Steve Lapham
Appearances
Blood Vines
Twisted Vines: 5
It's one of the most sacred rights guaranteed to criminal defendants in the United States Constitution, the right to trial by a jury of one's peers. But the practical reality of the criminal legal system is that 97% of federal cases and 94% of state cases end in plea bargains.
Blood Vines
The House of Licciardi: 3
As federal prosecutor Steve Lapham recalls, The word was out that we were investigating this fraud involving Corvette Company. And he basically said, come talk to me. Jack Licciardi asked for the interview.
Blood Vines
The House of Licciardi: 3
And so we visited his home. It was very Alfred Hitchcock-like.
Blood Vines
The House of Licciardi: 3
He lives in a house with no improvements. It's very dark and grimy when we went in. The curtains were all drawn. It just seemed, I have this image in my head of it being very dark and spooky.
Blood Vines
The House of Licciardi: 3
The most prominent feature I can remember from him is just having this gnarled old hand with a cigar stogie sticking out of it.
Blood Vines
The House of Licciardi: 3
The couch was grimy with, you know, years of grease from fried-on foods or something.
Blood Vines
The House of Licciardi: 3
I got the impression that he was in the dark about the whole thing.
Blood Vines
The House of Licciardi: 3
Michael Achardi told us during that meeting that he had visited V&K Vineyards and had talked to someone, perhaps Robert Klein, he said, who was from V&K.
Blood Vines
The House of Licciardi: 3
So that was the basis for one of our counts in the indictment for a false statement.
Blood Vines
The House of Licciardi: 3
He was murdered with a .22 caliber bullet to the head, which is a very mafia-type way of doing it. I mean, obviously, we were all speculating what happened. And, yeah, we were blown away.
Blood Vines
The House of Licciardi: 3
One of the problems that Michael Lichardi faced was he had to pull a fast one on his father, Jack Lichardi. He's due to inherit a multi-million dollar a year business. So he's impatient, I think, to inherit the business and start living the good life.
Blood Vines
The Grape Broker: 2
Mike Licciardi had an office at Delicato. So during the crush, he would be there almost 24-7.
Blood Vines
The Grape Broker: 2
One of the problems that Michael Licciardi faced was he had to pull a fast one on his father, Jack Licciardi, who was the owner of the company and who never would have entered into a scheme like this. So he had to create these companies that were fictitious.
Blood Vines
The Grape Broker: 2
He was murdered with a .22 caliber bullet to the head, which is a very mafia-type way of doing it. I could see that it involved a fraud on a pretty large scale, a multimillion-dollar fraud.
Blood Vines
The Grape Broker: 2
Growers had a sense for how much Zinfandel was out there. Too much was being delivered to the wineries to make sense.
Blood Vines
The Grape Broker: 2
Now, this is a guy who runs a $10 million business out of a checkbook.
Blood Vines
The Grape Broker: 2
He's due to inherit a multi-million dollar a year business. And his father is very stingy or he's frugal. And Luchardi could be living the high life with the money that they're making, but his father won't let him do that. So he's impatient, I think, to inherit the business and start living the good life.
Blood Vines
The Grape Broker: 2
Luchardi approached Bavaro and asked him to deliver low-sugar grapes and without field tags. What's a field tag, you ask? The field tag is essentially the birth certificate of the grape. It says, this grape, Zinfandel grape, was harvested from this field at this location.
Blood Vines
The Grape Broker: 2
But for whatever reason... Bavaro did that. He delivered Carignan, Grenache, and Valdepena.
Blood Vines
The Grape Broker: 2
After that, Bavaro learned that the grapes had been misrepresented as Zinfandel.