“A British con man was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Monday for swindling nearly $100 million from more than 140 victims. The financial asset he used to build his scheme? It wasn’t crypto or real estate. It was wine……… The high-profile case is one of many recent incidents of scammers turning grapes into financial crimes. Patrick Briones, the former top wine buyer at the grocery chain Albertsons, pleaded guilty in October to bribery and conspiracy, after prosecutors alleged that he’d accepted kickbacks like fancy vacations and expensive watches from wine sellers. And the winemaker Jeffry Hill was sentenced in January for orchestrating a $2.5 million grape scam in which he fraudulently mislabeled his bottles.
This new wave of wine fraud has occurred as the industry experiences a severe downturn, with climate change disrupting grape-growing conditions and consumers drinking less. “
by Nyungwe23
2 Comments
Lazy article, 3 incidents of fraud in a few years isn’t rampant fraud.
Seems like it’s less to do with wine, and more to do with corruption, bribery and forging documents. You could do this in any business sector.