If there’s one thing we know about rich people, it’s that they like collecting things. Particularly expensive things.
Another thing we know about rich people is that they often have assistants at their beck and call, whom, in most cases, act as trusted aid and confidant. Such was not the case for Goldman Sachs president and co-COO, David Solomon, who learned in 2016 that his personal assistant had been stealing wine from Solomon’s private collection and selling it online for two years.
According to reports from several major news sources, Solomon was victim to theft of $1.2 million worth of wine systematically swiped by his 40-year-old assistant, Nicolas De-Meyer. According to his indictment, De-Meyer (who was at least clever enough to use a pseudonym, Mark Miller, for the dealings) stole and sold hundreds of bottles of extremely expensive wines from his boss’ collection, and sold them online to a wine dealer in North Carolina. He did this for two years, from 2014 to 2016, according to reports.
Although Solomon himself was not named in the indictment, his employer, Goldman Sachs later confirmed it was indeed he who fell victim to the booze burglaries.
The liquid loot included seven bottles from the French estate Domaine de la Romanee-Conti (DRC), noted by prosecutors as some of the best, rarest and most expensive in the world. Those bottles alone cost a total of $133,650.
De-Meyer was arrested in Los Angeles this week, on Tuesday, January 16. He was scheduled for court in LA on Wednesday, and will later be arraigned in New York, where the crime was committed.
Nothing can replace the story and precise reasoning behind each bottle in a collector’s stock, but given the circumstances, we don’t feel that bad for Solomon. His search for the wine, and ID-ing of the culprit, coincided with the sale of his Manhattan apartment—a four-bedroom, 5,400-square-foot property with Central Park Views—which reportedly sold for $21.5 million in November 2016.
We do kind of sympathize with his assistant, though, who was tasked with receiving the wine and transporting it from Solomon’s Manhattan apartment to an East Hampton property — without, we imagine, being offered a drop to taste.
