Looking for the Real ‘Nicolas De-Meyer,’ Mysterious Goldman Sachs Wine Thief

De-Meyer—whose post-heist wanderlust took him to Rome, Argentina, Morocco, and beyond—fell far and fast. It was only last Wednesday the world learned the truth about Solomon’s missing wine collection. In the fall of 2016, De-Meyer sold shipments he was meant to ferry to Solomon’s Hamptons home to a North Carolina dealer instead.

But more interesting than the fact that one of the richest men in New York kept such a lavish collection—and such a wily assistant in his employ—are the few scraps of Nicolas De-Meyer’s story handed up with his indictment.

De-Meyer sold his boss’s wine under the alias “Mark Miller.” To Empire State wine snobs it’s not just a generic, alliterative American name but suggests deeper wine knowledge: From the mid-’60s until his death 10 years ago, Mark Miller was a well-known vintner. He put Hudson Valley wines back on the map, awakening a regional winemaking renaissance. The Alice Waters of East Coast wines, Miller foresaw the farm-to-table movement we today variably enjoy and make fun of. It makes an odd sort of sense that a gofer to the hipster bank president (Solomon DJ’s at techno clubs in his spare time—really, he does) would resell stolen wines under the assumed name of upstate’s low-key winemaking revolutionary. De-Meyer’s use of “Mark Miller” adds a note of thoughtful culture clash to what otherwise reads as an eruption of upstairs-downstairs class war tailor-made for the amusement of bloggers and Bernie bros. Invoking Miller places the mega-rich collector Solomon opposite the memory of a man who made and sold wines for love not money.

Even more oddly, Nicholas Demeyer was the name of New York City’s ninth mayor in 1670s, back when Wall Street bordered an actual wall. So, to rule out reincarnation, I Nexis-searched the 17th-century Manhattanite’s sticky-fingered namesake. And, to my confusion, the database spat out no fewer than 15 name variations, all pegged to a single Findlay, Ohio-based Social Security Number. The SSN of a boy who, just like the federal remandee Nicolas De-Meyer, was born in 1977.

His names range from Nickolas-with-a-K Meyer to the more Goldman-appropriate Nickolas Vonmeyer, Nicola Demeyer, and Nicolas De-Meyer or DeMeyer. (The indictment and the court filing from L.A. differ as well: The unsealed indictment calls him Nicolas De-Meyer, but he’s in the docket as Nicolas De Meyer. Whereas, typically, one FBI spokesman told me, an indictment would list the known aliases of a defendant with each one preceded by “aka.”) And along with the Findlay, Ohio, address listed for this Nick of many names? None other than Solomon’s former home 145 Central Park West.

The folks back in Findlay know him as Nickolas or Nick, at least according to a woman who identified herself as his stepmother when I called his father’s house. “He’s in Rome,” she said, where he’s been for six months as far as she knows. He’s never lived at his father’s current address, she said, but he did call there two weeks ago.

“That’s the last we heard of him,” she said. Did he say when he’d be coming back? “No.” He checks in and says where in the world he’s wound up, “Sometimes but not always.” It’s just not Nickolas’s style. “We never know where he is. He could be anywhere,” she said with a resigned chuckle and maybe a flourish of pride, “He goes all over.” He used to work in New York, she confirmed, “But he doesn’t now.” Had she heard he’d been in the news, or that he was arrested last week in Los Angeles? “I heard something about it, but we just think it’s a prank,” said Mrs. Meyer, speaking for herself and Nickolas’s father. She couldn’t comment on the theft, she said—she didn’t know if it was true. Plus they’ve already had a couple of calls from reporters, “And we don’t want anything to do with it.” Her husband was getting angry, she told me then. She said I shouldn’t call back.

Another woman in Findlay, Ohio, one who—public records suggest—is his since-remarried mother, abruptly declined to comment at first. Later, her voice shaking slightly, she denied any knowledge of a Nickolas Meyer. I was the 14th reporter to call her asking about him, she said wearily. She wished we’d “try someone else.”According to the 1994 Findlay High School yearbook, Nickolas Meyer played a guard in The King & I. His castmates so far haven’t responded to interview requests. They are community leaders, engineers, track coaches, stay-at-home moms. More than a few have stayed in and around Findlay. One hit it big on Broadway. For young Nickolas Meyer, who’s also captured on the ’94 candids page “looking stressed”, the role of a lifetime was yet to come. The following year, he told his school’s yearbook compilers he’d be heading off to college in the fall: “Senior Nickolas Meyer never questioned his post FHS plans, ‘I felt college was a necessity in order to bring me happiness in my adult life.’ Nickolas will attend Vassar in New York in order to pursue an art history degree. ‘My goal is to own an art gallery,’ comments Meyer.’”

Findlay High School yearbook, via Classmates.com

Up in Poughkeepsie, the registrar confirmed Nickolas R. Meyer had matriculated in 1995 and graduated four years later with a bachelor’s degree in art. What he did in the nine years between Vassar and working for David Solomon we don’t know.

Except that at some point, he changed his name—and signed into the alumni portal. Vassar’s alumni database turns up a Nicolas de Meyer ’99, art major. He’s got no class notes and no photos—and, by way of an address, a country of residence: Italy.

There are, I don’t doubt, many more untold dimensions to “De-Meyer”’s too-big-to-fail wine heist. They deserve at least a film treatment. But first—if his parents’ entirely appropriate impatience with reporters is any indication—we’re in for a reported deep-dive or several.

Speaking of which, the timing of the thefts in the autumn of 2016 permits one possible journalistic influence: The September 2016 WSJ magazine cover story on Shane Smith, a profile of the Vice founder who became a billionaire after selling a ten-percent stake to Disney.

In the story, Smith shows off his Santa Monica estate as if on an episode of Cribs. He tells the story of his action-packed punk-rock ascent from “coke-slinging” underage Canadian bartender to bona fide media mogul. He also talks up his wine collection.

If De-Meyer read about Smith, only eight years his senior, and then tossed aside the glossy mag and got to work cataloging Solomon’s wine collection—he’d have found seven bottles of the same label Smith bragged about, with WSJ’s reported dollar amounts still swimming in his mind.

Who could blame him for doing the mental math, or even for casually checking the internet for more per-bottle price quotes? Surely anyone else in his shoes would begin to wonder whether the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti belongs back out there on the market. Should two smug gazillionaires really monopolize a rare and velvety vintage just so they can tell their jealous friends “you can’t get this stuff anywhere”?

Suffice it to say, Nick strikes a sympathetic figure.

And he has a built-in audience already demanding answers. How did he spend the money? What other schemes kept him busy overseas? What different names did he use, how many hearts did he break? Why did you do it, Nick? What made you want to run? Should we all be a little more like you?

His next moves are pretty clear: Write a memoir. Option his life rights, demand a fat cut of however much the movie makes at the box office. And if it is, as I suspect, a Catch Me If You Can for the Elizabeth Warren era, he ought to be looking at more than $1.2 million, even after restitution.