The alleged mastermind of a multimillion dollar wine counterfeiting gang was conducting a transaction with a shady printer at Milan’s Malpensa airport when the Italian carabinieri moved in and arrested him on Sept. 26. At the exact same moment in multiple locations in France and Italy, various law enforcement officers launched raids and arrested five collaborators. It was the culmination of an international operation to dismantle a network that prosecutors say sold more than €2 million (approximately $2.12 million) in fake wine.
At the head of the illicit activity, investigators found a familiar suspect—Aleksandr Lugov. A 40-year-old Russian national who has several aliases, Lugov was previously arrested in Burgundy and convicted of counterfeiting wines from top names, including Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (DRC) and Domaine Leroy. But within a few years, investigators began to see similar fakes on the market again, leading them back to Lugov.
An All-Too-Familiar Face in Burgundy
Lugov first came to light in 2013, when DRC staff began finding odd bottles on the wine market. An international investigation led to the arrests of multiple people in France and Italy. Eventually, the trail led to Lugov.
The Russian was convicted in 2017 by the Dijon tribunal for money laundering and organized fraud for his part in selling approximately 400 bottles of fake Burgundy, valued at €2.5 million, between 2012 to 2014. He was sentenced to four years in prison, with two years suspended, and fined €150,000 as well as ordered to pay damages totaling €550,000, including €300,000 to DRC.
He was also banned from any commercial activity for five years—a punishment that one of the defense lawyers said was “the only sentence he didn’t want to have, the one he feared the most.”
Back in Business?
But just two years later, in 2019, new counterfeits began circulating in Europe, specifically in Switzerland and Italy, according to Europol, the law enforcement agency of the European Union. “Investigations which were carried out showed that the old fake bottles were still being sold, alongside new ones [featuring] copies of the [wineries’] new security features,” said a Europol spokesperson in a statement.
The French gendarmes in charge of the case realized that they had discovered a new distribution route that had links to the previous case involving Lugov. According to Europol, Lugov appears to have barely paused his activities, establishing a new international network of accomplices and bottling low-cost Italian wine as super-premium French wine, with counterfeit corks and labels made by Italian printing houses. The wines—some selling for up to €15,000 a bottle—were then exported by plane around the world to unsuspecting customers.
“Connections between the two investigations were also found while looking into the manufacturers of caps and capsules and the label printers,” said the Europol statement.
[article-img-container][src=2024-11/ns_europol-counterfeits-111224_1080.jpg] [caption= Europol agents organize counterfeiting materials seized during their raids.] [credit= (Courtesy Europol) ] [alt= Pallets of seized wine counterfeiting materials in a Europol warehouse.][end: article-img-container]
Following the Trail
Detectives began sharing information with their counterparts in other countries, and prosecutors in France and Italy banded together.
During the raids, law enforcement seized “several thousand counterfeit labels and other bottle components, as well as computers and telephones belonging to the suspects which will be used in the rest of the investigation,” according to the Dijon prosecutor’s office. They also found a fortune in luxury watches and €117,000 in cash. “Finally, assets with a total estimated value of nearly €2 million, which may have come from the reported offenses or been used to launder their proceeds, were also seized with a view to possible confiscation.”
In addition to the Italian carabinieri and French gendarmes, the task force included an investigating judge in Dijon, prosecutors in Turin and Milan, Swiss federal police and state police from Zug and Geneva, Swiss customs and border security as well as Europol. Investigations are ongoing.
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