Goldman co-COO's ex-assistant charged with stealing $1.2 million of wine

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former personal assistant to Goldman Sachs Group Inc Co-Chief Operating Officer David Solomon has been charged with stealing hundreds of bottles of wine worth more than $1.2 million from his former boss.

U.S. prosecutors on Wednesday said Nicolas DeMeyer's theft scheme ran from 2014 to October 2016, when he allegedly stole seven bottles from the famed French estate Domaine de la Romanee-Conti in Burgundy that his boss had bought for $133,650.

Using the alias Mark Miller, DeMeyer would sell stolen bottles to a North Carolina wine dealer, who would have them picked up at Solomon's Manhattan apartment, the indictment said.

Solomon, known for his devotion to wine, and his wife Mary maintained an apartment at the prestigious San Remo co-op on Central Park West while the alleged scheme occurred, public records show.

DeMeyer's responsibilities had included receiving wine at the apartment, and moving it to his former boss's wine cellar in East Hampton, New York, the indictment said.

While Solomon was not identified by name in the indictment, Goldman spokesman Andrew Williams confirmed that Solomon was the "victim" described there as DeMeyer's target.

"The theft was discovered in the fall of 2016 and reported to law enforcement at that time," Williams said in an email.

Solomon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

He and Harvey Schwartz share the titles of co-COO and co-president at Goldman, and are considered potential successors to Lloyd Blankfein as the Wall Street bank's chief executive.

DeMeyer was arrested on Tuesday night in Los Angeles and is expected to appear in court there, according to a spokeswoman for Interim U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman in Manhattan.

The defendant was charged with one count of transporting stolen property across state lines. A lawyer for DeMeyer could not immediately be identified.

The case is U.S. v. DeMeyer, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York.

(Reporting by Lauren Tara LaCapra, Brendan Pierson and Jonathan Stempel in New York)