Police Smash Wine Forgery Ring Selling Fake “Grand Cru”

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French, Italian, and Swiss police have busted a criminal network that sold average-quality wine as exclusive French red of the so-called Grand Cru superior quality for up to 15,000 euros (US$16,360) per bottle and amassing profits of more than 2 million euros (US$2.18 million).

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Reported by

Zdravko Ljubas
October 15th, 2024
Organized Crime
France, Italy, Switzerland

Europol and Eurojust, which supported the operation, revealed Tuesday that the counterfeit wines, falsely labeled with the French Protected Designation of Origin (PDO)—a mark that signifies the strongest links to the wine’s place of origin—were not even produced in France but in Italy. It was flown to France and exported worldwide at market value by unsuspecting wine traders.

According to Eurojust, the criminal group worked with Italian printing houses to replicate the corks and labels of prestigious French wineries.

Police arrested a half dozen suspects, including one “high-value target,” and conducted searches at 14 locations in Paris, Milan, and Turin.

According to Europol, authorities also seized a large quantity of counterfeit wine bottles from various Grand Cru domains, wine labels, wax products, ingredients for refilling wine, recapping machines, luxury goods, electronic equipment worth 1.4 million euros (US$1.53 million), over 100,000 euros (US$109,128) in cash, and important documents.

Europol added that this operation led investigators to uncover links to a previous probe targeting the counterfeiting of PDO wines.

Connections between the two investigations were found when police examined cap, capsule, and label manufacturers. A Russian national involved in a 2015 case was tied to both investigations, while authorities discovered new counterfeits in Europe, “specifically in the Swiss and Italian markets,” according to Europol.

It also said that in 2014, a trace on a label linked the case to a suspect from a similar crime. The investigation into a global wine counterfeiting network led to the arrest of a Russian suspect associated with two Italian winemakers.