In 2015, bullets flew through a Napa Valley winery in a business dealing gone bad. Only a few years prior, investor Emad Tawfilis gave Robert Dahl $1.4 million to finance his winery. But when a private investigator reveals Robert’s shady past, a legal battle quickly turns into a deadly negotiation.
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Episode Transcript
ASHLEY SMITH, HOST:
Hey, Vinfamous listeners, Ashley here. Heads up. This episode talks about murder and suicide and might not be suitable for all listeners. Please use discretion and be well down Winding road. In Napa Valley, two men were meeting in a barn at what was then Dahl Vineyards. The logo featuring the name of the front man, Robert Dahl, was plastered over oak barrels, glasses, and tables. The investor Ahau tops worked behind the scenes from the outside. The winery and tasting room looked like a slice of the peaceful, idyllic Napa landscape. But inside the tasting room, the tone was growing tense between the two businessmen. Both sides had their lawyers on the phone.
DAVID WISEBLOOD, GUEST:
He was greeted by Robert, and he was, according to Emad, very stern. His countenance was not pleasant.
ASHLEY:
That’s David Wise blood. Emad’s lawyer. Emad invested 1.4 million in a dream. Robert sold him on, but Emad had no idea where the money went. The conversation turned heated. A lawyer suggested they take a break. They hung up. Minutes passed. David started to call Emad. He’s getting worried now. Then an email hits his inbox. What happens next is Vinfamous.
DAVID:
There’s a report of police activity at the winery. My heart sign,
DAWN KING, GUEST:
Black gloves. There was duct tape, there was zip ties, and there was essentially a murder kit there at the winery.
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ASHLEY:
You’re listening to Vinfamous, a podcast from Wine enthusiast. We uncork tales of envy, greed, and opportunity. I am your host, Ashley Smith.
(Theme Music Fades Out)
ASHLEY:
The Napa Valley lifestyle is the stuff of fantasy who hasn’t sipped California red, while imagining a new life among the vines, where you spend your days honing the craft of winemaking, and you end by watching the sunset disappear behind the low rolling hills. In this week’s episode, we tell you about a face off between two men, a businessman who craved the vintner lifestyle in the investor who financed his dreams. Robert Doll was a big guy with a bigger personality. He grew up watching football and snowmobiling in Minnesota.
DAVID:
He had a very magnetic personality, and you wanted and easily did like him, and you wanted to do what he wanted you to do.
ASHLEY:
Robert was convincing people who knew him described him as a natural salesman back in Minnesota, he said he sold a mold removal company for 10 million. Perhaps he wanted to continue building his fortune in a more glamorous industry. He told friends that he had this great idea that piqued the interest of the New York Yankees in Minnesota. Twins he wanted to make ready to drink wines. It appeared he had a knack for starting businesses and making friends wherever he went. So in 2010, he uprooted his family and moved 1000 miles away to Napa Valley. And remember back in 2010, we were recovering from the global recession. California mostly focused on fine wine, but when the economy isn’t a slump, consumers reach for the cheaper stuff. But he found an opportunity to start building his business empire. He created a business called California Shiners. This was not a fancy endeavor. A shiner is off-label wine. It’s a blend of wines that other vineyards don’t want to sell to the public. A shiner’s bottle is shiny, hence the name. It looked like his businesses were taking off. He collaborated with Rapper E 40 to make Earl Stevens wine. Also, if you’re an elder millennial like me, you must remember who E 40 is. If you’re on TikTok, his song Choices was a trending sound. The yup, nope song ringing any bells. He was also in business with Adam Corolla of Jimmy Kimmel. In podcast fame, they made a wine called Mangria, like sangria, but manly. Interesting.
Now, back to Robert. It appears as if he’s building his empire Brick by brick, he buys a home for 1.4 million, which translates to about 2 million in today’s economy. It was inspired to look like an estate in Tuscany, and of course it had to have an elaborate wine cellar, an in-home movie theater, and a three car garage. So it was onward and upward to the ultimate Napa Valley dream, his own tasting room, bearing his name, Dahl Vineyards. But there’s something I heard a few times when talking to folks about the story.
DAWN:
As they say, it takes a large fortune to make a small fortune in the wine industry.
ASHLEY:
That’s when Robert Dahl met Emad Tawfilis. While Robert had the magnetic charming personality of a front man, Emad lived a quieter life. He was of a slight build. He had short, wavy, black hair. He was a runner, and he went everywhere with his dog, a Labrador named Maddie.
DAVID:
I would describe Emad as a gentle soul. He was soft spoken. He was a very loyal and caring person. And unfortunately, I think that those character traits, those positive characteristics, can be misinterpreted as weakness. He was not a weak person.
ASHLEY:
That’s David Wise Blood. We heard from him earlier. He lives in San Francisco, and Emad hired him as a lawyer.
DAVID:
Our first meeting was by phone. And we spoke at length about his background as an entrepreneur, as an accountant, as, uh, somebody who had always had a passing interest in wine and was interested in investing.
ASHLEY:
Emad made his money in Silicon Valley, but he’s not a flashy.com millionaire. It appeared he was at a point in his life when he wanted to enjoy his fortune. Isn’t that the dream of early retirement? So he followed his interests and started to invest in his hobbies. He always loved movies. So Emad had invested in films down in Hollywood, but he was also passionate about wine and Napa Valley drew him in together. Robert and Emad were going to create Doll Vineyards, but again, it takes a large fortune to make a small fortune.
DAVID:
He had originally loaned $180,000 in, I think it was February, 2013. That amount was then increased to $850,000. And then there was a consolidated note for 1.2 million that was executed in September of 2013
ASHLEY:
To a grand total of
DAVID:
1.2 million, which was basically his life savings.
ASHLEY:
His entire life savings. What was maybe more wild was how he delivered the investment. He dropped $800,000 in a gym bag.
DAVID:
It just sounds like something from the Sopranos. And to me, that’s a red flag. Although Robert was able to convince Emad, who certainly was no adult, that there was a perfectly legitimate reason for, for doing things in that fashion,
ASHLEY:
Right? That’s a lot of money. He had a lot of experiences investing money like he worked in tech and and in movies. So why do you think he was willing to give so much money to this guy he didn’t know very well? And then in such weird circumstances, like the cash in the, in the bag and delivering it that way.
DAVID:
And I think that’s in part what happened. I mean, Emad, you’re right. I mean, he was not just given his business background and his education and his experiences. On the other hand, he’d never invested in a winery before. This was something that became, I don’t know if it evolved from an avocation into a dream, but it had some, uh, there was some path along those lines.
ASHLEY:
Robert seemed to have an answer for everything too.
DAVID:
Robert Dah said. That’s what he said, which was, if I pay vendors in cash, I can get better terms. Why? That meant that there wouldn’t be a wire as distinct from, um, money in a red satchel. That was a sore topic. And so I didn’t, and one of the things about the roles that I’ve played is you get to know people and you realize that there are real lives that are at stake. And it’s more than just about money. And that was certainly true with Iman.
ASHLEY:
This was more than just money. They wanted to make it big. So the businessmen got to work. They leased a property in Ville. Robert built a tasting room, purchased wine equipment, barrels of wine were branded with the letters DV and set up around the modest estate. In the summer of 2014, Dahl Vineyards opened its doors to the public, and it looks like Robert’s other businesses were taking off too. He partnered with a local couple to open a brewery. He shared ownership of another vineyard, but cracks were appearing in the foundation of Robert’s business empire. He sold wine that was bad. He didn’t pay his growers for grapes. Ahau was growing worried. His investment, his life’s savings would not make a return. Maybe not at all. He was devising a legal strategy. But by the time you’re calling someone like David, you’re in a difficult position.
DAVID:
Emad was, I mean, making a decision to file what became a fairly high profile lawsuit to try to basically get people to honor their obligations. It’s a last ditch. It’s a last ditch thing. And so Emad had concluded two things by the time I was engaged. One, he couldn’t trust Robert and he needed to take steps to protect himself because Robert wasn’t doing that. And two, because Robert, by all appearances, had a robust business and certainly a useful business plan and all the licensure that was required. Robert, if he were pressured, would Emad believed. And that’s not an unreasonable belief that he would do the right thing because if for no other reason it was in Robert Doll’s best interest to do that. But yeah, things were definitely, were definitely quite tense by that point. And they got more tense as we found out more things.
ASHLEY:
One of the first things they did was call in the expertise of Napa’s Premier private detective Dawn King.
DAWN:
I’m a private investigator here in Napa, California, and I have a business called Dawn to Dawn Investigations, which I’ve been running now for 19 years.
ASHLEY:
Wow. And before that, you were an F B I agent. I’m so curious to hear how you got into this line of work.
DAWN:
Uh, that’s, uh, that’s a podcast in itself. I was actually dating an F B I agent, and I had always wanted to hear his stories about his latest caper had had, uh, a car break in three different times, and I started to become like a vigilante trying to solve the last burglary.
ASHLEY:
Emad called Dawn in a panic. He no longer trusted the man he gave his life savings to. Who was the man behind the confident facade. Was this wine empire built out of bricks, or was it a house of cards who really was Robert Dahl.
DAWN:
Emad was showing signs of stress and Bec just by his elevation and his voice and the way that he wanted everything done. Right now we’ve gotta figure out who this guy is.
ASHLEY:
This was not the first time someone asked Dawn to look into Robert. What she had to tell him did not ease his fears.
DAWN:
So he initially wanted me to run a background, which when he mentioned the name Robert Dahl, I, I’ve chuckled to myself because I had already done a background investigation on Robert. So I knew a lot about Robert Dahl’s background already.
ASHLEY:
Oh, that’s interesting. So when Emad reached out, you already knew who Robert Dahl was.
DAWN:
Exactly. Exactly. And he had done a little jail time in Minnesota and was, you know, looking like a swindler. And what what Emad was explaining to me was, was making it clear to me that this is, maybe this guy’s pattern has big dreams, but can’t back it up. That became evident to me now with the second person in Napa calling me, uh, to do a background on him.
ASHLEY:
After this short break, Dawn shares what she uncovered, stay with us. His big dreams went bust in Minnesota. Robert had a checkered pass to failed companies before he moved to Napa Valley and met AAuD.
DAWN:
Mr. Dahl had a business in Minnesota, Durban International. This company had produced a mold killing spray. He had a lot of investors that were unhappy with Mr. Dahl because again, they weren’t, they weren’t getting paid back on their end of the deal. And so these business partners were upset and filed lawsuits against him. That was the litigation that I had found. And, and then I think he had done a small stint in prison because of, because of the fraud.
It sort of painted a picture in my years of investigating it. You know, a leopard doesn’t change his spots a lot of times. And when you look at somebody that’s pulled a fast one on his investors, you can almost guarantee that he’s done it more than once. They don’t just wake up one day and go, oh, you know, I’m gonna, I’m gonna screw my partners out of their end of the deal. And like so many swindlers, they, they talk a really good game. And they’re, they’re super charismatic and they, they, they have great grandiose ideas and they talk people into getting involved with them. And then the investors and the associates get duped.
ASHLEY:
Dawn discovered that the entity where Emad invested his money was actually defunct
DAWN:
When he found out that it wasn’t, that was that set off all kinds of alarms as well.
ASHLEY:
This was a major turning point for Ahau. How would he get his life savings back if the entity didn’t exist?
DAWN:
I remember him finding, you know, being so distressed about the fact that that company had been dismantled or was no longer showing up as current. Emad was very emotional a lot of the times when I spoke to him. I mean, that’s why it was so sad to me because he was, I mean, he was realizing I think this is not gonna end well.
ASHLEY:
Robert Doll’s facade is crumbling. Remember all of the other arms to his wine empire? The celebrity wines, the brewery, the Shiners. By 2014 Robert sold 10,000 cases of wine to comedian Adam Corolla. He owed $800,000 on E 40 s wine deal. He even walked away from the brewery owing money.
DAWN:
But he had been siphoning money, I think from patio wine and from, I mean, basically I MOD’s money into the, the, the, the brewery business and another winery and was not putting the money where it was supposed to be, which was in, in their business venture.
ASHLEY:
It seems his strategy was to keep opening new businesses to bring in more money. Essentially, Robert was robbing Peter to pay Paul, but his smooth talking could only take him so far. Now, Emad and his lawyer David, understood who they were working with. And as, as a lawyer, I know this was very complicated, but at the same time were you thinking like, well, I’m representing the good guy here. And there’s so much evidence on the other side of like, you know, clearly this guy is in the wrong. I dunno, did you, did it feel kind of like a slam dunk? Like there’s no way you wouldn’t get Im MOD’s money back?
DAVID:
Well, nothing is a slam dunk. The only certainty in litigation is uncertainty. And when you have enough sort of games being played with creating and canceling entities and transferring assets and maybe liabilities or maybe not, and saying you didn’t do this and you did do this, it’s hard. And as far as your question about being able to collect the money, obviously the thought was he’s gonna be good for the money. And of course, the other source that made Emad comfortable and me as his representative was there was, uh, according to Robert’s representations, millions of dollars of wine inventory that was subject to the contract documents in the security interests.
ASHLEY:
At this point, the tasting room they opened in the summer of 2014 has shut down due to court orders saying you can’t operate or sell wine or do anything. They turned their legal strategy to trying to stop the collateral from disappearing. Neither side was going down without a fight.
DAVID:
There were 19 separate court appearances in the Napa Court, which is a ridiculous amount of court appearances on anything, especially something that hasn’t gone to trial.
DAWN:
And in fact, one, one of the hearings, the judge just stopped the whole hearing and had everybody step outside the courtroom cuz it was just getting too heated between the two sides.
DAVID:
So I saw kind of the dark side of Robert at that point, but I also saw him talking to other people outside the courtroom, just acting like a normal, you know, fun guy that you wanna have a beer with.
ASHLEY:
Dawn King, the private investigator said she acted as a gopher for Emad’s legal team. She served Robert papers,
DAWN:
But I really didn’t see anything violent with the guy. I mean, I, I had served him papers several times. He was always polite, he wasn’t angry. And believe me, when I serve papers, some people are downright nasty. They throw things at you, they try to run you over, they try to do crazy things. And, and he was never that way.
ASHLEY:
Dawn was also investigating where the wine equipment went. They obtained court orders to find where things like barrels, tanks and other equipment were used to make wine. It was sounding desperate. This wasn’t just an investment gone bad, this was personal to Ahau.
DAWN:
Nothing’s coming to fruition. And I think he was panicking. And so he was calling me a lot. I mean, I, it was consuming my days, it was escalating because I, I think Emad was realizing that, that this might go south.
ASHLEY:
They even went so far as to hire a crane company. Robert said he purchased 3000 gallon tanks in order to make in store wine. These tanks were supposed to be huge, easy enough to identify, but
DAVID:
Ultimately the tanks weren’t there. There were teeny weeny little tanks that were there. And Imon didn’t really want to do anything with those tanks. I mean, he, they, they weren’t really valuable to him, but he just wanted to be able to ensure that, uh, Robert understood that it was time to stop the games and to just be honorable.
ASHLEY:
This discovery was a clear example of Robert not following through on his word. Despite this disappointment, it seemed the settlement was turning a corner. The clouds in this legal storm were breaking, they were getting close to a fair settlement.
DAVID:
We were having coffee, Ima and I and his loving dog, and we were sitting out in Napa. The sun was shining. It finally seemed like things were, were going in the direction that Emad ultimately charted, which is to, to resolve this in a way that’s going to work for him. And that would work for the winery as well.
ASHLEY:
Then he gets a phone call. Robert wanted to meet now to resolve this at the winery. And remember the winery is completely closed down.
DAVID:
Emod said he wanted to go. I said, Hey, I’m not going. I don’t think you should go
ASHLEY:
After some back and forth. They all agree to meet at David’s office in San Francisco. It looks like they’re nearing the finish line on some sort of settlement agreement, flushing out an amount that would be paid, who’s going to sell the surplus inventory? And everyone could move on from this. But then
DAVID:
We got a phone call shortly before asking to change the meeting to the winery.
ASHLEY:
Then Robert cancels the meeting. So they reschedule and he cancels again. Emad calls David to update him
DAVID:
And he said, Robert’s been texting me all weekend. He knows that he screwed up again and quote, I need to get my life back. Those were, those were words I will never forget. And he said, are you gonna join me? I said, Iman, look, I don’t want to and I don’t want you to. Why are you gonna meet with this person? All he keeps on doing is telling you things. And then he doesn’t, he doesn’t deliver. If he’s got records, he can email them to you. He can text them to you. I don’t care. You don’t need to be there.
ASHLEY:
Emad also asked Dawn King if she was available to be with him during this meeting. She was out of the country. She says she also advised against meeting in person at the winery.
DAVID:
And he said, no, I’m gonna go. I’m not concerned. I said, okay. So he went, and that was the start of, of that day.
ASHLEY:
On March 16th, 2015, not even a year after the tasting room opened to the public, Ahau arrived at the winery with the dog. He brought everywhere with him.
DAVID:
And then Emad got there and he was greeted by Robert and not with Robert’s normal, friendly sort of man hug, kind of greeting. He was, according to Emad, very stern, his accountants was not pleasant.
ASHLEY:
Both men had their legal teams on speakerphone. It was a conference call where they were discussing the details of the final settlement.
DAVID:
And so the phone call started. I remember the tone. It was very civil, it was very cordial.
ASHLEY:
The former business partners already agreed on terms, but this time Robert handed Emad something else.
DAVID:
So what Robert handed Emad that Emad, uh, texted to me was a new settlement agreement that certainly I had not prepared and neither had his attorneys. It was something that Robert had cobbled together. And that settlement agreement, if I remember correctly, provided that Robert would pay, uh, basically 50% of what we had always agreed was the number. And Robert took the lead on that call and Emad said, we’re not here to renegotiate. So Robert Dahl said, I don’t give a shit what the lawyers agreed to. This is, this is more than fair. Emad said correctly. It wasn’t the lawyers who came up with these numbers, it was us. And I’m not here to renegotiate. This call didn’t last for very long.
ASHLEY:
One of the lawyers asked to take a break from the heated call,
DAVID:
And that certainly seemed appropriate and reasonable. So we took a break, Emad went outside, we spoke, um, on the phone for a few minutes, and that was the last time I ever talked to Emad.
ASHLEY:
Minutes pass, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. David’s calling Emad no answer.
DAVID:
And it was, uh, unusual and it was concerning.
AUTOMATED VOICEMAIL RECORDING:
Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system,
ASHLEY:
Almost an hour passes. Then David gets an email from a local wine writer.
DAVID:
There’s a report of police activity at the winery. And my heart saw, I just knew, I just knew that it was just nothing, nothing positive was, was happened. Um, and it was just awful.
ASHLEY:
So according to police reports of what happened after they hung up that conference call, Robert shared another version of the settlement agreement. It looked almost like a manifesto.
DAVID:
It was in the drawer of his desk in the shed and the winery that I saw much later. And that agreement said, I owe you nothing that you Emad filed this lawsuit and took all these steps against me pursuant to some sort of personal vendetta you had against me. And he had a multiple paragraph declaration that he wanted Emad to sign in, which Emad acknowledged those facts. And I’m sure even with the gun to his head, there’s no way that Emad would would ever do that.
ASHLEY (27:10):
At some point while inside the barn, Robert pulled out a gun and shot at Emad.
DAVID:
I just, I don’t even wanna think about the details. And had escaped out the door and
ASHLEY:
Emad was running for his life. He was weaving in, out and through the vines, dodging bullets that were flying his way. Even in the midst of what was surely panic, he managed to call 9 1 1 and share his location. Meanwhile, Robert jumped in his truck gun in hand to follow Emad. He tracked him down the driveway through the vineyard and out toward the street. It seemed like Emad was in the clear. Police were already arriving at the scene as far as we know, Emad could have seen their flashing lights coming towards him. But that’s when Robert shot him in the back of the head and then drove down the road and shot himself. Police found a few shocking things after the fact. In the vehicle where Robert killed himself, there was a list of names other people he wanted gone.
DAVID:
I was on that list.
DAWN:
And so I could have been a victim if I went with him. I mean, I could have, who knows,
DAVID):
Speaking selfishly about it, had I gone up to Napa for that meeting, you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation. I wouldn’t be around. And that that fact certainly isn’t, isn’t lost on me.
ASHLEY:
Robert also appeared to have planned this incident out. The conference call with the lawyers could have happened anywhere, but Robert asked to meet with Emad alone on the secluded property that was closed to outside visitors.
DAWN:
I actually saw the black gloves, I saw the zip ties, I saw the bleach, and I saw the contract. I’m like, oh my God. This was completely a setup.
ASHLEY:
He also had several rounds of ammunition in his truck burner phones, even a hazmat suit.
DAWN:
There was essentially a murder kit that was left behind at that winery.
ASHLEY:
And what happened after the murder suicide when you got back to town, did the, you know, police ask to see everything from your investigation or, you know, what happened next?
DAWN:
Well, what happened next was really nothing. It was a death and a suicide. So the, the victim and the subject were both gone. So I think to them, you know, what is there to investigate, right?
ASHLEY:
Right. Because they had their victim and their perpetrator and, you know, case closed.
DAWN:
Exactly.
ASHLEY:
The community still needed to grapple with what happened. And in many ways, this still haunts the individuals impacted by the crime.
DAVID:
I mean, I I literally think about this every day for lots of reasons. And there were no signs of, of violence. I mean, Robert was bombastic. He could be mercurial, he could be profane, but that doesn’t mean there were any signs of of violence. Uh, we knew that he was a family man. He had a wife and three children. I mean, it just goes to reinforce you. You never know what’s what’s gonna happen. And desperate people, I guess, will do desperate things.
DAWN:
He saw that it was gonna end this whole fantasy of having, you know, this vineyard and this, the, the sexy appeal of having, you know, having a tasting room in the Napa Valley was going to blow up and he turned psychopath. And, and so the moral of the story is, is that when you’re dealing with somebody that maybe is a conman and their house of cards now is falling down, that you just don’t know what they’re capable of. And they could very well be capable of something like murder, which is what happened here. So it’s a very good lesson to be learned and something that, that I took very seriously. And I, I I work my future cases. Now with that in mind, I really do.
(Theme Music Fades In)
ASHLEY:
Join us next time when we reveal the secrets of the so-called greatest seller on Earth. Find Vinfamous on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen and follow the show so you never miss a scandal. Vinfamous is produced by Wine Enthusiast in partnership with Pod People. Special thanks to our production team, Dara Kapoor, Samantha Sette, and the team at Pod People Anne Fuess, Matt Sav, Aimee Machado, Ashton Carter, Danielle Roth, Shaneez Tyndall, and Carter Woghan.
(Theme Music Fades Out)
Last Updated: October 23, 2023
