Cheese Heist: More than €360,000 worth of cheddar is missing in London

London cheese specialist Neal’s Yard Dairy said a con artist posing as a wholesale distributor for a major French retailer had made off with 22 metric tons (48,488 pounds) of award-winning cheddar worth more than £300,000 (€360,000) before the company realized it had been scammed and reported the theft.

Nearly 1,000 wheels of cloth-wrapped cheese from three makers have gone missing: Hafod Welsh organic cheddar, Westcombe cheddar, and Pitchfork cheddar.

The dairy sells a wedge of Hafod Welsh cheddar for £12.90 (€15) for 300 grams; Westcombe for £7.15 (€8.50) for 250g; and Pitchfork for £11 (€13) for 250g.

“The high monetary value of these cheeses likely made them a particular target for the thieves,” Neal’s Yard Dairy, a distributor, wholesaler, and retailer of British artisanal cheese, said in a statement.

Detectives at Scotland Yard and international authorities are searching for the culprits.

Tom Calver, a director of Westcombe Dairy, said a lot of work went into making the cheese that was aged 12 to 18 months.

“We’re devastated,” Calver said. “For that to be stolen … it’s absolutely terrible.”

Neal’s Yard Dairy has asked international cheesemongers to be on the lookout for the stolen cheese, particularly in 10-kilogram and 24-kilogram blocks.

Neal’s Yard has said it had still paid all three producers of the cheese in full so the individual dairies would not have to bear the costs.

British chef Jamie Oliver is also on the case of the stolen cheddar, having made a plea to his 10.5 million social media followers to help solve the mystery. Calling it the “grate cheese robbery,” Oliver told his fans to be on the lookout for “lorry loads of very posh cheese.” 

He added: “If the deal seems too gouda to be true, it probably is! Let’s find these cheese stealers.”