Rarely a day goes by (even for small merchants such as myself) without receiving a number of email wine "orders" from a growing band of conmen lurking out there in cyberspace. Most - if not all - are easy to spot and go straight into the "deleted items" folder (I don't like junk filters - I might miss something important). And most are asking for the same old wines and are seemingly written by illiterates who should never be allowed within a mile of a keyboard. Basically, these people send out bulk emails to every merchant email address they can find from trawling the Internet, in the hope that some gullible or desperate merchant will despatch the wines, having apparently taken payment, only to find out in due course that the credit card was stolen. The end result is that the credit card company takes back the money, leaving the merchant with a big hole in their accounts - whilst, in the meantime, the wine has been hastily spirited away from the delivery address, never to be seen again.
Luckily for me, I don't do trophy wines, so I couldn't supply what these people are after, even if I wanted to. Consequently (and much more importantly) I am not in a position to get fleeced. But I wonder how often other merchants who do stock these sort of wines get taken in - it must happen, or the conmen would eventually give up trying.
Here is an example I received today, which (honestly!) is well-written, in comparison to many others;
"Good day ,
I will like to make Inquiry about the under listed wines , Kindly advice
on there unit's prices and the availability, if you can source for supply.
LOUIS ROEDERER CRISTAL 2000 VINTAGE
DOM PERIGNON CHAMPAGNE 1999 VINTAGE
HOPE TO READ THE UNIT COST FROM YOU ASAP SO THAT I CAN FORWARD MY CREDIT CARD INFORMATION TO CHARGE FOR THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF MY ORDER.
THANK YOU"
Impressive, isn't it? (Not!)
More worrying still, though, is a recent increase in the targeting not of wine merchants, but the wine growers themselves - with the conmen posing as (legitimate) merchants. And some wine growers - many of whom are becoming more and more deperate to shift stock - are getting taken-in by these "orders" and losing literally thousands of Pounds (or Euros). The trick the conmen are employing is to use the details of real wine merchants to secure the orders, but provide a different delivery address (invariably, of course, not the real merchant's address). If the grower gets taken-in by the con, it is simply a matter of shipping the wines to the spurious address, upon which they are quickly transported to another location - and the trail quickly goes cold. Given that many growers offer 30 or even 60 days for payment by the merchant (some even on the first order from a new "customer"!) that is more than enough time for the criminals to escape with several pallets of wine, having never paid a penny (or a cent) for the privilege.
If you think this is rare, then think again. About a year ago, I received an unannounced visit from two people from HMRC, who were investigating the non-payment of excise duty on several pallets of wine, imported using my Company's name, from a cantina (wine co-operative) in Italy. Suffice to say, I knew nothing about this shipment and managed to convince them of that, fairly quickly. Of course, the fact that I only import wines from France was a fair indicator of my innocence! Statements were taken and (apart from a couple of phone calls by me, to HMRC) I have heard nothing more from HMRC. As far as I am aware, the culprits were caught, but the case has yet to reach court.
I did, however, receive a letter from a firm of solicitors acting for the cantina, demanding payment of several thousand Euros for the wines I had never even ordered and certainly never received. Which kind of puts the priorities of HMRC into perspective - they wanted their excise duty, but were far less (i.e. not at all) concerned about the fact that a wine grower had been the victim of the same criminals and had also lost a lot of money!
The moral of the story - think very hard before becoming a wine merchant. And if you do become a wine merchant (or already are one) - be very sure of who you are "selling" to!
For more on wine fraud, investigative wine journalist and Loire wine fanatic Jim Budd has lots more horror stories on his website http://investdrinks.org/index.html and (more recently) his blog http://jimsloire.blogspot.com/2009/04/update-on-fraudsters-from-ubifrance.html
Leon Stolarski
http://www.lsfinewines.co.uk/
Luckily for me, I don't do trophy wines, so I couldn't supply what these people are after, even if I wanted to. Consequently (and much more importantly) I am not in a position to get fleeced. But I wonder how often other merchants who do stock these sort of wines get taken in - it must happen, or the conmen would eventually give up trying.
Here is an example I received today, which (honestly!) is well-written, in comparison to many others;
"Good day ,
I will like to make Inquiry about the under listed wines , Kindly advice
on there unit's prices and the availability, if you can source for supply.
LOUIS ROEDERER CRISTAL 2000 VINTAGE
DOM PERIGNON CHAMPAGNE 1999 VINTAGE
HOPE TO READ THE UNIT COST FROM YOU ASAP SO THAT I CAN FORWARD MY CREDIT CARD INFORMATION TO CHARGE FOR THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF MY ORDER.
THANK YOU"
Impressive, isn't it? (Not!)
More worrying still, though, is a recent increase in the targeting not of wine merchants, but the wine growers themselves - with the conmen posing as (legitimate) merchants. And some wine growers - many of whom are becoming more and more deperate to shift stock - are getting taken-in by these "orders" and losing literally thousands of Pounds (or Euros). The trick the conmen are employing is to use the details of real wine merchants to secure the orders, but provide a different delivery address (invariably, of course, not the real merchant's address). If the grower gets taken-in by the con, it is simply a matter of shipping the wines to the spurious address, upon which they are quickly transported to another location - and the trail quickly goes cold. Given that many growers offer 30 or even 60 days for payment by the merchant (some even on the first order from a new "customer"!) that is more than enough time for the criminals to escape with several pallets of wine, having never paid a penny (or a cent) for the privilege.
If you think this is rare, then think again. About a year ago, I received an unannounced visit from two people from HMRC, who were investigating the non-payment of excise duty on several pallets of wine, imported using my Company's name, from a cantina (wine co-operative) in Italy. Suffice to say, I knew nothing about this shipment and managed to convince them of that, fairly quickly. Of course, the fact that I only import wines from France was a fair indicator of my innocence! Statements were taken and (apart from a couple of phone calls by me, to HMRC) I have heard nothing more from HMRC. As far as I am aware, the culprits were caught, but the case has yet to reach court.
I did, however, receive a letter from a firm of solicitors acting for the cantina, demanding payment of several thousand Euros for the wines I had never even ordered and certainly never received. Which kind of puts the priorities of HMRC into perspective - they wanted their excise duty, but were far less (i.e. not at all) concerned about the fact that a wine grower had been the victim of the same criminals and had also lost a lot of money!
The moral of the story - think very hard before becoming a wine merchant. And if you do become a wine merchant (or already are one) - be very sure of who you are "selling" to!
For more on wine fraud, investigative wine journalist and Loire wine fanatic Jim Budd has lots more horror stories on his website http://investdrinks.org/index.html and (more recently) his blog http://jimsloire.blogspot.com/2009/04/update-on-fraudsters-from-ubifrance.html
Leon Stolarski
http://www.lsfinewines.co.uk/
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