Grapes of Wrath

18:47He had to have two brand new motorcycles. I'm sure you'll play the video of him after the Napa earthquake.

18:54Tracy Smith:In fact, I have that video right here. This was taken after the 2014 earthquake in Napa. If an East Coaster is thinking about coming to Napa for harvest season to have some nice wine and have a few dinners, is it time to call that vacation off? Oh, absolutely not. Everything is back going in wine country. It's a great time to visit wine country, see some grapes being crushed, taste some fresh juice, and really take in the wine lifestyle. Man, listening to him, it almost sounds like he could be the mayor of Napa. But things aren't always exactly as they appear to be. Remember Dominic Fapoli, Dahl's former partner?

19:29Tracy Smith:Dominic had been running the winery, and Dahl was running the books. We're selling a bunch of wine. I mean, the winery was a hit, but there wasn't enough money to keep paying our bills, which I didn't understand, I didn't get. Where's the money going? Where's the money going? Where's the money going? That was the question plenty more people in the wine country were about to start asking.

20:14Tracy Smith:By 2014, the new Dahl Vineyards seemed to be taking off. Robert Dahl and Imad Tawfilis, the two ambitious entrepreneurs, were living their dreams. Robert himself running the show. Greetings from Dahl Vineyards. And Imad, silent partner, providing the money. Enjoy. But what Imad didn't know was partnerships with Robert Dahl had a way of turning sour. Remember Robert's first vineyard, the one he shared with Dominic Fapoli? One day, Dominic got a phone call from their lender. I'm starting foreclosure proceedings on you guys. Foreclosure proceedings? Foreclosure, yeah, because we had missed our first payment to him for the winery.

21:01So I called Robert and he said, you shouldn't be worried about that. I've got all that covered. And I said, are you kidding me?

21:06Tracy Smith:Vipoli went ballistic. This is my dream and we were successful in everything we were doing. His life savings and reputation were on the line. He had to get rid of Dahl. So my family and my partners, my brother and my best friends, came around and said, we'll do whatever we need to do and let's get this guy out. Fapoli got control of the vineyard, but he had to pay Dahl to go away. He was bitter. You know, I introduced him as my partner, my friend. So I brought him into that circle of trust that we have here. Everybody welcomed him with open arms because I vouched for him. I had never been burned before.

21:44I was naive.

21:45Tracy Smith:And it turns out, Fapoli wasn't the only one. No one that ever put money into something that he was doing was ever going to get anything back. Steve Birch knows he's a winemaker who worked for Dahl. Back when Dahl looked like he was the golden boy of wine country, Birch introduced him to celebrities. For the comic and TV personality Adam Carolla, he bottled a sangria called Mangria. He made money on it. But I know that there was a significant amount of payment for that that Adam never received. And there was the rapper E40. You a loser? No. Winner? Yeah. He had Dahl package some wines for his label, Earl Stevens Wines.

22:28We started his product and it went really well, but I know he wasn't paid either. No.

22:33Tracy Smith:And there was Birch himself. I left with him owing me a lot of money. Can you give me a ballpark? I will say it was well over$10 ,000. The same thing happened to Dahl's friend, electrician Miles Davis. Dahl owed him$15 ,000. Did you ever see that money? No. But you were friends with him again? Yeah, because he's a great... Yeah, I'm fine with that. I mean, it wasn't about the money. It was about, you know, there was concerns that he was in trouble. so I didn't feel like my little 15 ,000 was anything to worry about. Because he was getting underwater. Yeah. Did you say anything? No. No? No. Did you figure he'd find a way out of it?

23:19Yep. I hoped he would.

23:23Tracy Smith:And then there was Francine and Greg Knittel. Just a few months after the successful debut of the brewery they started with Dahl and a well-known brewmaster, the business started slipping. I got the first inkling that Dahl wasn't what he says he was because a friend of mine went to his brewery, and I put quotes around that, because a friend of mine liked craft beer, and he wasn't making beer at his quote-unquote brew pub. Apparently, by the time Lou's friend stopped by for a drink, the brewery was no longer making its own beer. He wasn't making beer at the brewery? No, he was buying kegs from somebody else.

24:05And when this friend of mine came face to face and told him about that, he just went ballistic.

24:11Tracy Smith:Like he'd been found out. Like he had been found out. Dahl's partners, Francine and Greg, say they didn't know what Dahl was up to at the brewery. And they were shocked when Dahl came in one day and announced he was shutting down the whole thing. Robert's sitting there and he goes, guys, the brewery's not making enough money. I'm going to close the doors. Francine and Greg say they not only lost$250 ,000 of their own money, they'd encouraged friends to invest too. And unlike Miles Davis, they felt personally betrayed by their friend Robert Dahl. What gets to you the most? Somebody that we trusted had this capability, had this...

24:54I mean, Robert knew the whole time, we're going to pretty much screw us over.

25:02Tracy Smith:But no one felt more ripped off than Imad Tawfilis. He thought he'd invested more than a million dollars in a vineyard. Instead, Dahl diverted the cash, spending it on his lavish lifestyle, the brewery business, just about anything else. Dahl had stopped paying back the money he borrowed, and Tawfilis hired a lawyer. He was angry he wanted his money, and he wanted to find out everything he could about Robert Dahl. You amassed a pile of information about Robert Dahl. This is the pile of liens that Robert had against him. Civil judgment from Ford Motor Company,$19 ,000. Allied building products company,$61 ,000.

25:46$53 ,000. $7 ,900.

25:48Tracy Smith:Oh my goodness. Imad hired Dawn King, who has her own special niche in Napa Valley. Well, I'm a private investigator here in Napa. and I was an FBI agent for 10 years. An FBI agent? Yes. So you can smell a rat. Well, I like to put rats in prison anyway. Don started digging. So he was just not paying his bills. I mean, he was just like, you know, charging credit cards. Here's the Federal Credit Union,$53 ,000. And then you get into his lawsuit. A lot of what Don discovered happened back in Minnesota during the years before Dahl came to Napa. But to Don, it told a story. You know, this is the theft, one of his theft charges.

26:33One of his theft charges. Yeah, he had two. This was the theft by swindle.

26:37Tracy Smith:He actually was convicted of theft by swindle. He was. Thefts and swindles got Dahl thrown into jail, not once, but twice back in Minnesota, and left him a convicted felon. I mean, this guy was a criminal. Now, here in the wine country, Dahl seemed to be scamming again. Every time he'd get a business investment, the money seemed to go right into his pocket. Was this kind of a Ponzi scheme? Yeah, to some extent. I mean, except that no one got paid. It's usually in a Ponzi scheme, the first people in get paid. But at this point, Robert did. Right, Robert got paid, but Robert spent all the money.

27:19Tracy Smith:In 2014, wine reporter Lou Perdue began to uncover the swindles Robert Dahl was pulling right here in Napa Valley. He started blogging what he found. And guess who responded? And those are his comments. Robert Dahl. Those are his comments. And then he starts to rant, paragraph. Oh, I see this. The caps in red. By paragraph. Oh, my goodness. Everything in big red capital letters just keeps coming. Oh, my goodness. And it comes. This is like one of those magic scarves. And it comes, just ranting and ranting and ranting. I think I measured this at 26 feet. And what did this say to you? This says to me the guy was off his nut.

28:09Tracy Smith:Things were really heating up. Both sides were suing, and it looked as if things were headed for a showdown. Ahmad was just like so crazed, and he was becoming like a desperate man.

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29:50Oh, my gosh. I mean, I used to get 10, 15, 20 phone calls a day.

30:00Tracy Smith:Imad Tophilis was angry, very angry. He wanted his whole investment back, but it wasn't looking good. How desperate was Imad? He was a desperate man. On a scale from 1 to 10, he was about a 9. He was not going to let someone like Robert Dahl take advantage of him and bully him into being submissive. Attorney David Wiseblood. Imad came to me saying, I have this problem. So I looked at it and said, yeah, you have a problem. So we devised a strategy. That strategy was to hammer Robert Dahl in court. and force him to pay up. So the strategy was file a lawsuit in Napa to basically get control of the collateral and to prevent stuff from disappearing.

30:55Tracy Smith:That collateral was mostly the wine tanks and all the equipment used to make the wine. And what happened? Robert didn't roll that. Well, what happened, I had, in a four-month period, 19 court appearances in the Napa court, which is crazy. I mean, the short answer is the Napa court issued an injunction against Robert saying you can't sell inventory, which in effect should have shut down his winemaking and wine selling operations. That all belongs to Imad, basically. Right, pretty much. Even though Imad was winning in court, Robert Dahl was doing everything he could to cheat. He was even secretly taking equipment and trying to sell it off.

31:37Robert, at that point, had started hiding equipment, hiding whatever he could. He started moving stuff.

31:44Tracy Smith:But Robert Dahl's attorneys, Jasmine Dwahl and Kusha Berakim... There's a lot more than the headlines. ...say Dahl was a clever businessman, but he was no crook. You think Robert's mindset was, I'm going to take this, but I'll be able to pay it back and everything's going to be okay. Absolutely. I think he had every intention to pay back the entire loan.

32:12Tracy Smith:Dahl's lawyers believed Dahl was a stand-up guy, that classic all-American risk-taking entrepreneur who puts it all on the line and at the last minute comes out a hero. The business was growing and it was not a Ponzi scheme or a house of cards. I was shown a document that says Robert Dahl was convicted of swindle in Minnesota. If you look at that document again, you will see that that goes back to when he was about 19 or 21 years old or so. But still, people look at that and say, once a con man, always a con man. Robert definitely had his share of failed ventures before as well. But you don't think that proves that he's a thief?

32:57Not at all. A thief takes money and runs with it. A thief doesn't go to court. He was a risk taker, and when you take risks, sometimes you end up harming other people as well. But our system is set up for that.

33:12Tracy Smith:In the wine business, Dahl's lawyers say, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. And they insist Imad Tawfilis was the real villain in this business deal. You think this was a scam for Imad? Absolutely. how would one come up with that much cash and why?

33:33Tracy Smith:It's still a mystery where all that cash came from. But Dahl's lawyers say Imad was so angry, he was determined to destroy Robert Dahl's business. His barrels of wines were taken. His cars were taken. His brewing systems were taken. He was in an impossible place. With no business to operate, Dahl couldn't earn any money to pay off the debts he owed to Imad and others.

34:06Tracy Smith:And then, surprisingly, there was a breakthrough. It looked as if Imad might get more of his money back. The lawyers had come to a deal, and Imad and Robert were going to get together to hammer out the details. Robert wanted to meet here, at his vineyard. I went to my office Monday morning, and I get a phone call from Imad. David and I have decided to go to the winery. On that morning, I was on the phone, and Imad's attorney was on the phone. Imad and Robert were there in person. Their attorneys joined them on a conference call. There was a definite agreement on what was going to be paid to Imad.

34:47It was just so eerily calm.

34:49Tracy Smith:It was eerily calm. It was eerily calm. But then Robert Dahl rocked the boat. And he said, well, I don't give an S what the lawyers negotiated. This is my offer. What seemed to be a nearly done deal suddenly started unraveling. Which was several hundred thousand dollars less than what was agreed to. The lawyers felt it was a breakdown that Imad and Robert should deal with themselves. They were both business savvy and this was something that they both could have easily handled. So both lawyers got off the phone. Both expected to hear right back from their clients. 20 minutes go by. We had no idea what was going on.

35:32I don't hear from Imad. I was expecting a call. Then I got an email saying there was a shooting. I got a call from Mr. Weisblood. He said, Kusha, tell me this didn't really happen. You thought Imad lost it? I thought in my last day. We both thought that.

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37:07That's the winery up at the end of the row. Down at the end of the row there? Yeah, up at the end of the row.

37:11Tracy Smith:On March 16, 2015, Imad Tawfilis and Robert Dahl had finally gotten together to try to settle their ugly dispute. They'd been meeting one-on-one in a room inside that barn over there at Dahl Vineyard. The lawyers were on the phone on a conference call, but just a few moments after everything started, they hit a snag. Imad wanted to settle it, and Dahl wanted to settle it. But something went wrong. Clearly they can't come to an agreement down there in the vineyard. Not only couldn't they come to an agreement, all hell breaks loose. There's a burst of gunfire, and evidence shows the men come tumbling out of the barn.

38:02Tracy Smith:One has a gun. He's firing. The other man is wounded, running for his life into the vines. They can't agree, and suddenly one person takes off down these rows, like in between these grapes here. Right. Running through here. Right. Imad and Robert both take off, one hunting the other. Running down the row, being pursued by the other one, who is shooting at the guy who became the victim. is shooting through these grapes just as the guy's running. It's a wild chase, something out of a movie. The hunted man desperately dials 911. He's calling 911 as he's running through the vineyard. He's still running, even though he's been shot.

38:48Right. So what does the shooter do? The shooter knows he can't catch the victim. So he goes back to the winery, gets in his car, and drives over, hoping to cut the victim off as the victim runs out. As the victim gets here, he tells 911 that he can see the deputies arriving here. So he's saved. He can see the deputies. And the shooter comes around, gets out of his car, and shoots the victim in the head with a fatal shot as the police cars are arriving.

39:30Tracy Smith:So the shooter gets out, basically stands over the guy? Yes. Delivers the coup de grace. While the sheriff's deputies were right there. The sheriff's deputies were arriving right at this corner. and this is where it all ended the winery these two men had dreamed of building together imad tafilis was lying dead on the ground murdered by robert doll he knows it's all over i mean he knows that no matter what he does he's been caught he can't talk his way out of it so he gets in the uh the vehicle drives up a Terrible road here where there are very few outlets. And as the police are closing in on him, he shoots himself in the head and kills himself.

40:19Kills himself. All over. The final bad life choice on a crooked life that's led all the way back to Minnesota.

40:34Tracy Smith:It's hard to say what set Robert Dahl off that day. It certainly seems the crime was premeditated. Dhal had brought a gun, and remember, he was a convicted felon, and he wasn't allowed to own one. And at that final meeting, he pulled out a bizarre document that he wanted Tawfilis to sign, a document that seemed almost insane. That was basically a manifesto that Imad was trying to ruin his life. This was supposed to be a confession by Imad that it was all a hoax and it was all his fault. So the idea is Robert pulls out this crazy manifesto and says, sign this. And he pulls out a gun and says, sign this.

41:17Tracy Smith:There was evidence that Dahl may have been ready to kill more people. Duct tape, flex cuffs, a tarp, gloves. And there was ammo, more than 750 rounds. A magnetic gun holder that goes on a car. Hide the gun. Yeah. To me, that is a murder kit. I mean, plain and simple. I think he was trying to figure out how to kill the people that had brought him down. And that theory fits what we've discovered here in Napa. In the course of our reporting, so many people told us they too could have been victims. There was Don King, the dirt-digging private eye. Could have been me running through the vineyard. Could have been.

42:03Tracy Smith:Lou Perdue, the dogged wine journalist. I think I was probably number one on his list to kill because I was the guy who blew the whistle on everything. Francine and Greg Knittel, who filed a criminal case against Dahl. My first thought was that could have very easily been Greg. And Imad Tafilis' attorney, David Wiseblood. It certainly could have been me. And I'm sure that it would have been. There was even that prince of the wine country, Dominic Fapoli. You think he would have killed you, too? Oh, yeah. Finally, we were left with one more question. This month's wine club shipment includes our...

42:40Tracy Smith:How could Robert Dahl have convinced all these people to believe in him? Robert Dahl was an Academy Award-winning actor when it comes to convincing people to trust him. How did he not get found out? Nobody checked. People like this, they keep moving. Destroy somebody else's life for their own good, their own benefit.

43:04Tracy Smith:Imad Taufilis' murder haunts almost everyone he knew in the wine country. You think about this case every day? I do. Yeah. Two years, two years plus. Dominic Fapoli says back when he and Dahl were still partners, he tried to warn Imad. I said, I want to give you a heads up. I'm having all these issues with Robert. You warned him? Yeah, we sat here on this deck and, you know, and talked. How did you hear about what he did? Somebody pulled up their phone and they showed me the article of what had happened. I was just in shock. And immediately, I mean, honestly, I started crying. And it was a mix of guilt because I guess I didn't do enough to warn Ahmad about him.

43:47Tracy Smith:Jonathan Kesselman, the director, felt deeply about Ahmad. He was a really sweet, kind, generous guy. And I just felt like I needed to say that, you know, just so it's on the record. You know, there's some legacy of Ahmad where, you know, he was remembered. He was a good person. As for Robert Dahl, he may have shown up in Napa with a grand vision. But in the end, he brought his dreams and those of so many around him crashing down. He wanted to be that guy that had a vineyard and had wine with his name on it. He wanted to live the life of the big fish. He was a little fish. this is not your typical wine story.

44:31No, it isn't. And one that we don't want to hear about around here again, for sure.

44:47When beloved family patriarch Gary Ferris went missing, his family looked everywhere on their property until they came across something horrifying. It's a homicide. Absolutely. The blame game in this family went round and round. This is Blood is Thicker, the Ferris wheel. I don't see how anyone can look at this story and think they were happy. Blood is Thicker, the Ferris wheel is available on Amazon Music. Follow the show on Amazon Music for more future episodes. Can you keep a secret?

45:23Tracy Smith:Now streaming on Paramount+. The money from your dad's life insurance finally came through. A new original series. Dad. It turns out I hadn't died. Can You Keep a Secret? New series now streaming on Paramount+.