Wine gang busted after selling fake vintage for £12,500 a bottle

Police say they have broken up a criminal wine gang that sold cheap plonk for €15,000 (£12,500) a bottle by passing it off as a French vintage.

The group is accused of counterfeiting bottles of Grand Cru in Italy and then distributing them for sale among “honest wine traders” around the world.

Police said they had seized a “large amount” of counterfeit bottles, stickers and wax products following raids at more than a dozen locations in Turin, Milan and Paris.

Detectives also discovered “technical machines to recap bottles”, computers, phones and luxury watches valued at €1.4m (£1.1m).

A total of more than €100,000 (£84,000) in cash was also seized from properties across Italy and France.

Seven people have been arrested.

The alleged gang is estimated to have made more than €2m (£1.7m) profit from the fraud, according to officials.

It comes following a probe led by French police, alongside forces in Italy and Switzerland, with support from cross-continent law enforcement agencies Europol and Eurojust.

A spokesperson for Eurojust said: “By working with printing houses in Italy, the criminal group was able to re-create the corks and labels of famous French wineries.

“The forged wine was then delivered to an Italian airport and taken abroad to be sold at market value around the world by wine traders.”

During the probe, officials established a link with a previous counterfeit wine investigation, which was closed in 2015 following the arrest of a Russian national.

The authorities said new counterfeits began to appear in 2019, specifically in the Swiss and Italian markets, in bottles fitted with copies of new security features.

The discovery of the fakes allowed police to trace the wines via distribution routes back to their source, officials said.

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It is feared that some customers who bought the fake wine may have put their bottles in storage as an investment or to drink years later – meaning they may never find out their purchase was counterfeit.

Counterfeit wines have long been a problem in the industry.

One of the most notorious cases is that of Rudy Kurniawan, who was found guilty in 2013 of manufacturing fake vintage wine in his kitchen and selling it to collectors to fund his “lavish” lifestyle.

The Californian was sentenced to 10 years in prison after a court heard he sold as much as $1.3m (£1m in today’s money) worth of counterfeit bottles to unwitting buyers.

Kurniawan, who inspired the 2016 documentary Sour Grapes, has since been released.