(Wine-Searcher) - The recent furor over alleged counterfeits turning up at auction shows no sign of dying down.

Wine experts are embroiled in a defamation lawsuit, in which the chairman of The Wine Institute of Las Vegas claims a San Francisco consultant accused him of being a "criminal [who] should be in jail".

Gil Lempert-Schwarz, who is also a wine columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, claims forgery and authentication expert Maureen Downey and her company, Chai Consulting, have made and continue to make defamatory statements, accusing him of selling counterfeit wines, and it has cost him millions in lost sales and commissions, according to the Courthouse News media outlet.

"There is neither any foundation of truth in any of this, nor any facts to back it up whatsoever; just pure bullshit and fantasy theories," Lempert-Schwarz wrote in a message demanding the publisher of online forum Wine Berserker remove a post by Downey. The message is part of 54 pages of exhibits attached to the December 10 complaint in Clark County Court.

Lempert-Schwarz founded and owns auction firm Dragon 8, which conducted a sale of vintage wine, art and artifacts in Hong Kong that took in $25 million, an amount the Financial Times reported as "underwhelming," according to another exhibit.

Before the auction, a Los Angeles attorney, Don Cornwell, posted concerns on the Wine Berserker website that some of the wines listed for auction were counterfeit, including a 1945 Château Margaux and a 1937 Cheval Blanc, and Dragon 8 removed 18 of 250 lots listed for sale.

Cornwell's concerns centered on the wines' provenance and whether they really came from the wine cellar of an alleged Swedish nobleman, the name of whose family Lempert-Schwarz refused to reveal due to a confidentiality agreement.

Although Lempert-Schwarz removed the questionable wines, Downey told Wine Searcher: "He only removed them because he is busted. Gil has been caught in a blatant lie about the provenance of the Swedish nobleman.".

Before the auction, Lempert-Schwarz says, he sent cease and desist letters to Downey, demanding she stop making "false, defamatory, disparaging and highly damaging" statements that harm his reputation and business interests. He says Downey continues to ignore them.

"They have threatened many times, and we have maintained that I can support my statements, and the discovery involved will be interesting," Downey said, declining to comment further.

Downey is an internationally recognized expert in wine fraud and has been interviewed about wine counterfeiting for "Inside Edition" and other shows and reports.