BUYER BEWARE CELLAR

‘Fraud wine’ auction

Wine lovers are forking over thousands of dollars for bottles from the private collection of a convicted fakevino peddler — with no guarantee the dusty old Burgundies and Bordeauxs are the real deal.

The feds are auctioning off the wines to try to claw back about $1.2 million of the money Rudy Kurniawan swindled from customers who thought they were getting top wines from the best vintages but instead got stuck with counterfeits.

The US Marshals Service, which is handling the online auction, admits that it can’t guarantee that the coveted wines are legit, even though they’ve been eyed by experts.

“While there can be no guarantee with 100 percent certainty in any situation such as this, to the best of our knowledge the wines we are selling are genuine,” a rep for the service said.

Roughly 4,700 bottles (including those pictured) from Kurniawan’s stash of 5,259 went on the market beginning last month. The auctions began after the experts ruled that 392 were bogus and another 156 unsuitable for sale because of damaged corks or other reasons.

The wines for sale range from three bottles of 1911 Domain de la RomanéeConti, which drew a bid of $38,250 — down to a 1953 Grivelet VosneRomanée Clos Frantin, which got a lone bid of $85.

The service hired Sotheby’s wine expert Michael Egan to determine which wines were genuine. Yet some buyers wouldn’t spend a dime on the wines because of Kurniawan’s shady rep. “I’d be concerned about their validity,” said Jeff Zacharian, who runs Zachy’s Wine and Liquor in Scarsdale.

The auction — which can be found at www.taxauction.com — ends Dec. 15

Kurniawan, an Indonesian businessman, was convicted of fraud in 2013 and sentenced to 10 years for selling fakes to wealthy wine lovers like Bill Koch, brother of billionaires Charles and David, who was cheated out of $2 million.