Fraud in a Bottle
How do you know if a product is authentic? First create a secure history of the product. How can you create a secure history of a product? Blockchain incorporated into the history of the product can keep it secure. This year my team and I are working with a sponsor to create just such a product for use in the wine industry. The plan is an application for wineries and distributors to use. Starting with the source of the bottle, it’s history can be stored securely with blockchain encryption. Then the information about the wine can be tracked in the application. This week I started researching the topic – starting with a movie on wine fraud.
Sour Grapes?!
This week I took an opportunity to watch the documentary “Sour Grapes” (2017). The documentary focused on the life of Rudy Kurniawan. He is behind one of the largest wine frauds to ever be exposed in the United States. Rudy came to the US in the late 1990’s on a student visa and stayed as a fugitive after it ran out. He made his way into the high class wine circles socially – where he tried to make everyone his friend. High dollar wines sold from his private collection for millions of dollars. These high dollar wines turned out to be bottles that were refilled with low dollar wine and sold at auction. It is estimated that 15,000 bottles of fraudulent wine sold through Rudy’s private collection.
Why This Project?
I enjoy drinking wine and am a security major. When looking at projects for my capstone project – I knew this was the one. This exciting project should make for an interesting year and my project partners and I seem to be off to a great start. We have a lot of research to do as we work to familiarize ourselves with the wine industry and blockchain. We plan to meet up with our sponsor once a weekly meeting time is established this week. I look forward to learning a lot and forming many connections in the wine community.
