Someone at Sherry-Lehmann is going to need a drink once this whole saga is over.
The renowned New York City wine shop was raided by the F.B.I. on Tuesday, the New York Post reported this week. That action followed reports from earlier this year that the store had failed to deliver more than $1 million in wine to its customers, plus other legal woes the 88-year-old institution has faced recently.
Sources told the Post that federal agents arrived to the store early on Tuesday and were present until the evening. People were seen carrying boxes out of the store, and a former employee told the news outlet that the F.B.I. was probably looking at Sherry-Lehmann’s computer system and any records that were stored inside the shop.
An F.B.I. agent who went into the wine store confirmed to the Post that they had been there for hours, but they would not say what they were searching for. A spokesperson for the F.B.I. declined to comment, while Shyda Gilmer and Kris Green, the owners of Sherry-Lehmann, didn’t respond to the New York Post’s requests for comment.
The bottle shop, which was frequented by celebrities like Mick Jagger and Greta Garbo, came under fire in late May, when The New York Times reported that the store had yet to deliver fine wines to people who had already paid for the goods. In addition to that allegation, Sherry-Lehmann had $2.8 million in unpaid sales taxes, and the owners were also accused of selling wine in private storage to other customers.
The store closed in early March after its liquor license expired. And while the license was later restored, Sherry-Lehmann never reopened. The Post noted that the business’s website was shut down over the Fourth of July weekend, and Eric Andrus, a spokesperson for the company as recently as May, told the outlet that he no longer worked for Sherry-Lehmann.
The F.B.I. is carrying out its investigation into the company alongside the New York Police Department and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, a spokesperson for the USPIS told the New York Post. And the New York State Liquor Authority is also working on an investigation into the wine store. Once the results of those probes are made public, perhaps we’ll find out what—if anything—the F.B.I. found during its recent raid on the shop.
