The federal complaint filed this week by billionaire collector William Koch is centered on his winning bid of $311,800 spent on four bottles of wine that Christie's authenticated as having been owned by Thomas Jefferson.

The wine's source, Hardy Rodenstock, against whom Koch has a separate pending lawsuit, claimed to have discovered a hidden cache of wine bearing the initials "Th.J." in a bricked-up wine cellar in Paris in the 1980s, according to the complaint.

Koch claims his 10 confidential witnesses include former Christie's employees and glass engravers and polishers who say they were living in the same small German town as Rodenstock in the 1980s.