Thieves Loot French Wine Merchant in Massive Heist
24 Feb 2007
Pulling a page straight out of Ocean's 11, professional thieves in France purportedly made off with almost $8,000,000 US (€6,000,000) in top-flight Bordeaux wines in what police suspect was an inside job.
The thieves' loot consisted of over 3000 bottles of grand cru classé (read: top shelf) Bordeux wines, namely Lafite-Rothschild, Latour, Mouton-Rothschild, and various other exclusive vintages.
Inhouse employees determined the bottles were missing only after someone noticed empty spaces in the bins of the stock room this past Monday morning.
"After completing an inventory, we realized we were missing over 250 cases of our most prestigious wines," said Laurent Barrier, export manager.
Several factors led investigators to presume the work of insiders or professional gang activity - namely that the mostly 2004 vintage haul arrived at the warehouse only days before the heist. There were also no signs of forced entry and the thieves clearly had the luxury of time - the merchandise totaled over four tons of vino!
The stolen haul will surely be taken overseas, as high tech tracking systems such as engraved lot numbers and identifcation codes on every label would make them virtually impossible to sell on the French black market.
Barrier has hope that the bottles will be recovered, but noted, "Essentially, this wine has already been paid for by our clients and they will be reimbursed."
(Developing ...)
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