Inaccurate Calif ABC Records Frustrate Winery Murder/Suicide Asset Hunters

Nearly three months after Robert Dahl murdered his main investor, Emad Tawfilis, the task has now begun in earnest to locate his assets and those of his businesses and determine who has first dibs on them.

Plaintiffs in at least four legal cases, are vying for whatever is left in Dahl’s companies and in his estate (Napa Vintner Murder/Suicide’s Gnarled Legal Knot Tangles Tighter).

Finding those assets, however,is turning out to be a lot like following the hidden pea in a street-side shell game by reverse engineering random bits of surveillance video.

The matter is complicated by more than $1 million in potentially untraceable cash Tawfilis delivered to Dahl in a bag. The fact that Dahl fraudulently represented collateral as “lien free” and borrowed multiple times against the same assets, and sometimes sold some of it, makes the puzzle even more difficult.

In the final weeks before the murder/suicide, Dahl played a real-life shell game by moving tanks and other assets from location to location so they could not be located or repossessed.

Contempt of court orders for those shenanigans finally backed Dahl into a corner and resulted in the murder/suicide. Details can be found in these six Wine Industry Insight articles.

Christopher Creek Winery: One Hoped-For Asset That Never Was

Litigants, lawyers and their investigators had hoped that Dahl’s share in the Healdsburg-area Christopher Creek Winery would turn out to be a gem for asset recovery.

Those hopes were dashed when a Wine Industry Insight investigation found that the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control had failed to properly examine ownership records when it granted Christopher Creek Winery’s winegrower license.

 

Robert Dahl’s Short-Lived Role At Christopher Creek Winery

Dahl’s involvement with Christopher Creek Winery began in 2012 when Healdsburg vintner Dominic Foppoli had Dahl’s California Shiners company bottle wine for his family’s winery, Foppoli Wines.

Also in 2012, Foppoli, Dahl and Phil Lutgen, who co-founded California Shiners with Dahl, made a bid to buy Christopher Creek Winery from founders Fred and Pam Wasserman who were retiring.

The three men, along with others, formed Two Kings Wine Company LLC on September 25, 2012.

Dahl, as was his style, promoted his involvement in a mid-November 2012 press release: Christopher Creek Winery Sold.

Less than four months after Dahl’s self-aggrandizing announcement, he was gone from Two Kings.

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Also In This Article:

The full text of the following sections is available to premium subscribers of Wine Executive News.

• Foppoli Ousts Dahl Over “Vision”

• Calif ABC License Data Excites Dahl Asset Seekers

• No Dahl: Wine Industry Insight Investigation Finds LLC Records Fail To Match ABC License

• ABC Belatedly Changes License To Reflect Accurate LLC Ownership After WII Inquiry

• ABC Accuracy & Record Scrutiny In Question

• Serious Issues For Tied-House Regulations

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