Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe NEW YORK, March 31 (UPI) -- A U.S. billionaire businessman says Christie's auction house conspired to sell bogus bottles of wine, including some supposedly from Thomas Jefferson's cellar. William Koch, who owns Oxbow Corp., an energy company in Florida, filed a federal lawsuit against Christie's on Tuesday in New York, the New York Post reports. Koch, who bought two bottles of the Jefferson wine, says he learned from 10 "confidential witnesses" that it was fake. Advertisement In legal papers, Koch says Christie's, which has branches in London and New York, did not dig into the provenance of Hardy Rodenstock's wines because the auction house wanted the 25 percent commission from the sale. One of the bottles with the mark "Th.J." was bought by politician and publishing heir Christopher Forbes for $156,000. Koch says he paid more than $300,000 for two of them. Koch said his witnesses include German glassworkers who described etching the Jefferson mark on bottles and former Christie's employees. In his lawsuit, Koch seeks financial damages and an injunction requiring Christie's to get an independent expert's opinion on all wines dating from before 1962. Advertisement Koch's suit against Rodenstock, filed several years ago, was dismissed.
