Aleksandr lugov, a notorious wine fraudster who had been previously convicted of faking fine wines including the rarefied Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (DRC) in 2017, was again arrested in Italy seven years later.
On September 26, six suspects were apprehended at Milan Malpensa Airport in Italy, including Iugov, a 40-year-old Russian man with a history of faking fine wines, as noted by a prosecutor in Dijon, France. The Italian police seized thousands of counterfeit labels and other materials for producing fake wines, with the wines involved in this case estimated to be valued at two million euros (US$2.16 million).
According to Wine-Searcher, the average price of a 750ml bottle of DRC is priced at US$24,690, with auction prices potentially exceeding ten times that amount. In October 2018, two bottles of 1945 vintage DRC were sold by Sotheby’s in New York—one for US$496,000 and the other for US$558,000.
The investigation was jointly conducted by France and Italy and aimed to dismantle a transnational network involved in counterfeiting and selling luxurious French wines. Fourteen searches were carried out in Turin and Milan, as well as in Paris, France.
In May 2017, lugov was sentenced to four years in prison by a court in Dijon, with a two-year non-parole period. He was fined 150,000 euros (US$163,354), along with a compensation order of 550,000 euros (US$598,964), of which 300,000 euros (US$326,708) was paid to the DRC winery. He was charged with selling about 400 bottles of fake DRC and Domaine Leroy wines between 2012 and 2014, valued at around 2.5 million euros (US$2.72 million).
The 2017 case involved seven suspects arrested across five European countries, including Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the UK, and Cyprus. In the court hearing, lugov claimed that he didn’t know the wines were fake and denied any connection with two Italian accomplices, who were sentenced to two years by a Swiss court in 2015.
Though many fake bottles produced by lugov were seized, some were still believed to be in circulation in the international marketplace by the time of the 2017 trial.
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