As always… Be careful who you hire! Also having great S.O.P's in place and redundant staff oversight for security purposes wouldn't hurt.
The former personal assistant to Goldman Sachs co-president David Solomon fled to Rome in November 2016, one day after privately admitting he took $1.2 million worth of rare wine from the executive's collection.
A federal court judge in Los Angeles on Wednesday denied Nicolas De-Meyer bail and called him a flight risk. De-Meyer, who had worked for Solomon from 2008 to 2016, had admitted to his boss he took the wine during a meeting with him and his wife at a Manhattan hotel that November, the day before he fled the U.S.
He traveled in Italy, Brazil, Argentina, Switzerland and Morocco and was issued a 10-year visa in Brazil in 2016, according to FBI agent Elizabeth Rivas, who testified on Wednesday about De-Meyer's arrest at Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday night. The FBI tracked his movements using bank records and ATM withdrawals, she said.
Solomon's wife provided a sworn statement that she, her husband and De-Meyer met at the hotel in New York that November. During that meeting, De-Meyer admitted to taking the wine. They talked about possible prosecution, Rivas said Wednesday, and Solomon wouldn't guarantee that the FBI would not be involved.
De-Meyer was supposed to meet Solomon's wife at a bank the next day to pay them back but he never showed up, instead fleeing the country, Rivas said. In a recorded phone call to Solomon's wife after that day, he admitted again he took the wine and had left for Rome.
Source: Ex-assistant to top Goldman exec fled to Rome after admitting wine theft, FBI says – cnbc.com