really fouled things up when he tried to cover his tracks.

Federal prosecutors recently accused Anderson of setting an October 2005 fire at a warehouse in Vallejo where he rented space for the wine. The flames spread through the building, consuming 6 million bottles owned by 92 Napa Valley wineries and 43 collectors. Their value: $250 million.

Read the story here.