French police bust wine fraud ring selling low quality wine for €15,000 a bottle
The counterfeiting included the creation of fake French vintage bottle labels
The criminals stand accused of making fake labels and passing off poor quality bottles as of far higher value
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The French gendarmerie has helped to break up an international fraud ring that had been selling poor quality bottles of wine for up to €15,000 each by pretending that they were top-quality vintages.
Gendarmerie officers led the operation, working with the Italian Carabinieri Corps (NAS Carabinieri) and Swiss Federal Police. The criminals had made an estimated €2m from their fraudulent activities, said Europol in a press release.
Six people were arrested in Paris, Turin, and Milan on October 14. The suspected head of the ring is Russian, but a French national connected to the case has already been charged with organised fraud and money laundering.
Read also: How a French winemaker put the world’s biggest wine fraudster in jail
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Counterfeit Grand Cru labels put on wine bottles
The counterfeiters are accused of making fake labels of famous and high-quality French vineyard bottles - of French Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) wines - and attaching them to bottles containing wine of far inferior value.
They are then accused of selling the counterfeit bottles to wine collectors, many of whom will pay up to €15,000 or more for a single bottle. Because collectors often store high-quality wine for years in cellars, they may never discover the crime, or only discover it many years later.
Europol said police had seized items including a “large amount of wine bottles from different counterfeited Grand Cru domains, wine stickers and wax products, ingredients to refill wine, technical machines to recap bottles [and] luxurious goods”, along with €100,000 in cash.
The seized electronic equipment was valued at €1.4m.
